Reframing Identity Politics 1.0 to 2.0: A Postpositivist Response to 21st Century Sinophobia

Decried by both sides of the political spectrum, identity politics continues to be the source of tension across the world. To address the problem, this article looks into the impact of Sinophobia on diasporic Chinese-identified individuals in Vancouver and Sydney under the rise of China in the 21^st century today. This article argues how its common mode of practice (Identity Politics 1.0) is grounded on a positivist notion of identity politics that fosters divisiveness and hostility. Drawing on Stuart Hall’s work on diasporic identity, it analyzes how the politics of identity can be reconfigured to remain a tool for social justice as it was originally proposed in the Combahee River Collective Statement in 1977. In this multi-sited inquiry, data was collected through a combined method of interviews and ethnographic fieldwork, as well as sourcing data through various forms of digital archives. The purpose is to explore the identity formation process of individuals to examine how they negotiate their Chineseness within three levels of societal relations : interpersonal, municipal, and national. The findings unpack a postpositivist framework called Identity Politics 2.0 that re-conceptualizes identity where, as Tony Bennett suggests, its process can disrupt hegemonic formations so that new meanings of identity are generated to affirm one’s humanity and new political directions can emerge to support social justice and foster coalition across differences particularly under shared problems of an interconnected world.