Since the 1960s, the United States has been the quintessential country of identity politics. This phrase refers to policies – governmental or otherwise – aimed at promoting the interest, or combatting the stigmatization, of some particular category of the population. Identity politics aim to rehabilitate the ‘identity’ of social groups hitherto discriminated against on account of the negative perception to which they are subject. Identity politics has two important characteristics. The first is that it involves minorities who recognize themselves as such – that is, who do not have the mission of transforming themselves into a majority. In this regard they are opposed to entities like the ‘people’ or the ‘working class’, whose historical role was to coincide, in the more or less long term, with society as a whole. The struggle for recognition of homosexual identity, for example, does not necessarily aim to generalize this identity. It aims to put an end to the stigmatization of those concerned. The second characteristic of ‘identity’ thus conceived is that it is not a (uniquely) economic instance. It contains a decisive cultural dimension.