Identifying “identity politics”

It has become typical to see the widest variety of writers of both popular and academic work arguing against, or discussing the limitations of, something which they call “identity politics.” The positions which are grouped together by this name are not generally categorized that way by anyone who actually holds these positions: such people might refer to themselves, variously, as “nationalists,” “feminists,” “Afrocentrists,” or “multiculturalists,” with further adjectival modifications referring to specific modes of nationalism or feminism (“cultural,” “economic”), or specific political modifiers, like “liberal,” “radical,” or “critical,” the last term of which once denoted marxist sympathies, but does not anymore.