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    On the utter futility of the politics of identity and difference

    Yesterday's post about the the extent that mainstream feminist thinking is implicated in trans exclusinary radical feminism generated some great comments. In particular, my impression that Women and Gender theorists overwhelmingly defined gender differences as being in the contingent realm of culture and sex differences as being in the realm of nomic necessity was mistaken. However, nobody took up the main point I was trying to make (and it should be clear that no one has an obligation to do so) so I'll try to frame it more generally.

    First, with respect to gender, it's not enough to problematize the gender/sex distinction merely by arguing that sexual difference itself is imbued with cultural and epigenetic factors. Has the debate gone beyond that sort of generic culturally relativist move? It was not clear from the comments. The challenge by Serano and Garcia is in part from the other direction; denying that aspects of gender difference are in the realm of nomic necessity leads to other forms of oppression. From Sullivan's post, the denial of this by many feminist activists involves systematically ignoring or dismissing the testimony of many trans people, and this suppression accounts for much of the acrimony between TERFs and transgender people.

    Second, the gender/sex issue wasn't a little bit orthogonal to the problem I tried to pose, which was that much feminist theory (at least the stuff I studied seven years ago) wasn't able to navigate a Scylla and Charibdis between politics of identity and difference. Serano and Garcia argue that even recent feminist theorists (who are aware of the danger) end up denigrating femininity and telling women that they should have traditionally masculine traits. But if the alternative is Carol Gilligan or Glover type theory, no thanks. Glover critiques the "final girl" in horror movies (the last possible victim who survives and kills the killer) as a "male adolescent in drag" in part because the final girl has "masculine" attributes such as planning and use of reason. As far as infantalizing condescension goes, this is about on par with pesticide companies giving pink teddy bears to women with breast cancer.


    I actually think that this is an instance of a broader structural problem with all theory that seeks to ground an emancipatory politics in politics of identity or difference. Politics of identity (to be differentiated from identity politics, on this more below) in the first instance correspond to characteristic tropes of many "first wave" feminists. The goal is to undermine the discursive and political norms that justify oppression in terms of the positing of systematic differences. The theorist critiques the Aristotelian assumptions about differences that might justify oppression, and the activist tries to render these norms no longer operative in society. The danger, of course, is that the oppressed group is in effect being told that they would not be oppressed if they could just be more like the oppressors. And to prove this, some members of the oppressed group are allowed to join the ranks of the oppressors. But, of course, this just serves to legitimate the oppression. I worry about belittling the heroic fight against apartheid in the United States and South Africa by mentioning them in this context (and I am not saying that things are nearly as bad today as they were), but I must. In South Africa part of the deal was to put a select few people connected with the ANC on the boards of corporations. And then of course,

    The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

    But the idea that you too might be able to be a man ends up legitimating a system where it is actually apriori that very few will ever get to be men. My post on the manner in which Gordon Ramsay's TV shows legitimate neo-liberalism explored this dynamic.

    A natural response to this is a specific politics of difference, in the first instance rejecting the Orwellian deal where you might be able to be an oppressor as long as you become indistinguishable from them. This make sense. After all, the deal is a priori only available to a few. However, in practice this often reverts to the kind of inverted Aristotelianism of someone like Carol Gilligan. Women really don't use logic and all that stuff, but are better for all of that. I'm reminded of an intro. student of mine from fifteen years ago who, in a brilliant instance of Pythonesque logic, defended the women being forced to cover there entire bodies in public with the following syllogism:

    1. Wome forced to wear a burka women are wrapped up.
    2. A gift is more valuable than a non-gift.
    3. People wrap up gifts.
    4. A woman forced to wear a burka is more valuable than one not forced to wear a burka.

    The danger of opposing politics of identity with politics of specific difference is always going to be affirming the very differences that are part of the oppression. Cultural reappropriations surrounding rap music in the United States, Britain, and France are often instances of just this. The narrators of NWA's Straight Out of Compton are distilled instances of this trope, cartoon projections of white racism, but somehow valorized.

    In continental theory at least, this dialectic between politics of generalized identity and specific differences gives rise to a sort of generalized philosophy of difference. One doesn't simply invert the previous paradigm, but instead critiques all politics of identity. Specific philosophies of difference are shown to be correctly called "identity politics," and rejected as more of the same.  This generalized philosophy of difference is instanced in the kind of French queer theory that Tristan Garcia critiques, but it is familiar to American conference attenders, where you see instances of the hyper-nominalist strategy that tries to show that any instance of some field of difference (such as gender) is a construction. It is a short step from this to enjoining people to either embrace fluidity or take a kind of existentialist ownership of their own identity. Once you realize there is no there there to any possible identity of that sort, you have no excuse not to realize that you are responsible for all of your behavior that can be categorized according to a that identity.

    In a wonderful Hegelian move, Garcia argues that such philosophies of generalized difference simply revert back to philosophies of identity. The virtues demanded of all of us by the French theorists in question are simply the traditional Aristotelian masculine virtues. The person who does not accept gender fluidity is weak and passive, that is feminine in the Aristotelian sense and worthy of censure. This contrasted with the strong, dedicated person who embraces fluidity.

    The broader point one can glean from this is taht in structures of oppression, oppressors are by definition those who get to dictate the acceptable forms of difference. So philosophies of generalized difference are once again nothing more than a crude instance of philosophies of identity, promulgating the cruel neo-liberal fantasy that everyone could be an oppressor. . . 

    All of the above is really just a Hegelian thought experiment, but I think it does illustrate many of the dangers involved in trying to ground an emancipatory politics in the categories of identity and difference. I might go further and argue that the very idea that such categories are foundational with respect to emancipation might itself be a self-legitimating bit of the dialectic constitutive of neo-liberalism. As Bruno Bosteels might say, one of the many the Baron von Munchhausen moments where the system pulls itself up by his own hair. But I'm not sure that this is the case. Likewise, if I understood Hegel better I would tie this in some manner to his claim about identity being the identity of identity and difference. But that probably wouldn't help things.

    From reading Garcia, I'm sure that there is relevant work in the Marxist tradition concerning how to ground emancipatory politicis without a crude class based dialectics. I would conjecture that feminist Marxists have long been onto the problem of grounding critique in the categories of difference and identity. It would be interesting to take that as a starting off point for looking at systematic* alternatives.

    [*If none of the above resonates with analytical philosophers, it might be because we analytic philosophers are ironically much more Husserlian than the Husserlians. We're very good at bracketing all sorts of possibly relevant presuppositions in order to make it possible to get down to the matter at hand. Thus an analytic feminist philosopher can more easily attend to various bits of the dialectic without having to think about the dialectic itself, which involves the possibility of a systematic philosophy addressing the issue at hand. This is fine. It probably goes without saying at this point that the only thing all of the authors of this blog have in common is that we take both traditions to be valuable.]

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    4 responses to “On the utter futility of the politics of identity and difference”

    1. Stacey Goguen Avatar
      Stacey Goguen

      These have been interesting posts to read; thanks for writing them up. I’m not sure if I know of any formal scholarship that addresses these points, but I think I see a way to navigate scylla and charibdis. (Edit: I was going to say it’s more about execution than getting the conceptual part down, but I take that back. The concept was actually really hard to articulate.)(Other edit: I think I’m also arriving at what you’re talking about at the end of the post, by my own route.)
      First, I think about the harms of oppression as falling into two camps: material and existential. Examples: income inequality is a material harm. Feeling like you can’t both be girly and admirable is an existential harm. (They aren’t completely separate; they feed one another.) I think the issue you’re bringing up in these posts has more directly to do with the existential harms than the material ones, so I’m going to focus on the issue in terms of it’s effects on how we think about ourselves and other people.
      So, I consider the main existential harms of oppression to be that some groups of people are treated as more valuable and admirable than other groups of people and that, by locking people into these groups, we constrict people’s self-concept, which is ultimately bad because many people would probably be happier if they had a more expansive/fluid/dynamic self-concept. Two corollaries: people in devalued groups can sometimes gain value either by (as you mention) taking on some of the traits of the valued group or by embracing their devalued group and being as virtuous as they can, for someone in that group. (If you think about valuation as a bar that you can fill up, we’re letting people in devalued groups feel better either by having slightly higher than average valuation for someone of their kind, or by having the maximum possible valuation someone of their kind could have.) So we let people tinker a little with their self-concept, but they can’t radically alter it. We follow both these corollaries for gender.
      The scylla and charbdis you mention is that we want to correct both the wrongful undervaluation of certain groups of PEOPLE and the restrictive valuation of certain CATEGORIES. Often however, an easy way to value a person more is to take them out of a devalued category. So if they want to self-identify with that category, we then have a conundrum.
      However, that suggests we need to find a better way to value people than the first easy way that came to mind. I think, a good way to do this is to stop thinking of people as having static valuation at all. And a good way to do that is to stop thinking of them as having static traits and category membership at all. This also has the added benefit of opening up people’s possibilities for their self-concept.
      But again, as you mention, there’s the danger of treating fluidity as desirearble and valuable, and thus denigrating people who want to be and seem to be static in their self-concept. So we therefore arrive at your warning, “oppressors are by definition those who get to dictate the acceptable forms of difference.” So that suggests a solution is to diffuse the power of identification among everyone so it doesn’t coalesce into unequal pockets.
      Okay, that’s a possible end goal for how to fix the problem. But how to we get their (point B) from where we specifically are right now (point A)? Is there a way to at least conceptually grease the wheels for a politics that would be closer to such a diffusion of power than what we have now? I think there is; I think there’s something that’s worth a shot, anyway.
      Since we are specifically in a culture where we think about people largely in terms of static categories and roles (feminine, care-taker, men feeling like they have to be strong every single second of the day, etc.), I think a way to move close to point B from point A is to think about identity in more fluid terms than we do now. Yes, there’s the possibility of over-correcting and then overvaluing fluidity itself. So navigating the straight is ultimately a balancing act. We’re on a tightrope between scylla and charibdis. So that means, when we know there’s likely going to be a strong gust of wind from the west, we should probably lean into it a little bit, even though, should that gust not arrive, or should we lean too much, we might make ourselves fall. But you can walk across a tightrope or a ledge by standing perfectly straight ONLY IF there are absolutely no environmental factors that are pushing you one way or another. I had the sense that in your post, you might have been presenting the problem as if it’s bad for us to ever lean one way or another. But again, that’s only if there is no wind or other specific cultural ebbs and flows that we’re trying to correct for.
      So if I’m engaging with your points correctly, this means that while the ultimate goal may require us to abandon all politics of identity, some politics of identity may get us closer to that point, in relation to where we are right now. So it’s somewhat okay if we can’t reconcile the grounds for such identity politics with our end goal. We’re on the move, so our grounds will be shifting as we go, too. (Though I think you might be arguing that we’re just moving in a circle, and might not actually be getting closer to true emancipation?)Sorry this got allegory and vague at the end. My brain got tired and I’m not fluent in continental.

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    2. Scu Avatar
      Scu

      I might try to respond more later, but there is quite a bit of formal scholarship on exactly the issues that you (Jon) raise. I might try to give a better bibliography later, when I try to write more, but the first work I know that brings together a variety of exciting scholars on this very issue is Gisela Bock’s and Susan James’ Beyond Equality and Difference. Of course, that is a 1992 book, drawn from an 1988 conference, so there is a wealth of scholarship both before and after.

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    3. Andrew Avatar
      Andrew

      Not for nothing, but there is a huge literature in political theory on these questions… from Sheyla Benahbib’s “Democracy and Difference,” to William Connolly’s “Identity/Difference,” to pretty much everything Nancy Fraser has written, to Charles Taylor’s “Sources of the Self” (if you really want to take up the Hegelian side of things) to Patchen Markell’s “Bound by Recognition” (which pretty much puts the recognition/redistribution debates to a productive rest) , to Young’s vitally important “Justice and the Politics of Difference” (on precisely the questions about oppression and domination as both interpersonal and structural that), to, well, lots and lots of things. As Scu notes, it’s also a literature that can easily be dated back several decades (Young’s JPD was published in 1990 after more than a decade of publishing articles leading up to it). And very little of even that body of work draws expressly from Foucault and/or Butler, which could produce an even longer list if one took the time.

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    4. sk Avatar
      sk

      well, for starters it might be helpful if there were particular philosophers on the table; i’m not familiar with the work of Tristan Garcia, and i can’t seem to find the work that he/she has done on gender theory or queer theory. but this passage:
      “This generalized philosophy of difference is instanced in the kind of French queer theory that Tristan Garcia critiques, but it is familiar to American conference attenders, where you see instances of the hyper-nominalist strategy that tries to show that any instance of some field of difference (such as gender) is a construction. It is a short step from this to enjoining people to either embrace fluidity or take a kind of existentialist ownership of their own identity. Once you realize there is no there there to any possible identity of that sort, you have no excuse not to realize that you are responsible for all of your behavior that can be categorized according to a that identity”
      makes little sense to me. i think what you describe is a rather long step, especially as it enjoins us to think carefully about the relationship between facts and norms, as it were. though i agree that what you’ve described from garcia – that we are enjoined to be masculinely resilient about our fluid identities, rather than passively weak in choosing a stable identity – sounds rather stupid; without specifics about where this is coming from, however, i cannot make much of a judgment about it. are we talking about irigaray? in her case, the identification of fluidity with masculinity is impossible. are we talking about kristeva? her dialectics of identity and difference are quite specific, and you might have to buy the whole lacanian shebang with your purchase. neither of these are queer theorists, exactly. or are we talking about the political opinions of several french poststructuralist theorists who have come out against adoption rights for gay parents? in that case, they are hardly embracing a doctrine of identity fluidity. re: neoliberalism and difference: well, robin james’ work would be a good place to start, as would shannon winnubst’s – but i don’t see them fitting into anything like what you describe above.
      there is a problem when some of this theorizing gets taken too far away from the political context out of which it emerged. that is, if we are talking about oppression, we are talking about power, and without taking account of the particular dynamics of power in which these concepts of identity and difference are operating, the result is often reification or hypostasization. this is why the mention in the last thread of the whiteness in/of feminism is pertinent: these dynamics are overlapping, and there is a lot to learn from womanism/women of color feminism, on precisely the issue of the relation between identity and difference. as the above mentioned, there is also obviously an entire literature in political theory – and in feminist political theory – on this – shit it’s too big to even call it a ‘point’, it’s like a whole subfield.
      happy reading!

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