Lord Of The Dead Essay Research Paper

Lord Of The Dead Essay, Research Paper

( This essay is a response to Benhabib. )

EDUCATION, DISCOURSE, AND

THE CONSTRUCTION OF IDENTITY 1

In order to see some of the strengths and weakness of identity politics as an approach to thinking about education, we need to make a distinction that is implicit, but not explicit, in Seyla Benhabib s essay. For there are at least two distinct conceptions of identity politics at work in her discussion, and criticisms appropriate to one may not apply to the other. The first perspective considers identity a rather static quality of persons, and views the process of identity formation in predominantly passive terms; the other perspective involves what Benhabib calls the fungibility of identity, suggesting that identities are more active and flexible constructions.2 Correspondingly, each of these views yields a different view of politics; both of which, I will suggest, can be seen as quite limited, but for different reasons.

For example, many identity theorists, and postmodern feminists generally, will balk at having Catharine MacKinnon put forth as an exemplar of their views. If she is an advocate of identity politics, it is only in a very specific sense, assuming a reified identity that is decided for women, by men, who with their foot on women s throats do not allow them to speak for themselves. MacKinnon also has a crude, instrumental conception of power, especially in her view of the state as monolithic and fundamentally insensitive to women s concerns (as she says, the state is male 3). As a result, her view of politics is strategic and somewhat opportunistic: she appears willing to forge single-issue coalitions with any group to advance her cause, as she has with right-wing groups in her antipornography crusade. MacKinnon s expressed sympathy for Clarence Thomas in the Hill-Thomas case is rather stunning, given her larger views on sexual harassment, and Benhabib places considerable weight on these comments as representing some larger dilemma faced by postmodern feminists in that dispute; but I do not see that MacKinnon s comments typify a position taken by postmodern feminists generally.

MacKinnon is not postmodern in any sense that I can understand, and it seems rather misleading to characterize the weaknesses of identity politics and of postmodern feminism largely through her example. If she is an identity theorist, she has a quite reified and passive conception of identity, as I have said. For MacKinnon, there is no active component in the process of identity formation; identity is constructed for women, imposed from without by powerful others and by hegemonic cultural norms and beliefs. And because her politics are instrumental, she seems quite willing to denigrate the qualities and character of many women, as we see in Benhabib s quote from the Buffalo conference, not because their actions or attitudes are in any way objectionable, but because the genesis of those choices does not comport with the vision of womanhood authorized by a political vanguard.

This sort of identity politics goes on in movements aside from MacKinnon s, of course. Some groups within so-called new social movements are inbred, suspicious, and convinced that their issues are the preeminent ones. For many of them, any Realpolitik to advance their cause is justified; as Benhabib rightly points out, they have no larger vision of social justice and little interest in taking on the concerns of other progressive causes.

But I do not see what is postmodern in any of this. The passive and reified sense of identity at work here, the crude conception of power, the instrumental and opportunistic politics, the embrace of difference only in the sense of leaving space for other self-interested and exclusionary groups to ply their trade, all seem out of step with a postmodern outlook.

On the other hand, there is also a position stressing, as Benhabib terms it, the fungibility of identity, which, whatever its merits or shortcomings, refers to an entirely different strand of thought from MacKinnon s. In such theories (Judith Butler is Benhabib s main example here), identity can be constructed in many different ways; and while this process is contingent, it can involve choosing, shaping, and reinterpreting the identity one has. Although I do not know much of Butler s work, it does not seem correct to characterize her view of construction as passive, as it is for MacKinnon.4 For Butler, and for many identity theorists, the politics of identity seems to be about the continuous formation and reformation of identity, about the free play of diff rance, and about a process of exploration and experimentation that is active and open-ended. However one judges this theoretical and political trend, it is clearly discrete from MacKinnon s: it is postmodern in a way that her view is not, and if it has problems, they are different problems from hers.

In fact, I would say that some of these views of identity may be too plastic and voluntaristic. If identity is a construction, it is not a mere construction; we cannot choose or reshape it in any way that we please, and a theory of constructed identities needs an account of how this process occurs.5

It is revealing, to me, that such theoretical positions often take the construction of sexual identity as their model. Benhabib rightly notes the fascinating sh