The "WE" Of Identity Politics

Just as the eighties had been the "me" decade, early on it seemed as if the nineties were going to be the "we" decade. As it turned out, no one really knew who "we" were. At home, lesbians and gay men struggled to decide if "we queers" included bisexuals and the transgendered. Feminists worried that any notion of "we women" would end up essentialist, excluding lesbians, women of color, or the differently abled. The myriad groups classified as "Hispanic" grappled with the problem of finding any inclusionary identity category. Was the proper term "Latino," some compound form of American like "Puerto-Rican-American," or something more specific altogether, like "Chicano"? Situated at the borders and intersections of the "we," people with multiple identifications experimented with notions like "world-traveling," "hybridity," and "the new mestiza."[1] Academics fought over the terms "postmodern" and "poststructuralist," reluctant to claim an identity predefined by an opposing camp.[2] Even the Right and Left labels, which had apparently solidified during the Reagan era, were not immune. Republicans, despite their ability to capitalize on widespread public disillusionment with Clinton in the November 1994 elections, self-destructed in an effort to establish a core of family values, the espousal of which would separate "us"—the solid, untainted core of conservative Republicans—from "them"—the less-than-faithful whose alleged moderateness might conceal a latent "liberalism." Likewise distancing themselves from Jesse Jackson and much of the Rainbow Coalition important to Democrats in the seventies and eighties, the new voices of Clinton Democrats took up the themes of community and religion previously associated with conservatism.



Abroad, tribalism and nationalism came to the fore. As many of the boundaries constructed in the aftermath of World War II collapsed, migrations and immigrations resulted in confusing and exclusionary (re)assertions of identity. The phrase "we Germans" evoked the horrors of National Socialism. Serbs and Croats, and later Bosnian-Serbs and Bosnian-Muslims, rejected the idea of "we Yugoslavians" in favor of a pure identity that, for some, could only come from "ethnic cleansing." Finally, the dream of a European Community began to fray as the dissolution of internal borders seemed to come at the cost of strengthening external borders and ignoring the legacy of colonialism. For what would be the status of the guest workers, foreign nationals, and political and economic refugees in this new community? At the outset, then, the shift to the "we decade" floundered in the wake of the risks any articulation of identity seemed to entail.

Returning home, back to the more manageable microlevel of everyday life, I recently told my sister Dahn about the complicated identity politics dividing the lesbian/gay/bisexual student organization I sponsored at a Texas university. I described the debate over whether to include bisexuals in the group's name and constitution. I asked her how to handle the problem of racism—many Chicanas felt that their particular experiences were overlooked in such an Anglo setting and were considering breaking off to form their own group. Although sympathetic, Dahn was somewhat bored. "Labels are so eighties," she said. "We at Yale have moved beyond labels. We think people should just be people."

Dahn's response troubled me. The people-are-people line seemed defeatist in situations of continued exclusion and oppression. In fact, it reminded me of the response of one of the Anglo lesbians in my student group when she lost office to a Chicana. Deaf to the desire of many members to increase Chicano visibility and insure diversity, she argued that "race consciousness" was the term guilt-ridden white liberals used to mask their racism. In her view, the only proper response to "equal merit" was to flip a coin.

Such a laissez-faire approach to discrimination repeats the prevailing mentality of the "me" decade. While it may attempt to drape itself in a politically correct rejection of labels, the laissez-faire attitude nonetheless views social progress and change through the individualist lens of competitive self-assertion. Further, in so doing it fails to acknowledge the sense of community and responsibility underlying the hope for a "we." In place of solidarity, it offers only the possibility of the contingent integration of egocentric interests always on the verge of disruption.

Upon further reflection, I realized that my sister's response did not point in this direction, for at the very site of her rejection of labels she articulated an identity—"we at Yale." Clearly, identifying as a "Yalie" has its limits as a political option. But this is not the real insight contained in Dahn's remarks. She was saying that it's time to stop talking about ourselves and start thinking about and acting with others. Her simultaneous rejection of identity and assertion of community thus suggests the possibility of a "we" without labels, a way of conceiving social change through a politics that is neither the assertion and reassertion of identity nor the individualist resort to (un)free competition.

This book offers a way to conceive of a "we" without labels. Positioning reflective solidarity as the bridge between identity and universality, as the precondition of mutual recognition necessary for claims to universality under pluralist, postmodern conditions, it argues that a communicative understanding of "we" enables us to think of difference differently, to overcome the competing dualisms of us/them, male/female, white/black, straight/gay, public/private, general/particular. Further, it claims that the key to this overcoming can be found in the margins and spaces that mark the limits of our concepts, the boundaries of our discourses.

I define reflective solidarity as the mutual expectation of a responsible orientation to relationship. This conception of solidarity relies on the intuition that the risk of disagreement which accompanies diversity must be rationally transformed to provide a basis for our intersubjective ties and commitments. This means that the expression "we" must be interpreted not as given, but as "in process," as the discursive achievement of individuated "I's." Such an opening up of the notion of "we" makes possible a change in our attitude toward boundaries, a change which requires that each individual view group expectations from the perspective of a situated, hypothetical third.

Simply put, solidarity can be modeled as an interaction involving at least three persons: I ask you to stand by me over and against a third. But rather than presuming the exclusion and opposition of the third, the ideal of reflective solidarity thematizes the voice of the third to reconstruct solidarity as an inclusionary ideal for contemporary politics and societies. On the one hand, the third is always situated and particular, signifying the other who is excluded and marking the space of identity. On the other, including the third, seeing from her perspective, remains the precondition for any claim to universality and any appeal to solidarity. Conjoined with a discursively achieved "we," the perspective of a situated, hypothetical third articulates an ideal of solidarity attuned both to the vulnerability of contingent identities and to the universalist claims of democratic societies.

We can find a nascent conception of reflective solidarity at the interstices of the identity politics debate. Generally speaking, identity politics in the United States emerged over the past few decades in the struggle for rights. Frustrated with the failure of "equal" rights to secure equality amid the pervasive hierarchies of sex and race, racial and sexual minorities struggled for recognition by appealing to their identities. Although this appeal had the perverse effect of enabling the Right to score rhetorical points by coining the phrase "special rights," it nonetheless provided a focal point for collective action. Through affirmative action and juridical categories such as "suspect class," excluded and minority groups endeavored to gain access to the universal by articulating their particularity as groups with a history of discrimination.

This appeal to identity revealed the biases within the fiction of the subject of law. If claiming their status as legal subjects meant that women had to deny their femininity—that is, their biological potential for motherhood, or their position in the home as child rearer—then the legal subject itself was not universal, but particular—particularly masculine.[3] Similar experiences on the part of racial, ethnic, sexual, and disabled minorities exposed the legal subject as white, English-speaking, heterosexual, and able-bodied.[4]

In the course of articulating their differences, many members of minority groups felt empowered, taking pride in a self-identification denigrated in the larger society.[5] Submerged histories and traditions were uncovered that provided minority groups with a sense of self-in-community they had previously lacked and upon which they could now draw as a source of self-respect. As Todd Gitlin writes: "Identity politics is a form of self-understanding, an orientation toward the world, and a structure of feeling that is frequent in developed industrial societies. Identity politics presents itself as—and many young people experience it as—the most compelling remedy for anonymity in an impersonal world. This cluster of feelings seems to answer the questions, Who am I? Who is like me? Whom can I trust? Where do I belong?"[6] For many, finding answers to these questions within the comfort of a shared identy gave them reason to question the goals of their particular groups. If securing recognition as citizens required assimilation into the dominant culture, perhaps this goal should be abandoned in favor of the enhancement and celebration of their difference.[7] In place of the abstract identity of the citizen acting in a universal public sphere, many of the heretofore excluded have thus come to champion the situated and concrete identity offered in, to use Nancy Fraser's term, subaltern counterpublics.[8]

The articulation of particular identities has also led to the rigidification of these very identities. At the legislative level, this rigidification appears as the reinforcement of minority status with its negative connotations of inferiority. We see this in the critique of affirmative action and in the debate over pregnancy leave policies that explicitly recognize gender differences. Martha Minow highlights a similar dilemma with respect to the recognition of the needs and rights of disabled children: "Identifying a child as handicapped entitles her to individualized educational planning and special services but also labels the child as handicapped and may expose her to attributions of inferiority, risks of stigma, isolation, and reduced self-esteem."[9] At the level of the group, the assumption that a particular identity dictates a particular politics overlooks internal differences, stifling diversity and dissent. Voicing his frustration with gay politics, Ed Cohen writes:

Although the assumption that "we" constitute a "natural" community because we share a sexual identity might appear to offer a stable basis for group formations, my experience suggests that it can just as often interrupt the process of creating intellectual and political projects which can gather "us" together across time and space. By predicating "our" affinity upon the assertion of a common "sexuality," we tacitly agree to leave unexplored any "internal" contradictions which undermine the coherence we desire from the imagined certainty of an unassailable commonality or of incontestable sexuality.[10]

Indeed, the rigidification of identity concepts suggests that even "citizenship" in a subaltern counterpublic is suspect, encountering problems similar to the very ones it emerged to solve. Thus, in response to this rigidification, Cohen, like many critics of identity politics, urges the importance of inventing, multiplying, and negotiating the construction of the "we."[11]

The exposure of the particularity of the universal, the sense of community and empowerment, and the rigidification of identity categories have framed the identity politics debate. Supporters appeal to the already particular character of the universal and reassert their own particularity. Detractors point out the contingency of identity categories, the histories of otherness they risk reinstating, and their failure to live up to the promise of empowerment as they suppress internal differences.

But framing the debate as an opposition between solidarity and reflection prevents us from acknowledging the ideals shared by both sides. Supporters of identity politics are united by the ideals of inclusion and community. They struggle against exclusions enacted in the name of universality. They endeavor to establish a space of belonging, a community that strengthens its members and gives them a base from which they can say to others, "I am different, recognize me." Similarly, detractors and critics of identity politics also struggle against exclusion, this time that exclusion effected by the very sign of identity. Thus, they too strive to establish a space for the self, but one which frees the person to say within the group, "I am different, recognize me." They want to ensure that those aspects of the self that elude the boundaries established by any identity category will not remain silenced or neglected but will be allowed to appear and develop in all their difference and particularity.

Further, what each side fears from the other is the same: the loss of this space for difference, this "home" to which the self can retreat for sustenance, intimacy, reinvigoration, and play. For example, in their argument for a radical politics that comes directly out of their own identity, the Combahee River Collective maintains: "We realize that the only people who care enough about us to work consistently for our liberation is us. Our politics evolve from a healthy love for ourselves, our sisters and our community which allows us to continue our struggle and work."[12] On the other side, Diana Fuss writes: "The personal is political reprivatizes social experience, to the degree that one can be engaged in political praxis without ever leaving the bedroom. Sexual desire itself becomes invested with macropolitical significance."[13] Like the statement from the Combahee River Collective, Fuss's remark can be read as revealing a concern with care and intimacy. Once the personal is political we are left with the politics of the personal. There is no relationship that can serve as a retreat from politics; there is no space simply to be in one's difference. Thus, while the supporters' appeal to community seems to conflict with the detractors' desire for freedom, both sides share a longing for recognition, for a space in which they can explore, secure, and articulate the differences necessary for concrete individual identities. This book argues that reflective solidarity provides such a space.

connections, we cannot remain content with a focus on the local, for how can we even know what "local" means? More to the point, given the fact of our shared relationships, we have to reconceive solidarity so as to acknowledge our shared accountability for each other.

But, of course, as the critics of identity politics remind us, this accountability cannot deny our differences. According, in the first chapter of this book I argue that reflective solidarity provides spaces for difference because it upholds the possibility of a universal, communicative "we." Traditionally, solidarity has been conceived of oppositionally, on the model of "us vs. them." But this way of conceiving solidarity overlooks the fact that the term "we" does not require an opposing "they," "we" also denotes the relationship between "you" and "me." Once the term "we" is understood communicatively, difference can be respected as necessary to solidarity. Dissent, questioning, and disagreement no longer have to be seen as tearing us apart but instead can be viewed as characteristic of the bonds holding us together.

My emphasis on the importance of questioning and dissent for reflective solidarity overlaps with those poststructuralist arguments urging openness, multiplicity, conflict, and attention to difference. Skeptical of the notion of any "necessary opposition," I reject the idea that one must choose between poststructuralism and universalism. Indeed, recent theorists have begun exploring the intersections and commonalities among philosophers and philosophical positions previously assumed to be irreconcilable.[18] Some theorists have argued that the communicative ethics of Jürgen Habermas, far from providing some sort of closed and totalizing metanarrative, highlights a commitment to diversity, plurality, and contest that in many instances allows for fruitful dialogue and cooperation with the genealogical, deconstructive, and postmodern approaches of Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Jean-François Lyotard.[19] I want to extend this dialogue by bringing in feminist voices and exploring the ways in which these voices point toward and challenge us to rethink the relationship between difference and universality.

Thus, in the second chapter I show how the debate over identity politics leads us to reflective solidarity. As the recent work of queer theorists, critical race theorists, and feminists indicates, a set of exclusions confronts identity politics and prevents it from doing justice to the concerns of the excluded and marginalized. These theorists suggest a need for recognition that extends beyond the recognition of concrete particularities to account for the ways in which they are constructed. Contained within this insight, then, is a convergence between poststructuralist and universalist approaches to difference. For as they have developed notions of multiply situated and constructed subjectivities, recent theorists have drawn our attention to the relationships on which identities always depend. My intervention in this debate makes this convergence more explicit by emphasizing the ways these relationships require reflective solidarity if we are to respect and take responsibility for others in their difference.

The third chapter continues the engagement between feminist and universalist theories, this time situating it on the terrain of civil society. Feminists have long criticized those universalist approaches that locate justice in the public sphere while relegating women, particularity, and difference to the private sphere. Taking up these criticisms, I argue for an understanding of universality that rejects this opposition, suggesting a model of civil society based on the idea of multiple, interconnecting discursive spheres. Not only does such an understanding allow us to include women in civil society, but also it provides a conception of democracy no longer focused on the state. As it conceives of a variety of types and loci of action in terms of the participatory efforts of an engaged citizenry, this more open version of democracy shows us how reflective solidarity can be institutionalized as the mutual expectations of citizens in contemporary pluralist societies.

The fourth chapter also looks at the institutionalization of reflective solidarity, focusing on the role of law in transmitting solidarity. As it does so, it suggests a further convergence between poststructuralist and universalist approaches to difference by highlighting the democratic dimensions of the indeterminacy thesis developed by Critical Legal Studies theorists. In contemporary democracies, the indeterminacy of law enables it to serve as a transmitter of reflective solidarity. Its abstraction, its inability to lead to determinate outcomes, establishes a space and framework for interpretation, questioning, and critique. When law is embodied in a constitution, it provides a space of collected meanings upon which citizens draw in their debates regarding their shared histories, practices, and concerns. To the extent that they can enter this space and draw upon these meanings, citizens assert and reassert their connections with one another. Their relationship as consociates becomes strengthened and renewed as they contest the limits of this space and the various interpretations of its meaning. By focusing on shifting the notion of privacy from that of a sphere to that of a boundary, I show how identity-based defenses of privacy fail to keep this space open and indeterminate. In effect, they attempt to overdetermine privacy, failing to acknowledge the way in which it is always an aspect of legal persons' mutual and public recognition of each other.

Finally, in the fifth chapter I turn specifically to the theoretical encounter between previous hit feminism next hit and universalism. Although many feminists writing today have rejected the ideal of universality as blind to women's concerns, I argue that, properly conceived, the discursive universalism of Jürgen Habermas both stands up to feminist critique and incorporates feminist ideals of inclusion and accountability. If we are to take seriously the insights and goals of identity politics while nonetheless moving beyond it, we have to find a way to conceive of shared connections and responsibilities that allows for freedom and difference. A universalist approach that anchors rightness or normative validity in the communicative agreement of real, embodied persons—in the solidary relationships of those who have turned away from violence and agreed to discuss and argue—thus presents itself as a promising ideal for a contemporary approach to difference. Accordingly, in this chapter I elaborate the philosophical presuppositions of reflective solidarity, asserting the priority of solidarity over justice in discourse ethics, replacing Habermas's "neutral observer" with the situated, hypothetical third, and stressing the fallibility, contextuality, and openness of the ideal of discursive universalism. My goal is to break through the opposition between difference and universality and to present an ideal of a universalism of difference—the ideal which infuses reflective solidarity.

Returning to my Texas students, I am reminded of their heated and often ugly debates over gun control, the death penalty, abortion, and gays in the military. Despite, and perhaps because of, the intense confrontations between competing sides, these students remain bound to each other. For as they return time and again to the Constitution upon which each side rests its claims, both proponents and opponents of the issue at hand strengthen their ties to each other through their confidence in the validity of the Constitution and the principles therein. Their acceptance of the possibility of universal principles and ideals and their shared efforts to find the meanings of these ideals within their own particular life contexts enable them to avoid fragmentation and division and to effect their own precarious and reflective solidarity. Of course, since their solidarity, like all reflective solidarities, remains unstable, they often fall back into identity politics, asserting that the others inability to agree is the result of her inability to understand, a problem rooted in the absoluteness of her difference. Yet the difficulty of reflective solidarity does not belie its value or our need for it today. On the contrary,the very effort involved in achieving a solidarity that respects difference exposes our continued failure to include the voices of those others, those hypothetical thirds, who for so long have remained unheard.

I hope that the concept of reflective solidarity developed in this book can move us out of the "we" of identity politics and toward an inclusive and ultimately universal understanding of the "we" of discourse. Thus, as I shift from identity politics to discourse ethics, from Anita Hill to Lani Guinier, from an unnamed Somali woman to civil society, I endeavor to seek out and expand those spaces for difference in which the hypothetical third can appear. For breaking through boundaries is always the first step of reflection.

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