Taken for Granted or Left Out (To Katha Pollitt)

[John St. Clair]

Yoshie writes:
> categories. The only thing that lbo-talkers have to say about us is that
> 'identity politics,' whose political economy they do have yet to theorize,
> is BAD. No productive + constructive discussion. Worse, in some of their

Let me re-introduce a point from the Rorty/Alterman debate that was passed
over: some leftists, I would argue, conflate the concept of "identity"--in
particular, those who would mix up "identity politics" with "identity
theory." The former, identity politics, I don't see as a problem. The
latter, on the other hand, I do. What's particularly a problem, however, is
the claim that "identity politics" implicitly depends upon "identity
theory"--particularly an essentialist account of what constitutes this
"identity." I Probably this derives from the claim that politics presupposes
a theory of the self--c.f., Michael Sandel's (wrong-headed) critique of
Rawls.

John St. Clair