>Sure, but... as this is exactly the way The Law etc. conceive of
subjects, doesn't that necessitate politics recognisable to that
conception? in fact, nothing else is likely to be heard in many areas in
which things need to be accomplished now. refusing identity seems
highly desirable, but we don't actually live without identities do we?
and there aren't really many possibilities for avoiding the unexplored
universal subject of the law are there?<
it's never a question of refusal or acceptance at this level of generality, though there is still it seems to me an important question of political practice at stake. recognition and misrecognition go hand in hand, as do identity and non-identity. the interesting results aren't always to one side or the other. there is certainly a repression of what is non-identical (say, in corporatism or pluralism) in order for that representation to take place 'smoothly'; or a dissolution of the speculative moment of identity in pragmatism and empiricism in order to divest identity of its critical (non-identical) moment. both of these make out as if there is no contest over representation, or rather seek to remove particular kinds of representation from contestation. and it's these moments which i think need to be guarded against, within any kind of oppositional politics. examples of these are well known, so i won't repeat them. but, let me pose it another way: what is a fair day's pay for a fair day's work? implicit there is certainly a kind of corporatism, but it never resolves once and for all what 'fair' exactly is, beyond _and because of_ the countless (mis)recognitions. for something to be 'fair', a notion of justice has to kick in, and whilst it's already tied to a notion of _calculable_ justice, for all the attempts to make justice reducible to calculation, nothing has really managed to make that reduction function (make sense) without it's speculative, non-calculable residue. and whether that residue is described as surplus value (as in marxism), or the non-reducibility of people to profits (as in socialism), or even as in a liberal humanism's critique of instrumentalisation and degeneration, the friction remains. that i think is a useful way to read, but (and here's my exemplar of the relation between identity and non-identity) workers can decide the bargain is so unfair that they refuse to work -- and without work, there is no capital. or, people can decide that those who are said to represent them do not. all of this happens and is explored every day, isn't it?
i think you might have posed this question as the difference between reformism and revolution, and whilst that's certainly related, it's never a question of deferring/displacing the non-identical in order to acheive an identity which is recongnisable -- or, rather it is a question of that insofar as such a way of posing it would have us concede this as a simple strategic choice. to make that decision means one is always on guard against the non-identical. but it avoids the historical sense in which things like corporatism and pluralism are responses to the non-identical, attempts to incoporate identity without the non-identity which animates it. and it's never been entirely successful. it's not been successful because no one has yet managed to establish a pluralism or liberalism or corporatism without reserve, without limitation. just think of the fiscal crisis of the welfare state; inflation; demands for the inclusion of more and smaller and more demanding constituencies at the bargaining table; the ways in which western philosophy so commonly and ineffectively held its doubt in check, usually at the limit-point of women, black people, gays, ... pluralism and corporatism are always going through a crisis, paradoxically because they admit identity.
that's a bit of a ramble...
Angela _________