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The Politics of Identity Downloaded from by Guest on 26 September 2021 Kwame Anthony Appiah The politics of identity Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/135/4/15/1829194/daed.2006.135.4.15.pdf by guest on 26 September 2021 I am never quite sure what people mean nothing to do with the government.’ when they talk about ‘identity politics.’ You might wonder how someone who Usually, though, they bring it up to com- said that could think that civil marriage plain about someone else. One’s own should not be open to gays. Isn’t that political preoccupations are just, well, straight identity politics? politics. Identity politics is what other In short, I think that what Sir John people do. Harrington so sagely said of treason Here’s one example: When someone is largely true of identity politics: it in France suggested gay marriage was never seems to prosper only because it a good idea, many French people com- has largely won the political stage. plained that this was just another in- But I think there is a way of explain- stance of American-style identity poli- ing why identity matters. ‘Identity’ tics. (In France, as you know, ‘Ameri- may not be the best word for bringing can-style’ is en effet a synonym for ‘bad.’) together the roles gender, class, race, ‘Why should les gays insist on special nationality, and so on play in our lives, treatment?’ So the French legislature but it is the one we use. One problem created the Pacte Civil de Solidarité with ‘identity’: it can suggest that ev- (pacs), whose point is exactly that mar- eryone of a certain identity is in some riage is open to any two citizens. ‘Much strong sense idem, i.e., the same, when, better,’ those people said. ‘Sexuality has in fact, most groups are internally quite heterogeneous, partly because each of us Kwame Anthony Appiah, a Fellow of the Amer- has many identities. The right response ican Academy since 1995, is Laurance S. Rocke- to this problem is just to be aware of the feller University Professor of Philosophy and the risk. University Center for Human Values at Prince- But another dif½culty with social iden- ton University. His publications include “Asser- tity is that the very diversity of that list tion and Conditionals” (1985), “In My Fath- can leave you wondering whether all er’s House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture” these identities have anything interest- (1992), “The Ethics of Identity” (2005), and, ing in common. What did it mean when most recently, “Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a I added ‘and so on’ just now to a list that 1 World of Strangers” (2006). ran from gender to nationality? Well, © 2006 by the American Academy of Arts 1 I’m reminded of Jorge Luis Borges’s famous & Sciences example of a list he claimed to have found in Dædalus Fall 2006 15 Kwame you can only answer that sort of ques- of herself as an X in the relevant way, she Anthony tion by proposing a theory of identity. identi½es as an X, which means she some- Appiah on times feels like or acts as an X. For exam- identity My own account of social identities ple: Joe Kansas is in Rome. He sees a is nominalist because I explain how the lost-looking couple and hears one of identities work by talking about the la- them say, with an American accent, bels–the names–for them. Take some ‘Gee, honey, I wish I knew the route to arbitrary identity-label X. My proposal the Capitol.’ Since Joe’s just come from is: X will have criteria of ascription; there, he goes up to them and tells them some people will identify as X’s; some the way. Why? Because he’s an Ameri- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/135/4/15/1829194/daed.2006.135.4.15.pdf by guest on 26 September 2021 people will treat others as X’s; and X can and so are they. In other words, to will have norms of identi½cation. feel like an X is to respond affectively in Ascription: The criteria of ascription a way that depends on your identity as for X are the properties on the basis of an X. You may feel proud of Mary, a fel- which we sort people into those we do low Englishwoman, say, who has just and those we don’t call X’s. These crite- scaled Everest. Politicians mobilize this ria need not be the same for everyone. sort of feeling all the time, when they Indeed, people will rarely agree on exact- can–more scope then for a politiciza- ly which properties X’s must have. Here tion of identities. is scope for one kind of identity politics: Treatment: Finally, to treat someone Are F-to-M transgender people men? as an X is to do something to her because Are Muslims really French? This form she is an X. When Joe tells those lost tour- of identity politics involves negotiation ists the way to the Capitol, he’s helping (not necessarily by way of the state) of them, in part, ‘because they’re Ameri- the boundaries of various groups. At cans.’ Kindness of this sort is a common the same time, this isn’t just a matter form of treatment directed toward fel- of what people say about you, or wheth- low in-group members. Unkindness is er they’re polite: it may affect what re- an equally frequent form of treatment sources you have access to. If being a de- directed toward out-group members. vout Muslim is inconsistent with being Here is room for politics, once more, as French, you might not be able to go to a people try to use the government to en- state school with your hijab on. force their likes and dislikes. And the Identi½cation: By itself, mere classi½ca- politics can be very serious: think of tion does not produce what I mean by ‘a the struggle against apartheid in South social identity.’ What makes a classi½ca- Africa. tion a relevant social identity is not just Norms of identi½cation: Identities are that some people are called X’s but also useful, in part, because once we ascribe that being an X ½gures in their thoughts, an identity to someone we can often feelings, and acts. When a person thinks make predictions about her behavior on that basis. This is not just because the criteria of ascription entail that mem- an ancient Chinese encyclopedia. It begins: bers of the group have, or tend to have, “(a) those that belong to the Emperor, (b) certain properties. It’s also because so- embalmed ones, (c) those that are trained, cial identities are associated with norms (d) suckling pigs, (e) mermaids, . ” and ends of behavior for X’s. People don’t only do with “(n) those that resemble flies from a dis- and avoid doing things because they’re tance.” What would it mean to add ‘and so on’ X X here? ’s; there are things that, as ’s, they 16 Dædalus Fall 2006 ought and ought not to do. The ‘ought’ ‘There it is,’ Carlyle’s point was. ‘We’d The politics here is what a philosopher would call a better deal with it.’ of identity general practical ought–the ordinary But if we’re going to deal with identi- ought, not some special moral one. Here ty, it’s reasonable to ask how large a part are some examples of the type of norms these identities should play in our politi- I have in mind. Negatively: men ought cal lives, whether we take politics in the not to wear dresses; gay men ought not narrow sense of our dealings with the to fall in love with women; blacks ought state, or, more broadly, as our dealings, not to embarrass the race; Muslims in social life, with one another. ought not to eat pork. Positively: men Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/135/4/15/1829194/daed.2006.135.4.15.pdf by guest on 26 September 2021 ought to open doors for women; gay To answer that question it helps to people ought to come out; blacks ought begin not with politics, not even with to support af½rmative action; Muslims social life directly, but with the ‘ethical ought to make the Hajj. life’ of individuals. By ‘ethics,’ I mean To say these norms exist isn’t to en- something like what whoever put the dorse them. The existence of a norm label Nichomachean Ethics on that ancient that X’s ought to A amounts only to its book meant by it. (Apparently, it proba- being widely thought–and widely un- bly wasn’t Aristotle.) Ethics is a reflection derstood to be thought–that X’s ought on what it means for human lives to go to A. well, for us to have eudaimonia. (This is Aristotle’s word, perhaps best translated Let me underscore at once how wide as ‘flourishing.’) Ethics, in this sense, a range of kinds of people ½t the gener- has important connections with morali- al rubric I have laid out. This story an- ty, which Ronald Dworkin taught me to swers the questions: what things ‘like’ distinguish from ethics as follows: Eth- race, ethnicity, gender, class are; what it ics, he said, “includes convictions about means to say ‘gender, nationality, and so which kinds of lives are good or bad for on.’ We can now add, for example, pro- a person to lead, and morality includes fessional identities (lawyer, doctor, jour- principles about how a person should nalist, philosopher); vocations (artist, treat other people.”2 composer, novelist); af½liations, formal Each of us has a life to live.
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