A Series on Identity Politics and its History - Part One
Author's Note: This piece is a thesis proposal submitted for my honors year at university. It will be part of an ongoing series of papers that I will publish here as my work develops throughout the year. This piece was written in April 2018, and the ideas and themes have evolved significantly since that time. The works that will continue to be published as part of the series have shifted in, at times, completely new and interesting directions.
Despite that, I think the series is made more interesting by posting throughout the process, rather than a single finished work. I think there is some value in tracking the way in which ideas develop as they encounter difficulties as more information is introduced and the author's understanding of the topic becomes more comprehensive. For anyone interested in what I am discussing here, please feel free to get in touch and be sure to keep a look out for new posts in the series.
Identity in America has long been a political tool used to galvanize the marginalized by recognizing, respecting, and representing group identities victimized by shared experiences of inequality and oppression (Lancaster 2017). Much of the social and political change of the twentieth-century can be attributed to the deployment of identity politics (Kauffman 2001, Lilla 2017, Wiarda 2014). Civil rights movements expanded the promises of social and political systems in America to women, African-Americans, and homosexuals with the use of identity (Wiarda 2014). Identity politics remains a strident force for the marginalized. It persists in elevating the status of marginalized groups to a point of equality in society and continues to celebrate difference as a great strength of a tolerant and vibrant America. However, the patrons of identity politics have increasingly been accused of employing identity as a strategy to restrict and reject evidence and opinions that run contrary to their agenda (Lilla 2017). University lecturers have been forced to audit their classes for controversial content (Associated Press 2018); speakers have had their appearances protested and shouted down for publicizing ideas deemed offensive, intolerant, or dangerous (Fortin 2017). Even the liberal sciences are now subject to careful consideration of what findings are appropriate for publication or further study (Nicols 2018). In view of identity’s impact on America’s social and political landscape, a puzzling relationship between identity politics and difference has emerged: on the one hand, identity politics seeks to acknowledge and dignify the lives of marginalized groups by recognizing and respecting their differences; on the other hand, it censors and rejects evidence or opinions that represent or support a difference in outlook. Difference is a virtue, so long as that difference is not difference of opinion.
This thesis will investigate the nature of this puzzling inconsistency by exploring the theory that informs modern identity politics, and the threat posed by identity politics to freedom of speech and expression. Why has this puzzling inconsistency – by which identity politics both celebrates and rejects difference – emerged? And what are the consequences of this inconsistency for American political discourse today? Identity politics, influenced by post-structural feminism, has allowed this inconsistent treatment of difference to develop into a form of political relativism – one that threatens freedom of speech and expression in America. The argument has four major components: first, an examination of the relationship between feminism and identity politics. Second, a conceptual history that will establish how post-structural feminist theories of knowledge and discourse have influenced identity politics. Third, discussion turns to how these influences have been applied to restructure social and political discourse. Finally, the research will demonstrate via a case study analysis that this restructuring awards special authority based on individual and group identity, restricting free social and political expression. This thesis will be careful not to deny the claims of poststructuralism or feminism, or their view of social and political constructions of identity and oppression in general. The aim of the thesis is strictly to demonstrate how particular aspects of post-structural feminist theory have been influential in producing an identity politics that engages a form of political relativism - one that feeds a skeptical politics and a discursive environment at odds with free speech and expression.
Identity Politics and Feminism
Identity politics has only became a significant feature of political and philosophical scholarship in the past 30 years (Heyes 2018). The latter half of the twentieth century witnessed the rise of large-scale social and political movements. Many of these movements – African-American Civil Rights, gay and lesbian liberation, and feminism – collectivized around unique experiences of injustice shared by individuals through a group identity (Wiarda 2014, Kauffman 2001). Identity was the identification of a group or category by an individual, in which they were able to recognise elements of their own selves (Bickford 1997). Therefore, identity was, in a sense, recognition of one’s place in society. This wave of identity based movement politics that swept through America after the 1960s gave rise to what is now ‘identity politics’ (Wiarda 2014). Identity politics became a political tool for recognizing group identities, and the associated injustice and oppression that individuals were likely to be subjected to in virtue of their self-identification as a woman, racial or religious minority, particular sexual orientation, or the like (Young 2011, Heyes 2018). As identity activism made advances, movements began to transition into universities and academia (Sutherland 1987, Hirschmann 2011, Williams 2016). Among the many academic traditions that came about from this transition, feminism was able to build a particularly significant and important body of scholarship centred around identity. Essential to Feminism’s academic tradition is the belief that “identity itself - its elaboration, expression, or affirmation - is and should be a fundamental focus of political work” (Kauffman 2001). This reorientation of politics created a new political dimension, one that brought into the focus of political scholarship the realm of the personal. Identity politics by opening up the personal to the political, created tools able to mount a more “radical challenge to such forms of domination and exclusion as racism, sexism, and homophobia” (Kauffman 2001). Outlined by Carol Hanisch in 1970, making the ‘personal political’ was central to feminism’s social and political critique of existing oppressive traditions (Hanisch 1970, Isenberg 1992, Schuster 2017). This allowed academic feminism to establish a substantial and diverse body of scholarship focused on issues of oppression, recognition, and respect of female identity. Feminist scholarship has since challenged the traditional social, political, and philosophical view of women and of marginalized identities, and created a society more sensitive, and tolerant of difference. Foundationally, identity, identity politics, and feminism have been, and continue to be intertwined (McNay 2010).
Identity Politics and Free Speech
Feminism and its essential relationship with identity has inevitably led to feminism’s influencing identity politics. Being such a diverse tradition, the nature of feminism’s influence varies. Among the diversity of scholarship present in academic feminism, the specific feminist traditions of interest to this discussion are those concerning post-structuralism. There are strands of post-structural feminist theory that have contributed to the fundamental assumptions about knowledge and discourse present in modern identity politics. Sandra Lee Batky’s ‘Toward a Phenomenology of Feminist Consciousness’ provides an example. Bartky aims to demonstrate a specific consciousness that is particular to victimized identities, a “consciousness of victimization” (Bartky 1975). Bartky’s work is central to Joanna Williams’ critique of feminism’s influence on the erosion of academic freedoms. On Williams’ account, Bartky provides the foundations necessary for a segregation of truth along lines of experience and victimized identity; debasing any potential for universalism and undermining human reason as an interpretive-mode (Williams 2016). If there is acceptance of a segregation of consciousness, and thus, a segregation of an individual’s ability to access truth, relativism becomes unavoidable. An assumption that truth is relative leads to two important problems: first, collective political decision-making encounters enormous difficulties. The assumption of relativity leads to a stratification of truth, but collective action must be grounded in truth. Without the possibility of determining what truths we accept, action cannot proceed with any legitimacy or authority. Second is the issue of free speech and expression. An acceptance of consciousnesses separated along lines of identity and experience makes free communication across the divides of identity problematic. Jonathan Rauch raises two important questions which are illustrative of this difficulty: “How do you stop people from breaking up into little tribes, each with its own opinion […]?’ and “How do you bring countless millions of subjective realties to come to some kind of convergence?” (Rauch 2014). Identity politics suggests that the answer to these questions is to simply use personal and group identity as the measure of what an individual is at liberty to speak and express freely. This answer preserves and tolerates differences of identity, but rejects differences of opinion – limiting acceptable opinion within the boundaries of individual identity. In defence of objectivity, liberal thinking, and academic freedoms, Daphne Patai, and Noretta Koertge conclude that in order for freedom to exist, we must “stop using identity as a passkey to all questions of truth or responsibility” (Patai and Koertge 2003, Stimpson 1995).
The thread that runs between feminism, identity politics, and free speech is difficult and currently imprecise, but of great political importance. Post-structural feminism is foundationally concerned with identity, it’s influence on identity politics has informed an interpretive-mode centred around identity. This interpretive-mode has limited speech and expression along lines of individual and group identity, bearing serious consequences for freedom of speech and expression. While this thesis shares many of the literature’s conclusions regarding the consequences of identity politics and its post-structural feminist influence, critical scholarship has until now been restricted to concerns regarding academic freedoms, and preservation of liberal sciences and thought, without having better defined the thread that runs between the elements of feminism, identity politics, and political freedoms. This thesis will aim to fill the gaps left by scholarship, arguing that identity politics, informed by strands of post-structural feminism, threatens freedom of speech and expression. Questions as to what precise influences have led identity politics to develop fundamental inconsistencies in its treatment of difference, and what consequences are born out of that inconsistency for freedom of speech and expression require further inquiry. The literary contribution made by this thesis aims to expose an evolving danger to freedom of speech and expression that scholarship has so far overlooked. Exposure of this threat, and the demonstration of its origins and effect on political discourse, will add to the existing defence of essential political freedoms.
References:
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