The politics of identity

During the last quarter of the 20th century, momentous changes took place
in the way people in the West understood society and themselves.

The appearance of new information technologies, which coincided with

dramatic changes in working habits (retreat of trade unions, loss of job security,
rapid disappearance of whole professions) led to a new situation in the relation
between people and work. For most of the 20th centuries, partly because of the
influence of Marxism (and the sociology derived from it), we believed that “I am
what I work”. Being, for example, “working class” in Britain meant living in a
certain type of housing, wearing certain kinds of clothes, speaking in particular
ways, voting Labour, drinking beer and going to football matches on Saturday.

Sociologists believed that they could predict an individual’s personal, social

and political behaviour by placing the person into a sociological category, based
on job description.

By the 1980s this was no longer the case. Changing job and career
patterns broke the link between identity and work. Gradually, a new
understanding of identity broke through: “I am what I do when I do not work – I
am the people I associate with, the music I like, the causes I embrace”.

Views on society changed at the same time, largely due to the influence of
post-modernism and under the impact of the disintegration of communism. Post-
modernists argued that no explanation of society (and no ideology) could be
based on scientific evidence. All such explanations were “grand narratives” (big
stories) and none of them contained any more truth than any other. We could,
therefore, choose the story about society that we found most attractive – rather
than worrying whether it was “true” or not. Ultimately, post-modernists argued
that we could put together our own stories about society, by picking pieces from
all available narratives and putting them together in no particular order.

It was only a matter of time before this approach entered the domain of
identity – before people would decide that they could put together their own
identities from various bits and pieces that they liked. As this conclusion was
being reached, it was challenged by Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” thesis,
which argued exactly the opposite: that the dissolution of previous identities and
the discrediting of the “grand narratives” led people to seek simpler, not more
complicated identities. And that the simple identity that was most attractive were
the great religions and their related civilizations.

By the opening years of the 21st century, these developments posed at

least two major questions: What is personal identity? And what is the identity of
nations? Because the individual and the nation state had been, for half a
millennia, at the very basis of political thinking, these seemingly abstract
questions in fact situated themselves at the very centre of political thought.
Matters acquired extra urgency after September 2011, as the (Christian) West
entered into the “war on terror” against (Muslim) extremists.

In this section we present what we believe are the major thinkers on

matters of identity in the opening years of the 21st century.
 Charles Taylor

Charles Margrave Taylor (born November 5, 1931) is a Canadian

philosopher, whose contributions in political philosophy in particular have earned
him the prestigious Kyoto Prize and the Templeton Prize.

Greatly esteemed in philosophical circles, Taylor is associated with a

communitarian critique of liberal theory's understanding of the "self."
Communitarians emphasize the importance of social institutions in the
development of individual meaning and identity.

Taylor, following Dewey’s thoughts on the social embeddedness of the

mind, sees society as a much more complex phenomenon than allowed by
single-principle explanations, writing that: "What should have died along with
communism is the belief that modern societies can be run on a single principle,
whether that of planning under the general will, or that of free-market
allocations."

Taylor argues that identity is an active phenomenon, arising out of

individual commitments: "To know who I am is... knowing where I stand.
My identity is defined by the commitments and identifications which
provide the frame or horizon within which I can try to determine from
case to case what is good, or valuable, or what ought to be done, or what
I endorse or oppose. In other words, it is the horizon within which I am
capable of taking a stand."
In other words, to be human is to follow causes – to take a stand for
things greater than oneself. Taylor’s activist philosophy and socio-cultural
sensitivity has ensured him great popularity in during the decades
bridging the 20th and the 21st centuries.
Among his major works, the following have made a significant
impact on the way we perceive the society and people’s place in it:
Sources of the Self (1989); The Malaise of Modernity (1992);
Multiculturalism: Examining The Politics of Recognition (1994); A Secular
Age (2007).
The passages below have been collated from: Charles Taylor.
Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Harvard
University press, 1989; Religion, politics, and ignorance past: discussion
with The Utopian (2010), available at: http://www.the-
utopian.org/post/2134189139/spiritual-gains; Templeton Prize News
Conference, March 14, 2007, available at:
http://payingattentiontothesky.com/2009/11/04/dr-charles-taylor/;
Charles Taylor interviewed, 29th February 2008, available at:
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2008/02/charles-taylor-philosopher-
interview/; Interview, Philosophy Now, May/Jun 2011, available at:
http://www.philosophynow.org/issue74/Charles_Taylor

On identity
 With this term (modern identity) I want to designate the ensemble of
(largely unarticulated) understandings of what it is to be a human agent: the
senses of inwardness, freedom, individuality, and being embedded in nature
which are at home in the modern West.

On the Enlightenment

What we can describe as a new moral culture radiates outward and

downward from the upper middle classes of England, America and (for some
facets) France… so that what we end up with is a family of resembling moral
cultures… this culture accords significance to productive work and also to the
family… And universal benevolence, or at least fair dealing, is its most important
social virtue.

Romanticism as expression of the self

It is an inner impulse or conviction which tells us of the importance of our

own natural fulfilment and of solidarity with our fellow creatures. This is the voice
of nature within us…

Fulfilling my nature means espousing the inner elan, the voice or impulse.
And this makes what was hidden manifest for both myself and others…

A human life is seen as manifesting a potential which is also being shaped

by this manifestation; it is not just a matter of copying and external model or
carrying out and already determinate formulation… This is the idea which grows
in the late eighteenth century that each individual is different and original, and
that this originality determines how he or she ought to live… Each person is to be
measured by a different yardstick, one which is properly his or her own.

Here we have the notion that the good life for you is not the same as the
good life for me; each of us has our own calling… We are all called to live up to
our originality…

This has been a tremendously influential idea… one of the cornerstones of

modern culture… Herder also used it to formulate a notion of national culture.
Different (nations) have their own way of being human, and shouldn’t betray it
by aping others… This is one of the originating ideas of modern nationalism.

On freedom

Another major idea we have seen developing is that of the free, self-
determining subject… what is universal in the modern world is the centrality of
freedom as a good. This, together with the ideal of universal benevolence, has
generated another deeply entrenched moral imperative, to universal justice…
And of course these ideas of freedom and dignity, in association with the
promotion of ordinary life, have steadily eroded hierarchy and promoted equality
– and that in all sorts of dimensions, between social classes, races, ethnic and
cultural groups and the sexes.

On the structure of modern-day identity

The need for an escape from the restrictions of the unitary self has indeed
become an important recurring theme in this century, and all the more so in
what is sometimes referred to as “post-modernism”… The recognition that we
live on many levels has to be won against the presumptions of the unified self…
And this means a reflexive turn, something which intensifies our sense of
inwardness and depth, which we have seen building up through the whole
modern period.

The self: “subject”or “agent”?

… in fact, the agent is constituted by language, hence by exchange

between agents, whose relationship thus escapes the subject / object model. The
significant others… are not simply external to me; they help constitute my own
selfhood.

That’s the interesting thing about the human condition — that you have
these different cultural constellations that open up parts of people’s minds but
close others. So the interesting normative issue that arises from all this is how to
maximally develop, and make as full as possible the things that are good in this
country — while somehow seeing whether we can’t recuperate some of the
losses.

On reason and meaning

… we develop this tremendous tendency to see the world in terms of

instrumental reason, all the time. But when we look back to earlier kinds of
culture, we see that for big swathes of life this was not at all the case. If you go
back far enough, you find Aborigines in Australia, for whom particular elements
of the landscape hold a different kind of meaning. If you go back less far, you
find other ways in which the way we organized our social life was also not seen
as instrumentally, rationally justified

We have greater power, we can develop these big societies like nations
where you can have some degree of control over things since you share a
common cultural identity.

On culture
When I began to understand how our culture shapes our whole
understanding of politics, what we argue and write about, the more obvious it
became to me that different cultures have to be approached by grasping those
different structures and modes of understanding.
 On trust
I think that there is the concern of the civic republican tradition,
which is a concern with constantly recreating through collective action the
preconditions for mutual trust and solidarity. Without these free societies
can’t function.
On equality and the collective
Then there has been developed on top of that a very articulated
human rights discourse, human rights law, and so on, concerned with
individual rights, with equality and non-discrimination, with the promotion
of democracy, so that a lot of people now look at politics in this
framework… And that has come to eclipse the tradition of worrying about
the collective creation of the common conditions of trust which alone, I
think, make this kind of society possible.
On immigration and national identity
They let all these people in — or in fact invited them in, in the case
of the German Gastarbeiter — but they don’t want to reorder their identity
in order to give them a place… Now, until the very recent past, until the
last 50 years or, the Europeans hadn’t had this kind of influx. Or, as in the
case of interwar France, they did, but in conditions where the people
concerned — Italians, Portuguese, some Poles — were eager to be totally
assimilated. They were willing to be integrated, and so they were.
Later they got people who couldn’t easily make this jump. That’s
something totally new, and it’s very disorienting. I can understand that.
But the creative and only possible response is to take account of that to
redefine national identity.
The importance of identity

Modernity has produced a new concept of identity, a definition of self

which we partly take over from our world and our history, and partly redefine
ourselves. This has had a profound impact on our political life. Issues which
might have been fought out in terms of equality versus privilege, or the fight
against exploitation, in the past, are now frequently framed in terms of personal
and collective identities and their alleged non- or mis-recognition.

Identity and violence

We’re living in an age of anxiety where everybody is made insecure

in their own deep sense of meaning by the fact that there are all these
competing elements. One of the ways you can calm down that anxiety
about your own sense of meaning is by diabolizing the others, making it
absolutely clear and undeniable that they are wrong.
…no-one, just in virtue of having the right beliefs, is immune from
being recruited to group violence: from the temptation to target another
group which is made responsible for all our ills, from the illusion of our
own purity which comes from our readiness to combat this evil force with
all our might. We urgently need to understand what makes whole groups
of people ready to be swept up into this kind of project.
But in fact, we have only a very imperfect grasp on this. Some of
our most insightful scholars, like Ren Girard, or Sudhir Kakar, have
studied it. Great writers, like Dostoevsky, have cast great light on it, but it
remains still mysterious.
Violence and leadership
What is equally imperfectly understood is the way in which
charismatic spiritual leadership, of a Gandhi, a Mandela, a Tutu, can bring
people back from the brink.
But without this kind of spiritual initiative, the best-intentioned
efforts to put human history on a new, and more humane footing, have
often turned this history into a slaughter bench, in Hegel’s memorable
phrase.
We urgently need new insight into the human propensity for violence, and
following the authors I mentioned above, this cannot be a reductive
sociobiological one, but must take full account of the human striving for meaning
and spiritual direction, of which the appeals to violence are a perversion. But we
don’t even begin to see where we have to look as long as we accept the
complacent myth that people like us (enlightened secularists, or believers) are
not part of the problem.

On the spiritual dimension

…a blindness to the spiritual dimension of human life makes us
incapable of exploring issues which are vital to our lives. Or to turn it
around and state the positive: bringing the spiritual back in opens
domains in which important and even exciting discoveries become
possible.
Narratives and facts
Modernity – however you want to define it, be it economic growth or
urbanization or science and technology, or the whole package – makes
religion shrink. But that’s not sufficient to explain it intellectually. For a
long time people tried to explain the Reformation in economic terms,
which is the same kind of deafness. So they buy very deeply into this
narrative and I think we all live by narratives. And always have… people
believe in science and they don’t think they are living by narrative. They
think they are just picking up the facts.
The West and Islam

At the moment in the West, we have a huge cultural fight within ourselves
against Islamophobia. There’s a kind of mindless Islamophobia that says all 1.2
billion Muslims believe the same thing and that what they believe makes them do
terrible things.

Democracy and emotion

Democracies don’t work well without some kind of strong cohesion,

which is usually some kind of cocktail of ideas around certain powerful
democratic principles, as well as some sense that we the people are
attempting to realise a particular historical project. In other words, we are
all proud of our constitution—”thin nationalism”—but we’re not just
Kantians attached to these principles; we have a particular feeling of:
wow, we’re proud of this project!
 But we recognise that this is a particular project with a particular
history, and that there’s nothing wrong with teaching everybody that fact.
As against, people would say “Talk only about the principles. As soon as
you start talking about the history, there are problems.” That is going to
create a gulf which we are going to be incapable of bridging.
I think the way to conceive our situation is that we are living through a set
of extremely painful dilemmas, and are going to go on doing so.

On participation
I think that there’s no such thing as total neutrality, particularly in
terms of what the good life is. For instance, the notion of participating, of
being a citizen, taking part in determining the future of yourself and your
society – I think this is not an ‘optional virtue’, as it were (laughs): it’s
very close to the health and lifeblood of liberal, democratic society. We
should be upfront about that.
On living together
I think that’s what we have to aim at if we want to get these
differences out into a sphere where there can be a rational and calm
discussion of how to live together with tension between different groups.
It’s only by coming to such a language that we can have a discussion that
doesn’t degenerate into a kind of stigmatising of the other.
On solutions
…in a general sense there are no final, determining solutions. There
are deep dilemmas, and we’re being pulled in different directions, and
we’re going to have to find the least destructive way of putting things
together… We’re never going to reach a final and definitive solution…
There’s always going to be the problem of putting perspectives together.
There will always be people pushing terribly hard in one direction and not
paying attention to other requirements. We are always going to need to
knit together a solution that will last for a while between opposing
tendencies.