Identity Politics, Political Identities: Thoughts toward a Multicultural Politics

Abstract

This essay addresses a particular aspect of contemporary debates about identity, identity politics, and multiculturalism: specifically, the implications of these discussions for political action in general and coalition politics in particular. How do we move beyond a liberal-democratic understanding of politics that denies that cultural differences are relevant to political behavior in order to confront the realities of a multicultural world? And if we do transform our liberal-pluralist conception of politics into one that can take into account the ways our needs and self-conceptions may be fundamentally affected by differing cultural, racial, gender, class, and other contexts, how do we do so without freezing identities in ways that both misrepresent their complexities and, at the same time, may make coalitions and alliances impossible?