Feminism, Identity and Difference (review)

Feminism, Identity, and Difference (1999), edited by Susan Hekman, focuses on a set of issues raised by contemporary feminist theory, such as identity politics and the problem of difference, and their implications for feminist politics. In Chapter One, "Identity Crises: Identity, Identity Politics and Beyond," Hekman gives an overview of the various problems created by contemporary feminist theories rooted in identity politics.

The discussion of the question of identity begins with Linda Alcoff's 1988 article, "Cultural Feminism Versus Post-Structuralism: The Identity Crisis in Feminist Theory," and the framing of the crucial issue facing feminist theory in the late twentieth century: developing a new paradigm for feminist politics that moves beyond modernist dichotomies of the self. Hekman's central claim is that "woman," conceived as a universal identity that informs feminist theory and practice, is no longer a viable basis for feminism.

Hekman provides an overview of the issues raised by identity politics to show the "morass of confusions and contradictions" (4) to which it has led. For example, she considers Robert Nozick's work (1981) a paradigmatic example of the nature of the philosophical inquiry into identity. Nozick's conception of the individual as abstract, neutral, disembodied, and devoid of social context has been challenged by several feminist critiques. But, according to Hekman, alternative conceptions of identity rooted in socially constructed views of subjectivity commit the same mistake. Hekman explains, "The presupposition of many feminist critiques of identity is a human body that is a blank state on which social texts are written. Thus, social construction is posited on a neutral abstract body that pre-exists the social" (7). Hekman's controversial claim is that feminist challenges and reformulations of the disembodied, neutral subject have merely replicated, rather than replaced, the abstract liberal individual. Hekman concludes that we need to move beyond identity politics, because any version of identity will continue to reinforce an essentializing posture. Yet, in her attempt to dispense with identity politics she overlooks a fundamental need of oppressed groups: the demand for recognition.

In the chapter "Difference as an Occasion for Rights: A Feminist Rethinking of Rights, Liberalism, and Difference," Nancy Hirschman offers an alternative political solution. Hirschman argues for a revised version of liberalism based on a reformulation of rights that addresses feminist concerns for a recognition of difference. Hirschman claims that it is a mistake to view the relationship between feminism and liberalism as either inherently contradictory or as unproblematically consistent. According to Hirschman, we should recognize the paradoxical relationship between feminism and liberalism: "We must simultaneously recognize that feminism cannot exist without certain key aspects of liberalism and that liberalism as it has been realized in most contemporary Western democracies is premised on women's inequality and unfreedom (33). By focusing on difference, Hirschman points the way to a reconfiguration of rights that allows for a richer and more complex recognition of differences within a rights framework.

Shane Phelan's chapter "Bodies, Passions and Citizenship" rejects all versions of liberalism as inherently masculinist. For Phelan, the current status of those bodies marked as "others" cannot be understood without reference to the role of bodies and the passions within political discourse. But, in contrast to those who argue for the potential of an emancipatory "body politic," Phelan argues that the body's role as trope for the political community merely sustains and incites fears of the dangerous other and thus needs to be rejected.

In keeping with Phelan, Eloise Buker's chapter, "Is the Postmodern Self a Feminised Citizen?" argues for displacement, rather than reform, as a way of eliminating the oppressive features of liberalism. Buker explores the connections between the postmodern self and the feminine self. Buker then offers a new conception of citizenship premised on the ethical implications of the postmodern self.

In the final chapter, "Feminising Race," Rajani Sudan demonstrates the possibility of rearticulating identity from the perspective of popular culture. Sudan uses cultural critique to illustrate how racial stereotypes are re-articulated and reinforced throughout the media. Sudan's cultural critique of magazine covers...