Description
Book SynopsisPolitics of identity have come to pose challenges to liberal polity and the presuppositions on which it is founded. Here, Susan Hekman aims to bring greater theoretical clarity to the debate by exposing some basic misconceptions.
Trade Review“In Private Selves, Public Identities, Susan Hekman explores one of the most important political developments within the United States in the past thirty years, the emergence of group-based or ‘identity’ politics. Her lucid critiques of the liberalism versus multiculturalism debates, as well as her insights into the limitations of modernist and post-structuralist conceptions of identity and agency, make this book well worth reading. Moreover, her sophisticated analysis of the problems generated by conflations of personal identity and political identity is an important contribution to contemporary debates in political theory and feminist theory.”
—Mary E. Hawkesworth,Rutgers University
“Taking the insights offered by a performative understanding of identity, Hekman demonstrates how identity can be fluid while retaining a core that avoids the problem of relativism. In the light of a careful development of the political concerns surrounding identity, Hekman offers a new understanding of identity politics that enables her to make some valuable suggestions about how identity might be articulated and a richer politics achieved. Feminists interested in theories of politics will find this a very important contribution to the field.”
—Eloise A. Buker,Saint Louis University
“One of the strengths of Hekman’s work is her extensive review of the pertinent scholarship on contemporary liberalism, identity politics, the essentialism/anti-essentialism debate within feminist theory, multiculturalism, and the politics of recognition.”
—Cynthia Coe Philosophy in Review
“Hekman’s claims are well argued and persuasively presented in this well-written volume, which would be useful for advanced undergraduates, as well as for scholars of political theory less versed in feminism and feminist scholars new to liberal political thought.”
—Beth Kiyoko Jamieson Perspectives on Politics
“In all, the book is a valuable contribution to the debate over the meaning and role of identity in politics. . . . Hekman’s book will invigorate debate on identity politics.”
—Amy Mullin Hypatia
Table of ContentsCONTENTS
Acknowledgments
1. Constructing Identity
2. Identity and the Liberal Polity
3. Identity Politics—the Personal and the Political
4. A New Politics of Identity
Bibliography
Index
