Description
Book SynopsisThe toppling of statues in the name of anti-racism is disconcerting, as is the violence sometimes displayed towards others in the name of gender equality. The emancipation movements of the past seem to have undergone a subtle transformation: the struggle now is not so much to bring about progress but rather to denounce offenses, express indignation, and assert identities, sometimes in order to demand recognition. The individual’s commitment to self-definition and self-appreciation, understood as the exercise of a sovereign right, has become a distinctive sign of our time.
Elisabeth Roudinesco takes us into the darker corners of identity thinking, where conspiracy theories, rejection of the other, and incitement to violence are often part of the mix. But she also points to several paths that could lead us away from despair and toward a possible world in which everyone can adhere to the principle according to which “I am myself, that’s all there is to it” without denying the diversity of human communities or essentializing either universality or difference.
This bold and courageous interrogation of identity politics will be of great interest to anyone concerned with the state of our world today.
Trade Review“In this profoundly compelling and exceptionally far-reaching book, Elisabeth Roudinesco ruthlessly exposes the benighted logic behind the emancipatory countenance of contemporary identity politics. Fierce, fearless, and forward-looking, she reclaims the legitimate right to an open debate in a world in which people’s desperate search for a redemptive identity has elicited new forms of intellectual, social, and ideological violence. I expect this book to create a storm, which will not only be perfect, but totally unavoidable and absolutely necessary.”
Dany Nobus, Professor of Psychoanalytic Psychology, Brunel University London
“Roudinesco’s book makes an important, timely, and courageous contribution to the vexed issue of identity politics. Debunking ideologies that take ‘his majesty the ego’ as a weapon, her book shows concretely how the truth of the political subject emerges where identity fails. This is the work of a true historian, while touching the nerve of crucial debates of our present times.”
Jean-Michel Rabaté, University of Pennsylvania and American Academy of Arts and Sciences
“We are blessed to have such a guide into the murkiest regions of high theory.”
Law & Liberty
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements
Preface
1. Assigning Identities
Beirut 2005: who am I?
Secularisms
The politics of Narcissus
Berkeley 1996
2. The Galaxy of Gender
Paris 1949: one is not born a woman
Vienna 1912: Is anatomy destiny?
Highlights and disappointments of gender studies
Transidentities
Inquisitorial follies
Psychiatry in full retreat
New York: Queer Nation
Disseminating human gender
I am neither white nor woman nor man, but half Lebanese
3. Deconstructing Race
Paris 1952: race does not exist
Colonialism and anticolonialism
“Nègre je suis”
Writing toward Algeria
Mixed-race identities
4. Postcolonialities
“Is Sartre still alive?”
Descartes, a white male colonialist
Flaubert and Kuchuk Hanem
Tehran 1979: dreaming of a crusade
The subaltern identity
5. The Labyrinth of Intersectionality
Memories in dispute
“Je suis Charlie”
Iconoclastic rage
6. Great Replacements
Oneself against all
The terror of invasion
“Big Other”: from Boulouris to La Campagne de France
Epilogue
Works Cited
Notes
Index
