Visible Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self

Linda Martín Alcoff. 2006. Visible Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self. Oxford
University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/0195137345.001.0001

** indicates a chapter particularly salient / insightful to my research agenda

Introduction: Identity and Visibility

This book theorizes the ontological reality of identity. Alcoff argues: "The reality of
identities often comes from the fact they are visibly marked on the body itself,
guiding if not determining the way we perceive and judge others and are perceived
and judged by them" (pg. 5). Alcoff's goal "is to cast serious doubt on [the]
suspicion of difference," for ignoring difference reifies interpersonal and structural
distrust and discrimination. She argues that race and gender are not peripheral,
but fundamental to one's self. In particular, gender and race are visible in ways
that age, class, and sometimes sexuality are not. She discusses how gender is
often viewed as determinate through the visuality of genitals, and race, even when
ambiguous, always has some biometric marker of the "truth." She portrays this in
the example of a white man divorcing his wife under the grounds he had tricked
him into thinking she was white. She was asked to bear her breasts to the jury to
determine her race (pg. 7) - which is also reminiscent of trans panic.

Class works alongside and is determined by visible markers of social identities, like
race and gender. "Capitalism was a racial and gender system from its inception,
distributing roles and resources according to identity markers of status and social
position and thus reenforcing their stability" (pg. viii). Alcoff discusses how
resistance to "identity politics" in the United States, questioning the relation of
identity to politics, has spread from the "'progressive' academic community ... to
the divisions that keep us from moving forward" (pg. x). Class solidarity is
encumbered by divisive race and gender relations and undermined antiracist and
feminist work. Alcoff argues that, while visible identity may be "a means of
segregating and oppressing human groups," it is also "the means of manifesting
unity and resistance" (pg. 7).

The Pathologizing of Identity

Criticisms of identity or "identity politics" sugges that "separatism, particularism,
and narrow group interest," but these criticisms ignore the ways "identities figure
into political discourses and practices" (pg. 12). Often, the discussion of oppression
of certain genders or races is viewed as "bashing" of the dominant group, even
when that group is not mentioned (pg. 14). Alcoff argues that identity is an "a priori
problem," which exists independent of experience. In particular, she argues that
social identities "post dangers and commit one to mistake assumptions when they
are believed to be real and/or acted upon politically" when they are "overly
homogenizing, essentialist, reductive, or simplistic constructions" (pg. 14).

Alcoff seeks to answer the question as to how identity politics have become to be
seen as divisive and dangerous. She starts by analyzing Arthur Schlesinger's 1991
book, "The Disuniting of America," which posited identity difference as a threat to
an idealized goal of homogenity and postracism (pg. 16). Specifically, Schlesinger
believed whites "have given up their European identities out of rational and
progressive motivations, but that nonwhites are now refusing to follow suit" (pg.
17). While arguing we must leave ethnic identity behind, he also proposes
European thought and culture as superior and thus, to eliminate identity, all others
must assimilate. Alcoff argues the true danger is identity movements, which have
been built on histories of oppression, being perceived as "a threat to progressive
politics" (pg. 18). She argues that the true challenge of identity politics is
"conceptualizing justice across cultural difference" while "relat[ing] precisely to
class" (pg. 19).

The Political Critique

Alcoff argues that the political critique of identity has "discredit[ed] all identity-
based movements, ... blame[ed] minority movements for the demise of the left,
and ... weaken[ed] the prospects for unity between majority and minority groups"
(pg. 20). A conflation of nationality and ethnicity results in the belief that
immigrants harbor political loyalty to the nation associated with their ethnicity (pg.
21.).

The Liberals
Alcoff points to classifcal liberal political theory to explain why political critiques of
identity emerge in those "who advocate in favor of individual freedom" (pg. 21).
Rooted in Kantianism, one cannot gain true autonomy unless one can objectively
distance oneself from their cultural traditions. Glazer and Moynihan theorized that
some individuals were unable to distance themselves from their ethnic or racial
identities because they have been shunned or excluded from the "melting pot,"
and thus develop a strong internal sense of cultural identity as a defense
mechanism. Strong ties to identity is viewed as inhibiting political discourse and
the democratic process. Liberal politics views identities as having a "right to exist
defended by political policies but ... not to play a constitutive role in policy
formation" (pg. 24).

Alcoff does not believe that identity has to be reduced entirely to be relevant to
political critique. Instead, she states that identities are constant and "ideas are
assessed in relation to who expresses them" (pg. 24). She adopts Foucault's notion
of discourse as an "event," which incorporates "not only the words spoken but also
the speakers, hearers, location, language, and so on, all as a part of what makes up
meaning" (pg. 24). Identity is always relevant to democratic discourse, because
identity shapes experience.

The Left
White leftist concerns in the United States revolve around "'overemphasizing'
difference" and "politics of visibility without an agenda of class struggle" (pg. 25).
Identity in lefist politics focuses on "relations of exploitation and oppression ...
between dominant and subordinate groups" (pg. 25). Alcoff critiques the position
that identities "are reduc[ed] to that oppressive genealogy ... that cultural
differences can be explained mainly in reference to oppression, thus suggesting
without oppression, difference might well wither away" (pg. 25). Like liberals,
leftists are concerned with division along identity lines, but are concerned most
with division that inhibits coalition around progressive class politics. Gitlin argues
that "the labor movement can only maintain a united front of it ignores internal
differences," but Alcoff believes positing class struggle as homogenous and generic
ignores difference in worker experiences (pg. 26). To equitably address class
struggles, labor movements must notice difference, as sexism and racism are a
cultural reality.

Fraser's Critique
Fraser identities a divide between social and political struggles: "struggles for
recognition (women, oppressed minorities, gays and lesbians) and struggles for
redistribution (labor, the poor, welfare rights)" (pg. 27). While LGBTQ people are
fighting for their identities to be recognized and equal ("group differentiation"), the
poor hope to eradicate their identities as poor ("group dedifferentiation"). Fraser
seeks to unite these two struggles, while also hoping to mitigate the problematic
effects of "identity politics." She divides those struggling for recognition into two
camps: the struggle for participation and the struggle for affirmation of identity.
She critiques the struggle for affirmation of identity, which is what she associated
with problematic identity politics.

Fraser's concern with affirmation is that it will: "(a) [displace] redistribution

struggles, (b) [tend] toward separatism and away from coalition, and (c) [reify]
identities, which she objects to not on metaphysical grounds but on the grounds
that it leads to a policing of authenticity, the promotion of conformism, and some
form of ... 'racial reasoning'" (pg. 28-29). She believes these struggles collapse
identity, ignoring the "complex array of social institutions" (pg. 29). Fraser
essentially believes that recognition should not be sought "for an identity" but
instead "we should be focusing on the right of full participation directly" (pg. 29).
Recognition should lead to a disolving of identity that is then focused on
redistribution, else risk division.

Alcoff critiques Fraser's concern that recognition struggles will divert energy from
redistribution struggles, arguing that if Fraser views both as legitimate, she should
neither weight one over the other or view them as inherently separate (pg. 29-30).
In other words, recognition does not exist in opposition to redistribution. Olsen
argues the opposite of Fraser, stating that identity is central to class struggle and
that "white identity was created as a recompense and distraction to white workers
for their economic disenfranchisement" (pg. 31). Further, Alcoff believes that
"internalizations of self-hatred and inferiority cannot be solved after redistribution,
but must be addressed ... to make possible effective collective action" (pg. 33).

Key Critiques and Assumptions

Alcoff names the following key critiques of identity and their associated
assumptions (common in Anglo-Western thought):

 Separatism Problem: "Identity-based movements will weaken the possibility

of coalition and lead to separatism" (pg. 36-37).
 Assumption of Exclusivity: "Strongly felt identity is necessarily
exclusivist ... Identities are thought to represent a set of interests
and experiental knowledge ... that differentiates them from other
identities, thus creating difficulties of communication and political
unity" (pg. 37).
 Opposing Argument: Alcoff highlights empirical research that show
strongly felt identities do no lead to political separatism. The
assumption of exclusivity posits identity as a "special interest group"
which can only single-mindedly focus on advancing one agenda at a
time and is incapable of seeing other perspectives. Identities can
unify lived experiences and contribute to meaning-making. Identities
can be posited as "lived experiences in which both individuals and
groups work to construct meaning in relation to historical
experience and historical narratives" (pg. 42).

 Reification Problem: Worries about "problems that exist in intragroup

relations: the policing for conformity, the abitrary defining of authenticity,
the de-emphasis and discouragement of internal differences, and the
preempting of open debate by castigating internal critics as less authenic
and disloyal ... curtails the ability to creatively interpret one's identity and to
determine its degree of relevant, or irrelevance, in one's life" (pg. 37).
Identity constraints individual freedom.
 Assumption of the Highest Value Being Individual Freedom: If identity is
a source of oppression, it is "odd that anyone would willfully choose
to be constrained by such an identity" (pg. 38). Even those with
 privilege are thought to be constrained by their unchosen privilege.
Constraints will be maximized in identity-movements.
 Opposing Argument: Alcoff argues that a given identity is not "an
imposition that curtails preferred possbilities" but rather "as
absorption, generation, and expansion, a building" (pg. 45).

 Reasoning Problem: Identity inhibits objective reasoning. One must "achieve

enough distance from out social identities that we can objectify and thus
evaluate them" (pg. 37).
 Assumption of Objectivizing: "Identities involve a set of interests,
values, beliefs, and practices" (pg. 38). To objectively reason, one
must "transcend" their identity. "To the extent that identities are like
containers that group sets of beliefs and practices across categories
of individuals, and to the extent that a strongly felt identity is defined
by its committment to these beliefs and practoces, then it follows
that the strength of identity will exist in inverse proportion to one's
capacity for rational thought" (pg. 38).
 Opposing Argument: Transcendence is impossible, because all
reasoning relies on background and experiences. Identity is thought
to be in conflict with reason "because identity is [incorrectly]
conceputalized as coherent, uniform, and essentially singular" (pg.
45). The reasoning problem views identity as "closed systems with
no intersections," ignoring common ground (pg. 46).

The Philosophical Critique

This chapter traces the geneaology of philosophical critiques of identity. Some
philosophers are concerned that the concept of identity excludes difference.
Leibniz believed that "(a) to share an identity is to be indiscernable or to share
every property, but (b) two entities thaat are thus indiscernable cannot be
individuated" (pg. 47). Alcoff says this does not reflect ordinary reality, where
identities delimit groups of individuals, but individuals are still individuals. Western
philosophy has often viewed the self as generalizable and universal, lacking in
specific identities, but Alcoff questions whether identity can be separated from the
self. She argues the crux of philosophical debates around identity are in the
Western treatment of the Other.

Substantive versus Procedural Rationality

The substantitive or hermeneutic approach to rationality argues that reason and
morality are situated within temporal, historical, and cultural context. The
procedural approach to rationality denies any cultural or historical role to
rationality and the role of being grounded in reality (pg. 50). Charles Taylor's
critique of proceduralism also critiques the belief that thoughts, beliefs, morals,
and feelings are "inside" humans and all objects humans might consider or
deliberate about are "outside" (pg. 51).

The inside/outside belief holds that all inner thoughts are pure and non-
interpretive, until one begins to perceive the outside world. In modern philosophy,
"rationality comes to be redefined as disengagement rather than truthful belief"
(as in Plato) (pg. 53). Scientism began to value the objective self, detached from
emotion and fear, which was attributed to white bourgeois men "not beholden to
anyone for their livelihoods" (pg. 53). Identity is viewed in conflict with reason,
where people cannot disengage from their cultures enough to portray rational
judgment; if one follows culture, one cannot discern from reason or desire. Yet if
one makes an objective and autonomous assessment of one's culture, and decides
to embrace it, it is not because of one's culture but because one finds their culture
rational (pg. 55).

Cartesian versus Hermeneutic Rationality

The modernist view formulated by Descartes argues that identity must be
objectively assessed before it can be rationally adopted. Taylor posits the
hermeneutic view, which argues that objective assessment cannot be the sole
requirement for rationality, because one's "objective" assessments are never a
view from nowhere. Otherwise, all would agree to the same identity and come to
the same conclusions. Alcoff argues against the belief that having a view from
somewhere necessitates the Cartesian belief that humanity is held back from
rationality by identity, stating that Descartes theories were also historically and
locally situated (pg. 55).

Identity in the Hegelian Tradition

Hegel believed that the self was inherently understood through the Other and that
moral agency requires intersubjective relationships (pg. 57). Hegel moved away
from identity as autogenous (arising from within itself) to an identity dependent on
recognition; yet, he still believed "the need for recognition [leads] inevitaly to a
death struggle between self and Other, as each seeks to receive recognition and
[resist] reciprocation" (pg. 57). Hegel's philosophical views shifted perspectives on
the self from "becoming over being" (pg. 57). For Hegel, the "core" of
consciousness "is fundamentally altered through its negotiations and struggles
with an external environment" (pg. 57-58). However, the "potential harm" of the
social realm is even greater, given its influence. Therefore, Hegel's attribution of
external social factors on the self is still viewed as a threat to individualism and
autonomy (pg. 58). True self-consciousness is portrayed as a domination, in which
we supersede the Other (pg. 59).

Hegel's later work is different, proposing that "self-actualization is best maximized

through collective institutions and the pursuit of shared goals" (pg. 61). Reciprocol
relations with the Other drive oneself to become a subject with moral agency. Thus
Otherness is no longer meant to be subsumed, negated, or feared as threatening
to the self. Yet, outside of Marxism, Hegel's later work is less influential (pg. 63).

Relational Accounts of the Self

Philosophers like Ricoeur, Code, Brison, Pierce, and Mead, "the self is presented as
a narrative which is produced through a reflexive movement that can only be
performed in interaction with another" (pg. 59). In this approach, the Other is
theorized as a sort of stage, where one is an "object" for the Other, and this
perspective lends to the "meaning-making activity of self-constitution" (pg. 60). The
Other in this case confirms the self's identity; they act as listeners to a narrative
and confirm its meaning. The Other is necessary to autonomy, and not expendable
or threatening, as in Hegel's early theory.

Psychoanalysis
"In classical psychoanalysis, the Other is not merely the prompt for the process of
self-constitution, but also provides much of the content of the self's interior" (pg.
63). Freud theorized that "the ego develops through negotiations between
multiple, conflicting inner drives on the one hand and the outpouring of stimuli
from the external world on the other" (pg. 63). The features of the self are not
intrinstic from birth but formed through social interaction from infancy. "The
wholeness of identity can only be achieved by internalizing the Other who can see
the self in its static image of wholeness, so this Other's viewpoint must be
incorporated and then controlled. Our self-image is necessarily produced via our
projection of how we are seen by others" (pg. 64). The Other is adopted as part of
the self, which Alcoff calls "an illustion of independence or self-sufficiency" (pg. 64).
Like Hegel's earlier works, Freud also frames the other as inescapable but fatalistic.

Brennan argues that the ego of the self receives its identity from the Other, who
offers the self a whole and fixed portrait of identity, which the self cannot do on its
own (pg. 66). The fixed points of identity given by the Other are necessary for the
self, but also hold the self back. She believes Western philosophy is wrongly
preoccupied with absolute autonomy, "[controlling] one's environment both
physically and psychically" (pg. 66).

Sartre's Solution to the Other

In his early work, Sartre defends radical freedom, though he also acknowledges
the constraints of the Other. He believed the only limits on our freedom come
from mortality and our reliance on others in assessing and valuing ourselves.
Sartre separates the "real" self (or "for-itself," which negates the need for the
Other) from the substantive self (or ego, which relates to historical choice and
interaction). The identity is related to this substantive self, and is viewed as
separate from the pure core of the "real" self. While the Other has a unique
perspective of the self, it has no hold on the internal "real" self; it only knows the
outward representation of the self (pg. 68).

Alcoff argues, through examples of racism and sexism, that it is consistently the
white and male self that is threatened by the Other's ability to "name it and
confirm or disconfirm its beliefs about the world and itself" (pg. 70).

Postmodernism's Other
For Althusser, Foucault, Derrida, and Butler, "resistance to identity is both
metaphysically and politically mandated," though it may be even less possible than
Sartre claimed (pg. 71). For Foucault, "there is no identity that is not a form of
subjugation" (pg. 71), and that subjugation is more active (though not necessarily
intentonal) than Sartre's innacuracy of the substantative self to the "real" self.
Subjection and subjugation are always in relation; being "capable of self-reflective
agency, of articulating one's intentions, one's rights, and one's interests, is always
also to be subjected to power" (pg. 71). The concept of having a stable, inner self is
seen to "promote the self-policing disciplines endemic to the modern form of
power" (pg. 72). The moment one becomes a subject is also the moment one
becomes subjugated; the moment of self is the moment the mind and body can be
disciplined and surveiled. Selves are "the effect of power" (pg. 72). Foucault
believed individual identity groups, like "gay," are products of the state. Identity is
always constructed through normalization (pg. 73).

Derrida distrusted identity because he felt "[making] demands in the name of a

subject (say, woman) will replicate structures of domination because such
demands must be predicated on a concept of the substantitive self" (pg. 73).
Mandating the notion of fixed identity or a core criterion is an act of violence.
Derrida instead proposes a "violence on reality ... to force its fluidity and variability
into the determinate essence we can predict and control" (pg. 73). He believed
political identity movements "[collaborate] with the empire of the law" (pg. 73).

Other postmodernists, like Ernesto Laclau, adopt a psychoanalytic lens and view
identity as a pathology directly stemming from a destabilized ego. "One needs to
identify with someone because there is an ... insurmountable lack of identity" (pg.
74). Psychoanalytical postmodernists saw embracing a named identity as "the
narcissistic desire to be seen, the delusional fantasy of wholeness, ... doomed to
failure and ... dependent on the master who names" (pg. 74).

Butler's Synthetic Constructivism

Butler uses "identity" to refer to one's public self, and "subjectivity" to refer to
one's true self (pg. 78). Yet what happens to one's identity also shapes one's
subjectivity, and vice versa. Alcoff analyzes Butler as "one of the relatively few
political analyses of identity that addresses it as an issue of interiority or lived
experience ... not simply as an issue of political effects or political struggles in the
public domain" (like Habermas, Luclau, and Mouffe) (pg. 75). In "The Psychic Life of
Power," Butler bridges the otherwise contradictory theories of Foucault and Freud,
the external and the internal. Butler "argues that social naming is a form of
primary alienation whose source is power" (pg. 75). She adopts interpellation (the
internalization of cultural and political values) from Althusser, arguing "that
interpellation never identifies that which existed before, but calls into existence a
subject who becomes subject only through its response to the call" (pg. 75).
Identity "comes into our consciousness through a second-person invocation rather
than from our first-person experience of ourselves" (pg. 75). While she adopts
Althusser and Foucault's views on subjectification (the process of becoming
subordinated by power), she does not adopt their historical lens - instead,
proposing a universal and ahistorical lens that claims "the process of
subjectification ... would unfold in this way no matter the historical context" (pg.
76). In a fatalistic sense, Butler believes that "resistances manifested in the
unconscious [are] themselves produced in power relations" (pg. 76). Therefore, the
unconscious self has no "inherently revolutionary potential ... agency is largely an
illusion" (pg. 76).

She also believed an identity was necessary for action. It is only the "disjuncture
between the identity and the individual that the latter can resist, critique, and thus
exercise agency" (pg. 77). Categories of identity are always inherently inaccurate,
creating the need for resistance. Therefore, "accepting identitis is tantamount to
accepting dominant scipts and performing the identities power has invented" (pg.
77). Adopting an identity is, much like Freud posited, pathological, concerning;
"interpellation is the price for recognition" (pg. 78). A more extreme perspective of
this is Wendy Brown's, which views adopting identity as inherently reifying systems
of oppression, and a preference for oppression over a fear of annhilation of
oneself if one relinquishes identity. Political theorist Wendy Brown has a similar,
more extreme view which argues that organizing around identity is " compulsively
repeating a painful reminder of our subjugation, and maintaining a cycle of
blaming that continues the focus on oppression rather than transcending it" (pg.
79).

Through all this, Alcoff argues that Butler's view remains naive of lived reality.
While she does not believe there is an inherent completeness of identity
ascriptions, there is also no need for completeness to adopt an identity (like
woman) - instead, one should not ascribe fundamentalist identities. Therefore, if
"interpellations can be accurate, [they] do not in every case require or motivate
resistance" (pg. 78).

Alcoff writes: "the bottom line for the postmodern approach to identity is that
identities are subjugating and cannot be a cornerstone of progressive politics" (pg.
79).

Modernist vs. Postmodernist Critiques

The major difference is in the degree of optimism "about the extent to which the
individual can negate the given and resist and external power" (pg. 79).
Postmodernists are more optimistic than modernists. Yet both view the role of the
Other on the individual as inaccurate. At the same time, identity is viewed as
inevitable.

Philosophical critiques say that identities are...

1. "Artificial and oppressive contraints on the natureal interderminacy of the
self"
2. "The product of oppressive practices such as self-disciplining mechanisms,
and the desire for their 'affirmation' is a manifestation of a repetition-
compulsion complex"
3. "Pathological and unproductive, even doomed, responses to lack or ego
dysfunction and instability"
4. "Never accurate representation"
5. "Manifestations of a primary alienation in which categories are imposed
from within"
6. "Freedom in any sense must be a move away from identity" (pg. 80).
Real Identities
Alcoff focuses on contemporary race and gender as embodied identities, stating:
"Class and nationality are also embodied identities, but their relationship to the
body is less intimate and more easily alterable" (pg. 86). In contrast to the a priori
"problem" of identity, Alcoff "aims to explain why the willful attachment to raced or
sex identities, identities created in conditions of oppression, is not necessarily
pathological" (pg. 87). Alongside this, she argues identities can be compatible with
democratic politicsl, autonomy, and agency. She uses hermeneutics and
phenomenology as ways of examining race and gender.

Identities and Essences

Traditional Western philosophy rejects that which is considered "inessential" to the
being of the self (haecceity)---any properties of a thing considered changable,
relational, or contextual are inessential (pg. 89). Identity has traditionally been
viewed as inessential. Alcoff argues that social identities are relational, contextual,
and still fundamental to the self. She questions whether there is such a thing as
acontextual human capacities, like rationality that is entirely separated from social
identity. "Our relational properties can be fundamental to who we are when they
have causal determinacy over our ... orientations to the world ... but also when
they profoundly affect how we are seen and interacted with by others" (pg. 90).
She discusses the mutability of identity dependent on context, using the example
of race and how race changes as one moves across borders (pg. 91). Our visible
identity impacts our relationship with the world, and thus also our internal,
subjective identity (pg. 92).

She uses the term public identity (exterior) to refer to socially perceived and

classified selves---like on the Census. She uses lived subjectivity (interior) to describe
who we understand ourselves to be, which may not always align with public
identity. She acknowledges that the notion of an exterior/interior dichotomy is
reminiscent of Western philisophical thought about the self as separate from the
body. However, she points out that this distinction has been used by marginalized
people to resist oppression - "how you portray me is not who I really am" (pg. 93).

Identities as Interpretive Horizons (Hermeneutic Rationality)

Alcoff argues that knowledge is attained through a process of reasoning, which
requires the process of judgment. Judgment, as a qualitative weighting of evidence,
an interpretation, is influenced by identities. Interpretations are always performed
in particular times and places by particular individuals who experiences influence
their interpretations. Gadamer's hermeneutical philosophy of situated reasoning
acknowledges the interpretive process as "involving the social location of the
knower" (pg. 95). We cannot stand outside of a situation, and thus cannot observe
some objective truth of it. The horizon from which we view the world is "the range
of vision that includes everything that can be seen from a particular vantage point"
(pg. 95). Gadamer does not view the subject as the master over all interpretation
and meaning. Rather, one must place themselves within the context or tradition of
what is being interpreted in order to be open, and not simply force a subjective
reality onto that interpretation. A reflective rationality requires the capacity for
doubt, which C. S. Pierce has argued requires prior content and context. We can
only doubt if we have reasons to doubt, reasons which are substantitive. She
argues that there is no possibility for a closed horizon, a view from nowhere.
Similarly, there is no possibility for incommensurable horizons, as all humans have
some shared experience, even if that experience is simply being human and
sharing a planet.

Identities as Visible and Embodies (Phenomenology)

Unlike subjectivity or the self, heralded as transcending physicality, identity
"implies a recognition of bodily difference" (pg. 102). Identities like race and gender
are social given their meanings are constructed "through culturally available
concepts, values, and experiences," but they are also physically marked (pg. 102).
The visibility of race and gender "is key to the ideological claims that race and
gender categories are natural, and that conflict is understandable because of our
fears of what looks different" (pg. 103). She posits the phenomenological as an
extension of the hermeneutic, given that "location" in terms of the horizon is
metaphor for the body.

Historically, philosophers like Aristotle, Hume, Kant, and John Stuart Mill claimed
that non-whites and women had lower intellect and were incapable of self-
governance, while at the same time claiming those "deemed to have philosphical
capability" (white men) could transcend the human body and make objective and
fundamental claims about the nature of reality (pg. 104). Rationality is thought to
require bodily transcendence. However, rationality is embodied, as cognitive
scientists Mark Johnson and George Lakoff have argued. Even abstract metaphors,
like the idea that "up" correlated to "more" (e.g., prices are up) correlates to
physical experiences of associating a pile of something going up with more things
in the pile.

Arguments about the embodied nature of reasoning have also been used to justify
sexism and racism. At the same time, they have also been used to demarcate
different experience, as determined by bodily difference. Alcoff argues that there
is, regardless, "a wealth of tacit knowledge located in the body" (pg. 106). She
states the the most importance takeaway from phenomenology in regards to
identity is "to reject the dualist approaches that would split the acting self from the
ascribed identity" (pg. 111). Identities gain meaning through social context, rather
than from an untouched and intrinsic "I." "There is no ultimate coherence between
anyone's multiple identities; there will always be tensions between various
aspects" (pg. 112).

Alcoff's overall argument in this section is "the relationship between embodiment

and perception, rationality and knowledge in order to argue that the interpretive
horizon we each bring with us should be understood not simply as a set of beliefs
but as a complex ... set of presuppositions and perceptual orientations, some of
which are manifest as a kind of tacit presence in the body" (pg. 113).

Identities and Self-Other Relations

Two major concerns come from those who critique "identity politics": (1) identities
are a form of imposition of the other onto the self, and therefore fighting to
maintain one's identity is irrational; and (2) "an emphasis on identities will increase
mistrust, conflict, and isolation, and that they will inhibit cooperative and
integrated self-other relations" (pg. 113). In both of these cases, the collective is
seen as at odds with and threatening to the individual and their autonomy,
rationality, integrity, and self-determination. In this section, Alcoff addresses
questions around the self's relation to others, and whether the other dominates
the self.

One aspect of understanding the self-other relationship is through history. Alcoff

writes: "Individuals have agency over interpretations of their history but they
cannot 'choose' to live outside history any more than they can 'overcome' their
horizon" (pg. 114-115). She points out that there are a range of attitudes about
how embedded individuals are in history, and those who critique identity politics
are often trying to live outside it. Himani Bannerji criticizes these approaches,
noting that those who chastise self-naming projects have never had to find
"missing parts of one's self in experiences and histories" (pg. 115). Alcoff points out
that those of dominant groups have reason to forget their histories "so that their
current material wealth can be imagined to have come through their own, or their
forebear's, hard work rather than unfair advantages" (pg. 115). Alcoff points out
that history showcases a self-other interdependence, as both making and
interpreting history is a collective cultural process. She points out that some
illogically believe that their own internal feelings indicate a naturalness (e.g., a
homophobic response of disgust to two same-gender people kissing means that
homosexuality is unnatural). Physical reactions themselves can be shaped by
cultural relations and history.

Further, "the other gives content to our self" (pg. 116). Our own self-image is
shaped by the perceptions of others and ours of them. Hegel suggests we need
"epistemic confirmation" of ourselves, how we understand the world, and our
values. Mead posits the self as born into a perspective, rather than having one;
being brought up on certain cultural values gives the illusion those values have
objective status, given they have been intersubjectively confirmed. All individual
agency operates within a collective context. Alcoff discusses this in the context of
racial identity, and how only recently white individuals have become conscious
they are white; when every aspect of media and society was inherently white, it
was perceived as objective, not Other. Through otherness, being perceived as
different, we become reflectively aware. Identity, for minorities in majority-
dominated spaces identities, "calls attention to itself, a call that communicates
both to them and to others" (pg. 119). Schutte describes how minoritized
individuals engage in self-alientation, a split-self that leaves behind the identity
that is Other in an attempt to participate in majority group contexts (e.g.,
embracing certain white behaviors or expectations while sidelining and denigrating
one's racialized behaviors). This often involves adopting expectations of one's
otherness that can directly benefit the majority group. Thus, acts like appropriation
do not occur as a solely conscious and outside behavior, but from an
internalization of the who, how, and when something benefits the majority group.
An examination of hierarchies, power differences, and material determinations is
necessary to understand the Western philosophical position that "the other is
hostile, oppressive, or at least less rational" and one must disengage to be rational,
morally right, and integrous (pg. 122). The underlying belief here is that the
individual is always smarter than the larger community of others.

Race and Gender

Alcoff's argument up to this point is:

"Rationality operates necessarily through the determination of qualitative distinctions;

such distinctions are not algorithmic but are made on the basis of a form of practical
reasoning that is grounded in our interpretive horizons as well as embodied
knowledges; these horizons and knowledges, which are located at the very center of the
self, in its embodiment, have a social rather than individual foundation. Rationality
does not, then, require the individual to minimize [their] embeddedness within a social
group. The fact that we are constituted by the Other, most clearly perhaps in our social
identities, is no cause for automatic alartm until we have specific reasons for distrust.

Racial and gendered identities are socially produced, and yet they are fundamental to
our selves as knowing, feeling, and acting subjects. Raced and gendered identities
operate as epistemological perspectives or horizons from which certain aspects or
layers of reality are made visible. In stratified societies, differently identified individuals
do not have the same access to points of view or perceptual planes of observation or
the same embodies knowledge ... If raced and gendered identities, among others, help
to structure our contemporary perception, then they help constitute the necessary
background from which I know the world. Racial and sexual difference is manifest
precisely in bodily comportment, in habit, feeling, and perceptual orientation. These
make up a part of what appears to me as the natural setting of all my thoughts."

The Feminist Crisis in Identity Theory

What woman is is a central problem for feminist theory. However, Alcoff argues
that feminism's assumption about what woman is is "foolhardy, given that every
source of knowledge about women has been contaminated with misogyny" (pg.
134). The central dilemma in feminism is that self-definition is "grounded in a
concept that must be deconstructed and de-essentialized in all its aspect" (pg.
134). Two feminist arguments have emerged from this dilemma: (1) cultural
feminists have argued that the exclusive right to defining and evaluating women
belongs to feminists, as men have a set of different experiences and interests and
often hatred of women; and (2) poststructuralist feminists have argued to reject
the possibility of defining women at all, and to deconstrct all concepts of woman
and to eliminate gender as significant. Alcoff's aim is to address the inadequacies
of both positions and to define an alternative.

Cultural Feminism
Cultural feminism "is the ideology of a female nature or female essence
reappropriated by feminists themselves in an effort to revalidate undervalued
female attributes" (pg. 135). Masculinity and male biology is seen as the enemy of
women, and culture feminist politics seeks to create an environment free of
masculinist values, such as pornography. Mary Daly posited that "male barrenness
leads to parasitism on female energy, which flows from [their] life-affirming, life-
creating biological condition" (pg. 135). She believed that the "childless state" of
men leads to a dependency on women that causes fear and insecurity that then
leads to a desire to dominate and control the "life-energy" of women. Adrienne
Rich had similar beliefs, and argued not to reject the "importance of female biology
simply because patriarchy used it to subjugate [women]" (pg. 136). Echols defined
this perspective as a cultural feminism because "it equated 'women's liberation
with the development and preservation of a female counter culture'" (pg. 137).
Echols points out that if the differences between men and women are so innate,
there is no purpose in attempting to change the male-dominated public; this is
why many cultural feminists posit a separatist culture. However, if there is no
innate difference, the focus of activism should not be separatism.

Cultural feminism ws most popular among white women, whereas radical

feminists of color rejected essentialist gender. Alcoff writes that "there is a self-
perpetuating circularity between defining woman as essentially peaceful and
nurturing and the observations and judgment we shall make of women and the
practices we shall engage in as women in the future ... [a] merry-go-round of
feminine constructions" (pg. 138-139). She argues that cultural feminism promotes
restrictive conditions for what makes women, such as forced parenting and lack of
physical autonomy.

Poststructuralist Feminism
Poststructuralist feminists posit that mechanisms of power tie the individual to
their gender identity and thus do not represent a solution to sexism. Borrowing
from poststructuralist, sometimes posthumanist French theorists like Derrida,
Lacan, and Foucault, the subject is not viewed as authoritative of the self or
containing natural attributes, but formed through cultural ideologies. "We cannot
understand societt as the conglomerate of individual intentions but, rather, must
understand individual intentions as constructed within a social reality" (pg. 140).
Postructuralism takes a nominalist approach to woman, positing the category of
woman is fictional, has no objective basis, and that feminist efforts should be
focused on dismantling that fiction. For Derrida, the only escape from the
oppressive binarism of man/woman, positive/negative, culture/nature, which is
reified by cultural feminists, is to "assert total difference, to be that which cannot
be pinned down, compared, defined, and thus subjugated within a dichotomous
hierarchy" (pg. 141). Poststructuralist feminists like Julia Kristeva promote a
negative feminism, which deconstructs and refuses to construct.

Alcoff points out three points of attraction poststructuralism offers feminism: (1) It
offers a promise of freedom for women, embracing a plurality of being not present
in predetermined gender identities offered by both patriarchy and cultural
feminism; (2) it moves beyond both cultural and liberal feminisms to theorize the
construct of female (and not just feminine) subjectivity; and (3) it enhances the
ability to understand why some women have embraces patriarchy and how
ideology is preproduced while social progress is diminished. However, Alcoff
argues the logical fallacies with poststructuralism. First, political activism cannot be
built on negation alone. Second, how did a right-wing woman's consciousness
become socially constructed by discourse, but not the feminist woman's? Third,
poststructuralism, through its endless deconstruction, also threatens to
deconstruct feminism itself. If gender identity is only a construct, and not in
anyway reality, then how can society be misogynistic and how can demands be
made for women's equality when women do not exist? Therefore, Alcoff argues
that "poststructuralism undercuts our ability to oppose the dominant trend, and
dominant danger, in mainstream Western intellectual inquiry, that is, the
assumption of a universal, neutral, perspectiveless epistemology, metaphysics, and
ethics" (pg. 143).

Positionality
Alcoff argues for a third approach to feminism that embraces neither essentialism
or nominalism, positionality. She states that "the position of women is relative and
not innate, and yet it is also not 'undecideable.' Through social critique and
analysis we can identify women via their position relative to an existing cultural
and social network" (pg. 148). The concept of woman is a "relational term
identifiable only within a (constantly moving) context" and "the position women
find themselves in can be actively utilized (rather than transcended) as a location
for the construction of meaning, a place from where meaning can be discovered
(the meaning of being female)" (pg. 148). When a woman becomes a feminist, her
perception is not one of an inherently new truth, but one of changed perspective;
she begins to view the same facts about the world from a different perspective.
Alcoff argues that this perspective allows for a fluid and non-essentialist identity of
woman, where a politics of change can emerge. The concept of woman needs to
remain open so that it can be altered through stages of feminist transformation.
Alcoff rejects both the essentialist definition of woman defined by intrinstic
characteristics and a politics of negation. We can instead make demands on behalf
of women, as they exist within a specific location and time, that reflect women's
needs.

The Metaphysics of Gender

This chapter focuses on women's gendered identity and its basis in sexual
difference. Specifically, she explores "whether giving metaphysical content to sex
identity is necessarily determinist, and whether ... an objectivist (postpositivist)
account of sexed identity is philosophically sound" (pg. 154). The anti-objectivist
perspectives takes 4 positions: (1) there is fluid variability between all
categorizations, which means they are subject to idological manipulations; (2)
there is a mediated nature to all descriptions; (3) there are inevitibly prescriptive
effects of descriptions; and (4) objectivism about sexual differences reinforces
compulsory heterosexuality.

The Case Against Sex

Gayle Rubin argued for the separation of sex and gender in 1975, wanting to
naturalize sex in order to denaturalize gender. Her idea was that while there are
"male and female" bodies, bodily difference does not explain the cultural practices
and beliefs of gender which vary so considerably. Rubin's theory came under
criticism for its concession of easily divided sex categories and the belief that
sexed identity itself is not free from culture. Moira Gatens criticized the divide for
replication mind/body and nature/culture binaries, which have been the
conceptual grounds for women's oppression. The sex/gender distinction closely
resembles the nature/culture distinction, which has been critiqued for neatly
dividing two things which cannot be divided (e.g., everything humans do is natural,
making culture nature). Both Butler, Monique Wittig, and Collette Guillamin argued
that gender was not the product of sex, but rather sexual classification is produced
by gender. Wittig, in particular, argued that the very construction of sex as a
category, presented as objective, is the basis of an exploited class (women).
Guillamin posited sex categories as produced through "arbitrary marks and
enforced practices, marks that confer symbolic meanings on parts of the body, and
ptractices that constitute race and sex identity as their effect" (pg. 157). These
three theorists posit sex and gender as socially real but neither objective or
independent of human cultures, and therefore not natural. These theorists argue
that heterosexism is upheld by these constructions, naturalizing heterosexuality
specifically by tying sexual differences to gender. Alcoff points out that both the
trans movement and new reproductive technologies that enable heterosexuality
unecessary have also destablized the concept of sex.

Antinaturalism as Mastery over Nature

Diana Fuss states that antinaturalist feminists hope for women to be "linguistic
rather than a natural kind [in order to] hold onto the notion of women as a group
without submitting to the idea that is is 'nature' which categorizes" (pg. 160). Some
feminists oppose this anti-naturalist view, out of concern that it is aligned with
masculine Englightment projects of overcoming physicality. Moi has argued that
separating sex from gender has neflected female embodiment and produced an
idealism that sex has no determinate effects on the practices of gender. Moi
argues that the separation of gender and sex is unecessary if we view the body as
historical and social, and we view the both as both unable to be reduced to sexual
difference but also subject to natural law and human meaning systems.

Is Sex Like Race?

Alcoff explores arguments around sex and gender by discussing its relationship
with race. Both are viewed as visibly marked on the body; and both sexism and
racism are built on the concept of physical features determining emotional, moral,
and intellectual capabilities. Alcoff argues that racism, once predicated on
phrenology and physiognomy and other visible differences, has had to scramble
for new footholds given the lack of empirical evidence for genomic differences. It
has then turned to cultural difference, predicating some innate tie between the
physicality of race and culture, which she also argues falls apart quickly given
culture is not immutable. The difference between demarcated sexes is much
clearer, given reproductive capabilities. She argues this may have more hold for
sexist mythologies, which have been heavily tied to reproductive difference, but
biology can also explain away sexism; all children inherit equal characteristics from
mother and father, for example. She calls sexism "outlandish" but also writes "the
variable of reproductive role provides a material infrastructure for sexual
difference that is qualitatively different from the surface differences of racial
categories" (pg. 165). (But when does something move from surface to deep
difference?)

Haslanger's Objectivism
Haslander argues for the validity of objectivism of gender distinctions, positing a
context-specific gynocentric metaphysics. Other feminist theorists reject the idea
of making contextually limited genderalizations about women (although social
scientists do this) because they believe it does not say anything about gender, only
the discourse of gender in a specific context. Halsanger argues that there are
"prediscursive, objective bases for some of the properties used to demarcate
gender, even while contesting whether it is these properties that are truly
fundamental to gender in the robust sense" (pg. 171). Alcoff points out that
Haslander fails to acknowledge that things themselves, like sexual dimorphism,
can be discursively produced and thus, like Butler, we must be skeptical of what
looks natural.

Alcoff proposes that an objective basis for sex is the relation to the possibility of
biological production. That regardless of whether a person plans to have children,
or can have children, their anatomical makeup shapes their relationship with
reproduction and thus gender. She also makes the argument that a biological basis
for reproduction does not necessitate nor justify compulsory heterosexuality and
that compulsory, exclusive heterosexuality can actually be damaging to
reproduction and child rearing.

The final position Alcoff takes on gender is that maintaining a distinction between
an objective sexed identity and a varied and cultural basis of gender does not
embrace the binary between culture and nature. Sex and gender are both still
mutable and contextual. We must still account for sex/gender as
phenomenological (how the body is lived in) and hermeneutical (how the body
shapes perspective and the horizon from which we even begin to experience
gender).

The Phenomenology of Racial Embodiment

This chapter is dedicated to examining the reality of race, how it is lived and
experienced. Race, as a concept, is often traced to Anglo-European cultures in the
era of early modernism (Foucault's classical episteme) during early scientific
practices of ordering and classifying everything on the basis of essential difference.
As Europeans colonized other geographic areas, they differentiated them by their
association with defined racial types. Also in the early modern period was an
emerging liberal ideology that embraced "universalism," creating a confused logic
around race. Visible difference threatened liberal concepts of justice based on
sameness, yet visible difference was still used to differentiate race. Alcoff argues
that "the resultant juxtaposition between universalist legitimation narratives that
deny or triviliaze difference (political science and the law) and the detailed
taxonomies of physical, moral, and intellectual human difference (anthropology
and genetics)" has had a negative lasting impact on Western discourse and
"commonsense knowledge" (pg. 180). Since, race has largely deroded as a
legitimate biological category. However, it still stands as socially significant.

Alcoff proposes that current work on race falls into three categories:

(1) Nominalism: Race is not real. The biological meaning of erroneous racial
categories have led to racism. The use of racial concepts at all should be avoided to
further an antiracist agenda. Alcoff criticizes this position for incorrectly ascribing
race only to biology and that the end of racial concepts will end racism.

(2) Essentialism: Race is a category of identity with explanatory power and

members of racial groups share characteristics, political interests, and history.
Racism has affected the content of racial categories, rather than racial
characterization itself. Alcoff criticizes this position for failing to capture fluidity and
open-ended racial meanings and for assuming racial identities are obvious, racial
groups are homogenous, and ancestry is fate-determining.

(3) Contextualism: "Race is socially constructed, historically malleable, cultural

contextual, and reproduced through learned perceptual practices. Whethere or
not it is valid to use racial concepts and whether ... their use will have positive or
negative political effects depends on the context" (pg. 182). Alcoff finds this
argument the most substantitive. She defines two types of contextualisms: (1)
objectivist and (2) subjectivist. Objectivists attempt to define race generally while
also recognizing how context determines specific content by "invok[ing]
metanarratives of historical experience, cultural traditions, or processes of
colonization" which Alcoff feels ignores everyday realities of racial experiences.
Subjectivists begin with the lived experience and thus reveal "how race is
constitutive of bodily experience, subjectivity, judgment, and epistemic
relationships" (pg. 183). These two approaches are not mutually exclusive.

Alcoff writes how race is inherently maintained through the visible, and the
experience of race is predicated on the perception of race. She states that
perception is habitual and does not require consciousness. Thus, the commonly
held belief is that one must have conscious bias to be a racist, and "if introspection
fails to product such a belief then one is simply not racist" (pg. 188). But even
perceptual dynamics are mutable and changeable, thus such perceptual sources of
racism can be altered. Alcoff believes that "the mediation through the visible,
working on both the inside and the outside, both in the way we read ourselves and
the way others read us, is what is unique to racialized identities as opposed to
ethnic and cultural identities" (pg. 191). Everything encoded into racial identities
(experience, ancestry, self-understanding, practices, etc.) is through "visible
enscriptions on the body" (pg. 191). That race was constructed on the visible
creates an immutable experience; race must operate through the visible to give
ground to the ideology internal characteristics are accessible to the viewer. Thus,
Alcoff proposes "to make visible the practices of visibility itself" to counter racist
perceptions (pg. 194).

Racism and Visible Race

This chapter discusses the relationship between racism and visible racialized
identity. Alcoff contends with the argument that we should unlearn racial seeing,
which puts forth the logic that without racial seeing there are no races and thus no
racism. Disentangling social identity from physical attributes would be a manner of
erasing race. Vision-centric cognition, linked to a positivist paradigm, is said by
Nietzche to ease anxiety: everything must be visible and thus clear. However,
Alcoff is concerned with white society's obsession with "color blindness" and a
post-racial world. While "color blindness" remains a utopian and legitimate hope
for the future, acting as if it is reality is a position of denial. Acts of supposed color
blindness "reduces socially significant human differences to invisibleness and
meaningless hype whereby one does not have to acknowledge what one does not
see" (pg. 199).

The Whiteness Question

Alcoff writes that whiteness "poses almost unique problems for an account of
social identity ... given its simultanous invisibility and universality" (pg. 205). She
questions whether making whiteness visible is a useful approach given the
propensity of white supremacists to do just that. This chapter focuses on the
increasing visibility of whiteness to white people and their various reactions. She
points out that an awakening of the hermeneutic horizon of white supremacy in
white people can upset identity formations about the self.

Alcoff points out that anti-racist movements have required for white people to
acknowledge that their perceptions and experiences are impacted by being white,
despite that whites' ability to ignore race is a major piece of white privilege. She
asks what it means to acknowledge whiteness. "Is it to acknowledge that one is
inherently tied to structures of domination and oppression, that one is irrevocably
on the wrong side? ... can the acknowledgment of whiteness produce only self-
criticism, even shame and self-loathing? Is it possible to feel okay with being
white?" (pg. 207). She asks what whites who identify their whiteness can then
relate to, whether they should assimilate into non-European cultures. Feminist
theory has also asked whether white women benefit wholly from whiteness, or if
whiteness is "a ruse to divide women and to keep white women from
understanding their true interests" (pg. 209). Some feminists argue that sexism is
more fundamental than racism, and that gender is more explanatory of social
status than race. Others criticize this view, saying it trivializes racism and that
genocide, war, and other atrocities cannot be solely explained by sexism. Gloria
Joseph states that white women are both white and female, and are both "tools
and benefactors of racism, and that feminists must recognize and address white
women's social position as both oppressors and oppressed" (pg. 209). She argues
that white women are interested in protecting white supremacy and that "white
female supremacy" must also be dealth with alongside "white male supremacy."
Alcoff states that there are a variety of interests driving white women and the
question is: "for any given individual white woman ... is she more interested in
attaining as much as possible of what white men now have, or would she prefer to
live in and contribute toward a just society?" (pg. 211).

Alcoff considers whether a white "double consciousness" that "requires an ever-

present acknowledgment of the historical legacy of white identity constructions in
the persistent structures of inequality and exploitations, as well as a newly
awakened memory of many white traitors to white privilege" would help transform
white racism (pg. 223).