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Identifying the Difference

Author(s): William E. Connolly


Source: Political Theory, Vol. 21, No. 1 (Feb., 1993), pp. 128-131
Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/191855 .
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CRITICAL RESPONSE

IDENTIFYING THE DIFFERENCE


WILLIAM
E. CONNOLLY
Johns HopkinsUniversity

T HE AUGUST 1992 REVIEWof Identity\Difference... by Iris Young


first translatesthe book's themes into a set of alien dichotomies and then
convicts the authorof selecting the wrong choices among them. Here, I
recovera few issues concealed by this familiarcampaign.
1. To prove thatmy "melodious,""abstract,""rambling"sentences"often
do not makea greatdeal of sense"Youngdropstwo quotationsfromthe sky.
I concede that her first sample is awkward.Who wouldn't? But why does
this protectorof the concrete, the precise, and the analytical not give the
readerany hintof wherethe sentencesarelocated,what themesthey connect
to, whatpriordefinitionsthey consolidate?Young'sfirstspecimenis dropped
froma discussionof Todorov'scritiqueof both universalistandcontextualist
models of engaging an alien culture, presented as he reviews the first
encounters between the Old World and the New. Had Young engaged
Todorov's appreciationof how Las Casas and Sahagun in the sixteenth
centurybecame criticalof the Christianuniversalismthroughwhich Spain
the Aztecs, she mightalso haveencounteredin advance
conquered/converted
a critiqueof the unreflectiveuniversalismthroughwhich she readsa book at
odds with herown presumptions.Foronly a crudeuniversalistcould assume
thatany book will makeevery sentenceperfectlyclearto each readerwithout
any reference to the work surroundingit. Moreover, to place the guilty
sentence in the settingof the Aztec examplewould be to contraveneYoung's
contentionthatno extendedexamplesarepresentedin thisbook.A few others
include careerism and dropping out, antisemitism, Hobbes on madness,
syndrome,"the conAugustine'sconstitutionof heresy,the "procrastination
POLITICALTHEORY,Vol. 21 No. 1, February1993 128-131
? 1993 Sage Publications,Inc.
128

Connolly / IDENTIFYINGTHE DIFFERENCE

129

tingency of gender relations,and the way in which welfarism and terrorism


areconstructedto protectthe collective identityof the U.S. throughnegation
of the other.
2. Young's next skydrop is pulled from a discussion of how theories of
individualism, individuality, and civic liberalism (or communitarianism)
converge, amid their differences, in occluding a crucial dimension of the
political. The civic liberal, for instance,valorizes politics as action in pursuit of general ends but devalues it as the periodic disturbanceof identity\
differencerelationsthathave become naturalized.But a democraticsociety,
as thematizedin this book, maintainsa productivetension between politics
as governance and politics as disturbanceof sedimented identities and
conventions. Young forgets the latter dimension when she accuses me of
providing an "apolitical"reading of the "pathosof distance."Had Young
consideredthe sentences surroundingherskydropshe would have foundthat
culturalcultivationof the pathosof distanceprovidesspace for differenceto
be and that, contraryto Nietzsche, such a distance must be sustained by
political means if it is to be sustainedat all in the late-modernage.'
3. Young says that my strategies of ethics are therapeuticratherthan
institutional,but I resist the categories through which she organizes my
thinking.The book does considertacticsof the self appliedto the self. But it
does so in relationto cultivationof a democraticethos in which interdependent and contendingidentitiesfold a greaterdegree of agonistic respectinto
mutualrelations.Social movementsare indispensableto this result.Young's
inabilityto detect any "institutional"proposalsin the book is determinedby
her reinstatementof the very personal/institutionaldichotomymy reflection
on identity\differencerelationsloosens up.2
4. While criticizing me for issuing throwawayexamples, Young tosses
away the only instance she cites. She says, vaguely, that I lump several
contemporaryphenomenatogetheras signs of "politicalcontraction"without
providingan extended analysis of any. But the point, in this case, is to show
what these disparatephenomenahave in common in the context of a discussion of a subterraneanchange in the collective identityof the United States.
Viewed from inside the collective identity,the emergenceof religious fundamentalism,
hedonism,anda drugculture,the expansionof litigiousness,theconcentrationof affluent
youthon careerism,tax revoltsandtaxstringency,andthe tougheningof prisonsentences
doubtless appearto be disparatephenomenareflecting, variously, modes of deviance,
patternsof self-indulgence, and breakdownsof social discipline. Viewed from another
angle, these same phenomenasignify diverseresponsesto a generalset of pressuresand
perceptions. For all these developments exemplify a logic of political contraction-

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POLITICALTHEORY/ February1993

contractionby the statefrom the effortto drawexcludedconstituenciesinto the circle of


freedom, by careerists from emotional involvement in the future of the whole, by
fundamentalistsfrom confidence in the officially chartedfuturecourse, by hedonists
from self-disciplinefor the sake of futureattainments..., by usersof harddrugsfrom
hope in the futureto a struggleto get throughone day at a time. (p. 205)

Thisgatheringof disparateinstancesindicatesa collective decline of confidence in the futureour institutionsare designedto build.This effect, in turn,
is expungedfromelectoraldebateby a politics of collective identitythrough
negation of the other. Other examples, as noted above, serve different
purposes.3

5. Young castigates me for ignoring the "material"conditions of the


political culture I admire. Does this mean the dimensions I focus on are
"immaterial"?Still, Young is on to something. It is just that I concede
explicitly thatthis book does not deal with economic arrangementssupportive of the ethos it admires,and I explicitly note otherwritingswhere such
supportingconditions are explored.4Also, while criticizing my neglect of
material conditions, Young suggests that the identity relations I admire
requirethe "relativesocial privilege enjoyed by political theorists."But I
oppose Young'selitism here,findingrelationsof agonisticrespectsometimes
absent among political theorists. .., and often present in other sectors of
society.
I resist, then, Young's divisions between the poetic and the analytic,the
concreteand the abstract,the political andthe apolitical,the materialandthe
immaterial,and the personal and the institutional.Reading within these
notationsshe hearslittle meaningin my melodies. Workingthroughthem, I
note a lack of discernmentin the categoriesthroughwhich she identifiesthe
differencebetween us.

NOTES
1. Young remainstotally deaf to the discussion of the ontological dimension of political
theory,even thoughthe quotationin questiondeals directlywith it. This dimensionis enclosed
in the "supplement"of civic liberalismin the sentenceunderreview.It is, for instance,the social
ontology of civic liberalismthat warrantsthe devaluationof disturbancein its political ideal.
whereasI heara contestable
Youngprobablyfindsthe ontologicaldimensionto be too "abstract,"
ontology lodged in the categories throughwhich she reads my book. On my view, responsible
involves sustainedeffortsto articulateandreflecton the contestablesocial
politicalinterpretation
ontology informingone's own work.
2. Is the referentof the following statementpersonalor institutional,on Young'sreading?
"A democracy infused with a spirit of agonism is one in which divergentorientationsto the

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131

mysteries of existence find overt expressionin public life.... Distance becomes politicized in
a world where othertopographicalsourcesof distancehave closed up. The termsof contestation
enlarge opportunitiesfor participantsto engage the relationaland contingentcharacterof the
identities that constitutethem, and this effect in turnestablishes one of the preconditionsfor
respectfulstrife betweenpartieswho reciprocallyacknowledgethe contestablecharacterof the
faiths thatorientthem andgive themdefinition in relationto one another"(p. 211). And, by the
way, is Kevorkian,given Young'sdistinctions,a therapistof death,a political activist pressing
the cultureto reconsiderits collective orientationto mortality,or neither,or both?
3. Young criticizes me for "weaving"a variety of presentations"aroundthe main theme."
But each instance she cites is part of the theme, dealing with the way individual, group, or
collective identities are shaped throughtheir constitutionof difference. In one such instance,
Youngasserts,I argue"againstthe internationalsystem andterritorialsovereignty."Ugh! Rather,
I endorse social movements that extend through and beyond the state, compromising the
monopoly of the territorialstate over the identitiesand allegiances of its members.Young also
says the book reads like "one man's painstakinglyinscribedjournal."Perhapsit does. What,
though, renders its inscriptions "painstaking?"Does Young presume that "Connolly," the
grown-up Irish boy, raised to be religious and Catholic, painstakinglyreconsidersit all in "A
Letterto Augustine"?This stereotypewould be false in two of its presumptions- andoffensive
to the Irish, who, as everyone knows, are quick to take offense. What is the referentof this abstractpresumption:"painstaking"?Does Connollycomposeabstract,painstakingIrishlullabies?
4. For example:"Thisstudy has confined itself to the politics of identityanddifference.But
to illustrateits linkagesto anotherset of issues, let me outlinejust one ingredientin an economic
projectelaboratedsomewhatmorefully elsewhere"(p. 214). "Butsuch economicmodifications,
while crucial, are certainlynot sufficient"(p. 215).

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