Identity Politics Reconsidered

Based on the ongoing work of the agenda-setting Future of Minority Studies national research project, Identity Politics Reconsidered reconceptualizes the scholarly and political significance of social identity. It focuses on the deployment of "identity" within ethnic-, women's-, disability-, and gay and lesbian studies in order to stimulate discussion about issues that are simultaneously theoretical and practical, ranging from ethics and epistemology to political theory and pedagogical practice. This collection of powerful essays by both well-known and emerging scholars offers original answers to questions concerning the analytical legitimacy of "identity" and "experience," and the relationships among cultural autonomy, moral universalism, and progressive politics.

Linda Martín Alcoff is Professor of Philosophy and Women’s Studies at Syracuse University. She is the author of Real Knowing: New Versions of the Coherence Theory (1996) and the co-editor of Feminist Epistemologies (1993), Thinking From the Underside of History (2000), and Identities: Race, Class, Gender, and Nationality (2002). Her most recent book, Visible Identities: Race, Gender and the Self, is forthcoming from Oxford. Michael Hames-García is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Binghamton University (State University of New York). He is the author of Fugitive Thought: Prison Movements, Race, and the Meaning of Justice (2004) and the co-editor, with Paula M. L. Moya, of Reclaiming Identity: Realist Theory and the Predicament of Postmodernism (2000). Satya P. Mohanty is Professor of English at Cornell University and Director of the Future of Minority Studies Summer Institute. He is the author of Literary Theory and the Claims of History: Postmodernism, Objectivity, Multicultural Politics (1997). His research interests include critical theory, the novel, social and cultural identity, ethics and aesthetics, and “comparative Indian literature.” Paula M. L. Moya is Associate Professor of English and Director of the Undergraduate Program in the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE) at Stanford University. She is the author of Learning from Experience: Minority Identities, Multicultural Struggles (2002) and the co-editor, with Michael Hames-García, of Reclaiming Identity: Realist Theory and the Predicament of Postmodernism (2000).

Introduction--Linda M. Alcoff & Satya P. Mohanty * Disability Studies and the Future of Identity Politics--Tobin Siebers * On a Critical Realist Theory of Identity--Rosaura Sanchez * Reclaiming Left Baggage: Some Early Sources for Minority Studies--Juan Flores * Identity as Calling: Martin Luther King on War--Paul Sawyer * What Is at Stake in ‘Gay’ Identities?--Michael Hames-Garcia * What’s Identity Got to Do With It? Mobilizing Identities in the Multicultural Classroom--Paula M. L. Moya * Identity Politics: An Ethnography by a Participant--Renato Rosaldo* Multiculturalism Now: Civilization, National Identity and Difference Before and After September 11--David Palumbo-Liu *
Américo Paredes and the Transnational Imaginary--Ramon Saldívar * Border Thinking, Minoritized Studies, and Realist Interpellations: The Coloniality of Power from Gloria Anzaldúa to Arundhati Roy--José David Saldívar * Realism and African American Literary Paradigms * Johnnella E. Butler * On Forming Dialogic-Analytic Collaborations: Curating Spaces within/between Universities and Communities * John Kuo Wei Tchen * Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics of Sexual Identity: Recasting the Essentialism and Social Constructionism Debate--Raja Halwani * Experience, Identity, Objectivity * Dominick LaCapra * Transformation vs. Resistance Identity Projects: Epistemological Resources for Social Justice Movements--Sandra Harding * Internationalism and the American Indian Scholar: Native Studies and the Challenge of Pan-Indigenism--Sean Teuton