Gender, Citizenship, and the Politics of Identity

Bibliographic Data

ID4806546
AuthorsLynn Stephens, Lynn Stephen (Oregon, corresponding author)
Year2001
Volume28
Issue6
Pages54-69
Publication date2001-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueLatin American Perspectives (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0094-582X • E-ISSN: 1552-678X
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0094582x0102800605
OpenAlexW2084223713
LanguageEN
Citations received31
References cited12

Many antiessentialist critiques have been made of ethnic, gender, racial, and national conceptions of identity. In fact, some of most dynamic areas of feminist theorizing have interrogated concepts such as women, men, the feminine, masculine subjectivity, and sex as falsely unifying heterogeneous groups of people (Butler, 1990, 1993; Fausto Sterling, 1997; Garber, 1993). What, then, is need for a further debate about identity? The concept of identity, however flawed, is, nevertheless, obviously still useful to those engaged in grassroots social movements. Rather than abandon concept of identity, Stuart Hall proposes that we continue to think with it in a detotalized and deconstructed form. He also proposes that we focus on process of identification, which he sees as a construction, a process never completed. In end, identification is conditional, lodged in contingency. Once secured, it does not obliterate difference.... Identification is, then, a process of articulation, a suturing, an over-determination not a subsumption.... And since as a process it operates across difference, it entails discursive work, binding and marking of symbolic boundaries, production of 'frontier-effects' (Hall, 1996a: 2-3). While it is clear to women in grassroots movements that participation is a constant process of negotiating difference, need to create unitary names, symbols, and goals can result in essentialization of women as mothers, as in case of El Salvador's CO-MADRES, or as Indians, as in case of indigenous women participating in and supporting struggle of Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional (Zapatista Army of National Liberation-EZLN) and, more broadly, Mexico's national movement for indigenous autonomy. Organizing requires projection of sameness to outsiders. Strategically, demands must stem from a coherent social location understandable to those who are audience for them-often institutions of

Aesthetics · Articulation (sociology) · Citizenship · Epistemology · Frontier · Grassroots · Identity (music) · Indigenous · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Subjectivity · Cultural Identity and Representation · Gender Studies · Latin American and Latino Studies · Law · Rhetoric and Communication Studies

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