Does Collective Identity Presuppose an Other: On the Alleged Incoherence of Global Solidarity

American Political Science Review 99 (1):45-60 (2005)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Two arguments apparently support the thesis that collective identity presupposes an Other: the recognition argument, according to which seeing myself as a self requires recognition by an other whom I also recognize as a self (Hegel); and the dialogic argument, according to which my sense of self can only develop dialogically (Taylor). But applying these arguments to collective identity involves a compositional fallacy. Two modern ideologies mask the particularist thesis’s falsehood. The ideology of indivisible state sovereignty makes sovereignty as such appear particularistic by fusing “internal” with “external” sovereignty; nationalism imagines national identity as particularistic by linking it to sovereignty. But the concatenation of internal sovereignty, external sovereignty, and nation is contingent. Schmitt’s thesis that “the political” presupposes an other conflates internal and external sovereignty, while Mouffe’s neo-Schmittianism conflates difference (Derrida) with alterity. A shared global identity may face many obstacles, but metaphysical impossibility and conceptual confusion are not among them.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,593

External links

  • This entry has no external links. Add one.
Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Identity trouble: Disidentification and the problem of difference.Josè Medina - 2003 - Philosophy and Social Criticism 29 (6):655-680.
Kurios George and the Sovereign State.Jeffrey Paris - 2004 - Radical Philosophy Review 7 (2):115-134.
Law and sovereignty.Pavlos Eleftheriadis - 2010 - Law and Philosophy 29 (5):535-569.
Liberal recognition for identity? Only for particularized ones.Sahar Akhtar - 2011 - Politics, Philosophy and Economics 10 (1):66-87.
Two conceptions of state sovereignty and their implications for global institutional design.Miriam Ronzoni - 2012 - Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 15 (5):573-591.
The "world" of the enlightenment to come.Jacques Derrida - 2003 - Research in Phenomenology 33 (1):9-52.

Analytics

Added to PP
2012-01-07

Downloads
88 (#177,203)

6 months
1 (#1,040,386)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Arash Abizadeh
McGill University

References found in this work

Elements of the philosophy of right.Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel - 1991 - New York: Cambridge University Press. Edited by Allen W. Wood & Hugh Barr Nisbet.
The Concept of the Political.Carl Schmitt - 1996 - University of Chicago Press.
23 The Politics of Recognition.Charles Taylor - 1994 - Contemporary Political Theory: A Reader.
Hegel’s Ethical Thought.Allen W. Wood - 1990 - New York: Cambridge University Press.

View all 11 references / Add more references