Abstract

My dissertation examines the intersection of identity and subjectivity in modernity through the example of identity politics---political movements centered on social identities such as gender, race and sexuality. Through Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault and Hannah Arendt, I argue that identity politics reinscribes the very relations of power that it attempts to undermine, and that identity must be decoupled from subjectivity, which expands the notion of the political itself. ;In Chapter One, I enter the on-going debate between Judith Butler and Seyla Benhabib on the role of identity in feminist theory and practice. I argue that Butler's position better accounts for, and helps redress, the multiple mechanisms by which oppression operates in our age, but that she does not offer a robust enough account of subjectivity. In chapter two, I turn to Heidegger to provide just such an account. ;Heidegger's notion of being-in-the-world from Being and Time provides a convincing account of subjectivity as historically conditioned, but not determined. I argue that this notion of subjectivity, coupled with the notions of social conformity and finitude, are key for understanding the particular forms of oppression with which my project is more generally concerned. ;I turn to Foucault in Chapter Three to articulate social identities as the main way in which subjectivity is constituted in the modern era; I argue that these identities are dangerous because of their oppressive effects. I then turn to Foucault's notion of practices of the self from his later works to argue for subjectivity as a form of relation with others. ;In Chapter Four, I use Arendt's notion of power as collective action in the public sphere to articulate this concept of subjectivity as a form of relation. Her notion of politics as creating realities and establishing relations is rooted in plurality, requiring that individuals become aware of and attempt to take responsibility for the effects of their actions on others. ;In Chapter Five, I reexamine feminist politics, arguing that its goal should be altering the very practices by which gender is constituted. This focus on micro-level practices of gender formation reveals that everyday, seemingly innocuous practices constitute the political and should be the target of public action that seeks to redress oppression based on identity