Uses and Misuses of the Concept of Identity

Abstract In international politics as in the domestic management of collective claims, everything today is a question of ‘identity’: identity-based demands, identity-based mobilizations, ethnic, religious, social and professional identity, etc. Recourse to the term ‘identity’, whether by the group concerned or from distant analysts, is the most immediately evocative and the most effective packaging in its appeal to common sense. It is as if there were a legitimacy immediately attached to identities: ‘oppressed identities’ (oppressed by the state, by the big and powerful, by the West, by globalization or by market liberalism) always fit the bill. Martyrs or liberators, opponents of the order in power and self-proclaimed holders of an alternative identity are all situated in a face-to-face situation that at once ensures them if not sympathy, then at least understanding. The only clear dividing line between perceptions of ‘identity-based movements’ is the recourse to violence: if one recognizes the legitimacy of working for a community-based culture and an identity that is shielded from the great process of global homogenization, then the use of (terrorist) violence must be condemned.