PRIVATE SELVES, PUBLIC IDENTITIES

204 Hypatia
Private Selves, Public Identities: Reconsidering Identity Politics. By SUSAN
J. HEKMAN. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. 2004.


Amy Mullin
What role does or should group membership play in political life? How should
we conceive of political groups organized around some sort of common identity
among their members? Must such groups hide differences amongst their
members? These are questions that Susan Hekman addresses in Private Selves,
Public Identities: Reconsidering Identity Politics. It is a relatively short book (fewer
than 160 pages, including index and bibliography), suitable for upper-level
undergraduates with previous exposure to feminist philosophy and political
theory. The work is organized into four chapters. The first three chapters seek
to dispel what Hekman considers misconceptions about the nature of identity,
while the last chapter introduces Hekman’s own view as to the proper place
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of identity in politics. In all, the book is a valuable contribution to the debate
over the meaning and role of identity in politics.
In the first chapter of Private Selves, Public Identities, Hekman argues that the
fictive postmodern subject (most frequently associated with Judith Butler) is not
the only alternative to the modernist disembodied self. Hekman praises Butler’s
definitive rejection of the modernist subject and deconstruction of the social
production of gender, but argues that Butler’s account of incoherent performative
identities suggests a vision of a subject in psychological distress. Hekman
cites the work of James Glass on women suffering from schizophrenia and
multiple personality disorder as evidence of the need for stable identities (17).
Against Butler (or at least her interpretation of Butler’s earlier work), Hekman
claims that we each have a relatively stable core self, formed in childhood in
response to our most important social relationships. Hekman’s model here is
object relations theory, modified to reflect the ways that gender, race, and class
inflect children’s first relationships. She aims to reinvigorate earlier feminist
interest in object relations theory (for example, the work of Nancy Chodorow,
Christine Di Stefano, Jane Flax, and Nancy Hirschmann). The chapter remains
at a theoretical level, without seeking to give psychological evidence of the role
of childhood relationships in shaping the core self (beyond a brief discussion
of Carol Gilligan’s work) and without giving any extended account of how the
self remains stable throughout changing circumstances.
In the second chapter, Hekman argues that liberal political theory needs
radical modification to properly reflect citizens’ distinct embodied identities.
Many of the arguments in this chapter will be familiar to feminist philosophers
and political theorists (such as the claim that the supposedly disembodied citizen
masks a distinct male propertied identity). The most valuable part of this
chapter is Hekman’s discussion of Bhikher Parekh and Monique Deveraux’s critiques
of liberalism from a multicultural perspective, alongside more frequently
discussed theorists such as Will Kymlicka, Charles Taylor, and Iris Marion
Young. However, because Hekman introduces such a large number of theorists
she can only give brief sketches of the arguments of each. Her discussion of the
reasonable woman standard (and the reasonable woman of color standard) in
legal theory is suggestive, but leaves readers wondering how any legal system
could possibly incorporate the large number of standards required to avoid
assuming uniformity without, as she suggests, inviting chaos (78). Hekman
claims that it is worth taking the “risk of difference,” but without an extended
and more concrete discussion of how Hekman thinks this could happen it is
difficult to imagine how one might effectively incorporate multiplicity into
legal reasoning.
Hekman’s third chapter argues that both feminist theorists (Linda Martín
Alcoff, Judith Butler, Carol Gilligan, Carole Pateman, Elizabeth Spelman,
Iris Marion Young, and others) and liberal political theorists (Will Kymlicka,
206 Hypatia
Susan Moller Okin, John Rawls, and others) generally have failed to distinguish
properly between private identities (formed in childhood and relatively stable)
and public identities (which reflect group membership, either those groups
we willingly identify with, or those groups into which others place us). This
chapter is the most original of the first three, with its careful analysis of both
the distinctions and interplays among private and public identities. However,
I am not entirely convinced by her argument that an identity politics which
recognizes this distinction will avoid problems associated with assumptions
about fixed identity. Hekman argues that identity politics involves “a process
of identification between personal and public identities” (100) and that pressure
to conform remains a factor. It seems that recognizing private identity as
not equivalent to public identity will never be enough to prevent social groups
based on a shared public identity from seeking to minimize differences among
members of the group (at the very least in terms of how that public identity is
understood and presented to others). And even if group members (or the group
itself) recognize that private identities are not equivalent to public identities,
this knowledge cannot prevent nonmembers from assuming that members are
alike at least in their public identity and political commitments (even if they
grant that group members may have various occupations, different personal
experiences with family members, and so forth).
Hekman integrates the findings of chapters 1 through 3 in the last chapter,
where she develops her own account of a new politics of identity. Hekman’s
new conceptualization of identity, however, raises many questions. For instance,
what kinds of personal identities enable or encourage (possibly complex and
shifting) identifications with various public identities? If private identities are
largely stable and reflect relationships experienced in early childhood, then are
they open to change through later identifications with important social or political
groups? If so, how does this happen? Her emphasis on the relative stability
and continuity of the core self, which she insists is fixed in early childhood (87),
seems incompatible with her description of significant ongoing transformations
among group members. Such transformations could be prompted by political
activity (and taking on new kinds of identifications with public identities) or by
taking on new and important relationship forms (becoming a parent or forming
close interpersonal bonds with friends or lovers, which themselves might lead
to joining a new social or political group). Readers will also wonder whether
some kinds of personal identities thwart political or social action and others
encourage them.
In her brief analysis of the formation of personal identity, Hekman emphasizes
the role of mothering; but when she discusses the mothering of conforming
and nonconforming mothers, she suggests that either can encourage social conformity
or nonconformity equally well, making questions about the relationships
between private identities and political action mysterious. For instance, she
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writes that “some mothers neatly conform to the public identity of ‘woman’ that
dominates our gender consciousness and communicate this identity to their
daughters. . . . This can have the effect of producing conforming daughters. Or
it can have the opposite effect. The daughter may assimilate the conforming
identity or rebel against it” (105).
Inspired by Michel Foucault’s conception of the diffusion of power throughout
society, Hekman argues that political action around public identities needs
to be supplemented by attitudinal change, but she does not engage here with
the large body of feminist work that calls for this sort of change (for example,
feminist work on primary and secondary agents of socialization or feminist
media studies) so it is odd to read her claim that “feminists have lost sight of
the thesis advanced by Foucault and Millett. Power in the contemporary world
is everywhere” (131). Later, she acknowledges that “feminist work in philosophy,
psychology, anthropology, and many other disciplines has documented
how identities are constituted by the diverse array of forces that make up civil
society” (138). It is puzzling that Hekman devoted no space to the discussion
of this relevant feminist work.
In summary, Hekman’s book will reinvigorate debate on identity politics.
She offers brief accounts of relevant work by philosophers and political theorists
(chiefly but not exclusively feminist) on the topic and makes a convincing case
for the need to attend to the different notions of identity that often operate in
these debates. Because of its length, the book will serve as a useful introduction
to the topic. However, perhaps also because of its length, Private Selves, Public
Identities will leave many readers with unanswered questions.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.