Words to Ponder #36

22 Jan Words to Ponder #36

These words, written twenty years ago by renowned social constructionist Ken Gergen, are surely worth pondering today.

“In important degree, identity politics is a descendent of Western, individualist ideology. It is not the single individual who commands our interest in this case; rather individual identity is conflated with group identity. Individual and group interests (and rights) are one. In this way, the group replaces the individual as the center of concern, but the discourse of individuality is not thereby interrupted. Rather, the group is treated discursively in much the same way as the individual: imbued with good and evil intent, held blameworthy, deemed worthy of rights and so on. In spite of the shift toward the social, we thus inherit the problems of individualism yet once again— simply one step removed. Rather than a society of isolated and alienated individuals—a potential war of all against all in the individualist sense—we have a battlefield of antagonistic groups.”