Every individual has an impulse to be respected and recognized, says Francis Fukuyama. Recognition is a deeply rooted human desire; it has been the cause of tyranny, conflicts, and wars, but at the same time, it also acts as a psychological foundation of many virtues, such as courage, justice and the spirit of citizenship.
This struggle for recognition, or what today we call identity politics, has become hugely important in the contemporary political discourse. Identity grows, writes Fukuyama, “out of a distinction between one’s true inner self, and the outer world of social rules and norms that does not adequately recognize that inner self’s worth.” Say I am a woman, or an African-American, or a lesbian, or some other category, a person that I have been disrespected and marginalized by my society in the past and what I am now asking is respect, the recognition that I am as good a person as everybody else.
In his book Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment, Francis Fukuyama goes back to Hegel’s non-materialistic view of history based on the struggle for recognition, a desire so strong that Hegel argued that it is the driving force of history. Fukuyama offers a historical overview, from what Plato called ‘thymos’, the longing for respect and recognition, to Martin Luther’s Reformation, and the social changes that brought to Europe, to the modern concept of identity and identity politics.
The modern concept of identity unites three different phenomena, he writes. The first is ‘thymos’; the second is the distinction between a person’s outer and inner self that emerged in early modern Europe and suggests that the individual (the authentic self) should be prioritized over social structures; and the third is an evolving concept of dignity, in which recognition is due not just to a narrow class of people, but to everyone.
This authentic inner self is the basis of the human dignity and it is recognized by political documents such as the United States Declaration of Independence and more recently by the Charter European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights which declares that the peoples of Europe are resolved to share a peaceful future based on common values in a European Union, “founded on the indivisible, universal values of human dignity, freedom, equality and solidarity; based on the principles of democracy and the rule of law.
What is happening today, argues Francis Fukuyama, is that many people do not feel that their inner self is respected and valued by their societies. Identity politics is, in short, a struggle for the recognition of dignity. Francis Fukuyama examines many groups and movements that feel disregarded, from Arab Spring to the white working-class men in the United States and Europe and from the Black Lives Matter to the women who launched the #MeToo movement. The characteristic of all these movements is the desire for recognition and respect, he argues.
“Each movement represented people who had up to then been invisible and suppressed; each resented that invisibility and wanted public recognition of their inner worth. So was born what we today label as modern identity politics.”
I don’t feel comfortable with identity politics. I never bought into it. To me, we are individuals with multiple identities. I am a woman, feminist, environmentalist, European, a bookworm, a kind of nomad. I understand that identity politics is a natural response to injustice. As such there is nothing wrong with it. Societies need to protect the marginalized and the excluded. It becomes problematic only when identity is interpreted in certain tribal way. The tendency of identity politics to focus on cultural issues and to ever narrower group identities threatens the possibility of communication, inclusiveness and collective action and diverts energy and attention away from broader socioeconomic issues, such as inequality or political corruption.
The remedy, writes Fukuyama, is not to abandon the idea of identity. We all have multiple identities defined by our race, gender, education, affinities, etc. The aim is to create identities that are broader and more integrative that take into account the diversity of the existing liberal societies. He favours identities based on creed, that is shared values and beliefs, rather than identities based on race or heritage. He suggests that the “successful assimilation of foreigners,” could restrain populism and he proposes civic education in schools in order to form informed and open-minded citizens. Could this steer individuals, groups, and nations away from a politics of resentment? Francis Fukuyama hopes that it does.
