Amartya Sen: Identity Not Fated

Nobel Prize economist Amartya Sen has the beginnings of a good critique of identity politics in general and Huntington’s clash of civilizations thesis in particular.

However, he only goes halfway on the 1st, which dilutes his criticism of the 2nd.

He repeats the common criticism of identity politics that none of us can be reduced to a single identity: ethnic, religious, etc. Ok, fine. But he fails to make the necessary next step in acknowledging that the concept of identity itself is weak, and overlooks the importance of action as a constituent element of humanity. We are not merely what we are, but also what we do, as Aristotle once observed. Sen begins to move in this direction in reference to ninth-century Muslim mathematician Al-Khwarizmi. However, he persists in moving only within the categories of identity by contrasting Al-Khwarizmi’s identity as a Muslim with that of a mathematician.

The other side of this weakness is that he overlooks what I think is what identity politics aspires to: a fundamental moment of judgment or expression of what an entire life stands for. Consider for example, Dante’s Divine Comedy, where the souls in hell, purgatory, and heaven are characterized by their particular virtue/sin in life. While it might be possible to discover some particular judgment of a life in the afterlife, this is not our act in this our mortal coil. Identity politics seems to want that judgment without either (1) the adhering to the limits our mortality places in discovering that judgment and (2) putting oneself under that judgment. That’s why identity politics is so utopian and self-righteous.

At least Huntington, by identifying civilizations with their founding religions, implicitly seems to understand that religions aspire to judgment. However, he’s hardly the thinker to derive any further insight from on the nature of judgment. In the meantime, we’re better off reading this and this.