[Interviewer]: Looking back, I get the sense that –correct me if this is a wrong analysis- there’s been great progress on issues of recognition in the U.S., marriage equality and so on, and even on issues of visibility, with things like having a black president. Has there been too much of that and too little emphasis on redistribution? We live at very unequal times, and that doesn’t seem to be going any better.
[Nancy Fraser]: It’s not a question of too much-too little, but that there’s not been a balance. There’s been an imbalance and a one-sidedness. For example, the gay movement, the LGBT movement, focus on marriage equality and on access for military service. Now, these would not be my first choices for places to wage the fight on. However, both of them, interestingly, do have a distributive element. The military is one of the few routes to a paid college education, for instance, so there are economic benefits to it. And to have the right to marry carries economic and social entitlements as well as symbolic ones of recognition.
[Interviewer]: What would have been alternative routes that you would have liked better?
[Nancy Fraser]: Well, I would have preferred a struggle to make basic social entitlements simply the social rights of individuals, independent of their marital status, I would have preferred a society that deemphasizes who is married and who isn’t. Instead of saying, we want to get married too! Why not say, you get your health benefits, tax and you get all kinds of other benefits just by being a person, a citizen, a resident, living in the country.--Nancy Fraser Interviewed by Álvaro Guzmán Bastida. [HT Ed Kazarian on Facebook.]
Nancy Fraser, Henry A. and Louise Loeb Professor of Political and Social Science and professor of philosophy at The New School, is the favorite feminist of those that dislike so-called identity politics (say, because, on the Left, they wish to see more focus on redistribution, or eliminating social hierarchy, or, on the Right, because they simply dislike identity politics). Fraser's position (and those that like her on the Left) assumes that favoring identity politics, or the politics of recognition, as a means toward emancipation displaces a focus on redistribution. In the interview from which I quote, Fraser emphasizes that "the rise of the politics of recognition coincides with the rise of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is in effect displacing the social-democratic imaginary and in its attack on egalitarian distributive justice." While correlation is not causation (more on this below), she implies that the politics of recognition when focused on identity (especially in upper-middle class feminism) reinforces neoliberalism. In fact, Fraser treats Hilary Clinton as an exemplar of a feminism that is in cahoots with neoliberalism (presumably the reason why the interview got shared widely by others critical of HRC).
Yet, Fraser's position does not withstand scrutiny. First, there is no logical reason why identity politics (in the pejorative sense) has to be accompanied by regressive distributionist policies. After all, even Fraser has to admit that a "focus on marriage equality and on [gay] access for military service" has a welcome "distributive element." This is to be expected: few social movements focused on (social identity) recognition expect that recognition will result in a reduced economic status. Rather, it's nearly always imagined to prepare the way to economics gains, too.
Now Fraser might argue that even if there is no logical trade-off between identity politics and redistribution, there is a political trade-off; political science teaches that the salience of issues can displace issues that are not linked to it in two ways: (i) time and attention are scarce resources, so a focus on one issue or set of themes will displace other issues and themes; (ii) political coalitions may be organized around some salient issues that function as wedges/glues--issues in different dimensions may then be systematically ignored. One could grant this point about political salience, and still not be moved by Fraser's rejection of identity politics (even if one also wishes for redistributionist policies).
For, second, Fraser ignores two alternative possible interpretations of her claim that "the rise of the politics of recognition coincides with the rise of neoliberalism." (I) this may just be a matter of perception. Because she regrets the failure of a more redistributionist agenda, she may be noticing the success of the politics of recognition. For, identity politics focused on recognition of a marginalized group is not a modern phenomenon: it's rooted in the post-Herderian nineteenth century (and can be discerned in the varieties of nationalism within the cosmopolitan/Liberal Empires, in regionalism, in Catholic and Jewish emancipation, the civil rights movements, indigenous rights, etc.).* (II) even if Fraser is right to think that there has been a rise in the politics of recognition with the rise of neoliberalism, its very rise (of identity politics) may have been a response to that very neoliberalism as, say, a second-best option due to the failures of the politics of redistribution. For, under the centrifugal and disruptive forces of neoliberalism, appealing to the state's ability to confer formal and informal recognition on a group is a way to secure some of the benefits that flow from such recognition which would be unavailable otherwise. If (II) is right then it would be foolish to forego identity politics as long as the coalitions or powers that support neoliberalism are in place.
Only if Fraser could show that identity politics actually reinforces and enhances neoliberalism would her criticism of identity politics be convincing (to a friend of redistributionist policies). It's here that Fraser's criticism of Hilary Clinton matters (echoing recent criticism by fans of Bernie Sanders). For, if the kind of feminism that HRC espouses were an instance of the bad sort of identity-politics then, indeed, she would have some evidence for the claim that identity-politics props up neoliberalism (granting that the Clintons are knee-deep in neoliberalism). But Hilary Clinton was a public critic of gay-marriage as late as 2008 (and when Bill Clinton repudiated Sister Souljah, he was, in effect, repudiating a form of identity politics). So, one can be a genuine critic of Clinton's embrace of neoliberalism, while still supporting identity politics. This is even true for those -- like me --, who would prefer an ideal world without identity politics. No friend of justice should be in the business of telling historically persecuted minorities that they cannot demand recognition.
Finally, there is something awkward about Fraser's, "Instead of saying, we want to get married too! Why not say, you get your health benefits, tax and you get all kinds of other benefits just by being a person, a citizen, a resident, living in the country." It's easy to tell others (I have no idea of Fraser's sexual orientation, and I am not interested) that they should not ask for a certain form of recognition just because you think it does not produce the optimal outcome for other important projects.** In addition, Fraser is being subtly inconsistent because the focus on the "rights of individuals" at the exclusion of group rights just is neoliberal.
Let's stipulate it's true that the focus on gay marriage has helped reinforce the institution of marriage, and that this institution is problematic.+ Let's also stipulate that not all gays and lesbians will benefit from access to marriage (or the military). Yet, the focus on gay marriage has helped emancipate gays and lesbians in lots of ways and made visible that they have been subject to hatred and discrimination to a wider public. Here the politics of identity have helped educate publics of numerous societies to see the errors of their previous ways (recall) along many dimensions and also hold out the promise to produce real economic gains for gays and lesbians. That should be celebrated, not second-guessed.
*It's often said that identity politics is distinctly modern because marginalized groups ask for recognition of their status on precisely those grounds on which they are (formerly) discriminated against within Liberal societies. But, when Catholics, for example, wished to run their own schools and trade unions in late 19th century Calvinist Netherlands, they were already practicing identity politics.
**In 2002, Fraser, writing in The New Left Review, got it right: "Consider again the case of marriage laws that deny participatory parity to gays and lesbians. As we saw, the root of the injustice is the institutionalization in law of a heterosexist pattern of cultural value that constitutes heterosexuals as normal and homosexuals as perverse. Redressing the injustice requires de-institutionalizing that value pattern and replacing it with an alternative that promotes parity. This, however, might be done in various ways: one way would be to grant the same recognition to gay and lesbian unions as heterosexual unions currently enjoy, by legalizing same-sex marriage; another would be to de-institutionalize heterosexual marriage, decoupling entitlements such as health insurance from marital status and assigning them on some other basis, such as citizenship. Although there may be good reasons for preferring one of these approaches to the other, in principle both of them would promote sexual parity and redress this instance of misrecognition. Consider again the case of marriage laws that deny participatory parity to gays and lesbians. As we saw, the root of the injustice is the institutionalization in law of a heterosexist pattern of cultural value that constitutes heterosexuals as normal and homosexuals as perverse. Redressing the injustice requires de-institutionalizing that value pattern and replacing it with an alternative that promotes parity. This, however, might be done in various ways: one way would be to grant the same recognition to gay and lesbian unions as heterosexual unions currently enjoy, by legalizing same-sex marriage; another would be to de-institutionalize heterosexual marriage, decoupling entitlements such as health insurance from marital status and assigning them on some other basis, such as citizenship. Although there may be good reasons for preferring one of these approaches to the other, in principle both of them would promote sexual parity and redress this instance of misrecognition."
+I expressed misgivings about some of the claims about marriage in Judge Kennedy's opinion in Obergefell vs Hodges, but not his verdict.
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