I actually forgot why I thought I should read The Once and Future Liberal. But, when I was sorting mail after we got back from vacation, the volume seemed slim enough that I could probably read it on a Sunday afternoon before the 4 o’clock NFL games even kicked off.
So I did.
Mark Lilla writes as “a frustrated American liberal.” His frustration “has its source in an ideology that for decades has prevented liberals from developing an ambitious vision of America and its future that would inspire citizens of every walk of life and in every region of the country” (6-7). As he sees it, the American right has offered such a vision, while the left has abdicated. The Once and Future Liberal is the short story of that abdication.
The ideology he refers to is often called “identity politics.” Lilla is not a fan to put it mildly, and he writes in order to convince other liberals that the “spell” of identity politics in the Democratic party needs to be broken if they want to actually move forward. What I realized in reading is that this spell extends beyond politics itself and actually affects many of the generation I’m a part of, and the one I teach and mentor.
The opening chapter of the trio that form the book gives a short history of the “Reagan Dispensation.” It is where Lilla thinks liberals lost their hold on the American imagination. Republicans might read do well to read the book for that chapter and remember what was done right in terms of vision casting. In the middle chapter, Lilla starts unpacking how he sees identity politics poisoning the well. His emphasis is on the universities, and having a rather large one nearby, I was curious to see his diagnosis of the problem.
After tracing some historical trends on the university scene, Lilla determines that “Young on people on the left—in contrast with those on the right—are less likely today to connect their engagements to a set of political ideas.” Instead, Lilla notes, “they are much more likely to say that they are engaged in politics as an X, concerned others Xs and those issues touch on X-ness.” (87)
He then explains how this plays out:
The more obsessed with personal identity campus liberals become, the less willing they become to engage in reasoned political debate. Over the past decade a new, and very revealing, locution has drifted from our universities into the media mainstream: Speaking as an X… This is not an anodyne phrase. It tells the listener that I am speaking from a privileged position on this matters. (One never says, Speaking as a gay Asian, I feel incompetent to judge this matter). It sets up a wall against questions, which by definition come from a non-X perspective. And it turns the encounter into a power relation: the winner of the argument will be whoever has invoked the morally superior identity and expressed the most outrage at being questioned (88).
This is a very helpful analysis that picks up on a real and tragic shift in the way students approach reality. Hopefully, you can see why this is problematic. He goes on to explain how this affects the classroom (or any discussion really):
So classroom conversations that once might have begun, I think A, and here is my argument, now take the form, Speaking as an X, I am offended that you claim B. This makes perfect sense if you believe that identity determines everything. It means that there is no impartial space for dialogue. White men have on “epistemology,” black women have another…
What replaces argument, then, is taboo. At times our more privilege campuses can seem stuck in the world of archaic religion. Only those with an approved identity status are, like shamans, allowed to speak on certain matters. Particular groups—today the transgendered—are given temporary totemic significance. Scapegoats—today conservative political speakers—are duly designated and run off campus in a purging ritual. Propositions become pure or impure, not true or false. And not only propositions but simple words. Left identitarians who think of themselves as radical creatures, contesting this and transgressing that, have become like buttoned-up Protestant schoolmarms when it comes to the English language, parsing every conversation for immodest locutions and rapping the knuckles of those who inadvertently use them (88-89).
Now, that’s some pretty intense liberal on liberal shade, and I was loving it. It helped to clarify some trends I noticed, and maybe more importantly, gave me a way of describing how fundamentalism looks outside of conservative Christianity. In essence, the left’s version of fundamentalism is identity politics. And, like fundamentalism on the right, is detrimental to the movement’s ability to capture the imagination of the next generation. It also inhibits true intellectual discourse and learning.
You might also see how this ties into a genetic fallacy issue I discussed. Just because my identity is a certain thing, it doesn’t necessarily make me an infallible authority on the subject. Suppose I was a gay Asian (to use Lilla’s example). I may be able to speak to aspects of being gay or being Asian (and being both) that a straight American from the South (actual me) might not understand at the interpersonal and experiential level.
However, if one begins making knowledge claims that are more propositional, and moves beyond speaking about personal experience, the identity no longer certifies truthfulness. Presumably, gay Asians are not intrinsically better or worse at logic than straight Americans. Our ability to dialogue coherently rests on our ability to form sound arguments. And while our identity may play into our aptitude, it doesn’t particularly determine it.
But, it gets worse for those in the spell of identity politics. Just because one might be a gay Asian, it doesn’t mean that one can speak for the whole gay community, or all Asians for that matter. One cannot even be considered the spokesperson for all gay Asians. Once one speaks as an X, one can only speak for themselves. This is because as identity politics would tell us, there are no privileged metanarratives. So, my personal perspective cannot actually speak for everyone, even if they share an identity with me. Unless they are identical to me, we will differ slightly on important existential matters.
At the end of the day, a person could be appointed a spokesperson for a particular identity. But, that takes something like a political process, and if everyone is looking inside themselves to decide what truly matters, there is hardly an ability to unify with others. This is what Lilla sees as undermining the Left’s approach to politics, and we do well to take notice.