“What is Proper to a Culture”

Abstract

This article considers sociocultural identity and identification in the work of Jacques Derrida. Though Derrida’s philosophy is often presented as a source of inspiration for identity politics, Derrida’s precise position on identity is far from evident. This discussion will unpack his account of identity through a dialogue with the work of Amartya Sen, a Nobel laureate in economics and moral philosopher, known for his capabilities approach. In spite of their philosophical differences, I propose that Sen and Derrida share strikingly similar views about identity. Descriptively, they both understand sociocultural identity as inherently hybrid, anti-essentialist and plural. Sen’s argument for this is based on empirical and historical examples, while Derrida’s focuses on the relationship between cultural identity and the other. Their shared understanding of identity is reflected in a similar normative argument: we should consciously select our identities, so as to protect the plural nature of identities. In the case of Sen, this is accomplished through reason. Derrida takes a broader understanding of this, based on his concept of inheritance. I propose that inheritance needs to be interpreted as involving active and critical deliberation on identity and that this is an ethical dimension of Derrida’s work. I conclude by pointing to the potential for future dialogue between Sen and Derrida, the need to reflect further on the normative aspects of inheritance and the potential for their work to inform identity politics.

Keywords:

• Jacques Derrida
• Amartya Sen
• identity
• identity politics
• plurality
• normativity

disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Marian Hobson for originally directing me towards Amartya Sen and to Andrew Hines for stimulating exchanges. This work was supported by “Differential Ontology and the Politics of Reason,” funded by the Government of the Region of Madrid, as part of line 3 of the multi-year agreement with the Universidad Complutense de Madrid: V PRICIT Excellence Program for University Professors (Fifth Regional Plan for Scientific Investigation and Technological Innovation); and “The Politics of Reason” (PID2020 -117386GA -I00), financed by the Ministry of Science and Innovation, Government of Spain. Additional work was financed through Una Europa and the DIGITALIZED! Project funded by the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange (SF21D3). I am grateful to King's College London for their support.

Notes

1 For an account which brings Derrida’s view of personal identity in contact with another major thinker of identity in the Anglo-American tradition, Derek Parfit, see Barton.

2 We might well ask, as Margaret Heller does, if privileging Europe in this way might well carry with it some of the old Eurocentrism that Derrida is keen to do away with, whether “the substance of his argument rather repeats older themes of European exceptionalism” (105).

3 This is a point which could be expanded further by consideration of their use of biography in their writings. Both thinkers explicitly thematize and theorize their own identity as plural and hybrid. On the intellectual value of Derrida’s “self-conscious performance” of his biography, see Hiddleston (302).

4 Importantly, this connection to inheritance is closely connected to Europe. As Isin points out, “For Derrida, being European means taking responsibility for the heritage of thought that reflects upon what Europe is” (112), or similarly as Benjamin and Chang emphasize “Derrida was convinced that, in the age of telematic spectrality, the unaccomplished inheritance of Europe calls for a responsibility before a world that Europe cannot ‘see’ or apprehend” (168).

5 For recent efforts to take a similar approach with other Francophone philosophers, see Rae on Laclau and Ingala on Balibar.