What if life is impersonal?

In the book The Identity Trap, political scientist Yascha Mounk argues how some ideas (or his interpretations hereof) are causing new forms of polarization, separatism, control, and even repression.

The identity trap, according to Mounk, refers to those people and institutions that prioritize identity over universalism–especially when specific identity categories like race, gender, and sexual orientation are favored. 

The book is filled with illustrative examples from the US of “progressive separatism” and “strategic essentials”, claiming to be for equality while not treating all people as equals.

Yet, some of Mounk’s claims regarding the cause of the emergence of identity politics require a comment.

Foucault & Deleuze

For example, Mounk writes: “Many postcolonial scholars were especially aghast when Foucault, in his exchange with Deleuze, argued that the oppressed do not need intellectuals to speak on their behalf.”

Mounk refers to the French philosophers Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze, who in 1972 discussed the struggles of women, homosexuals, and prisoners, as well as the relationship between theory, practice, and power.

In their conversation, they try to break away from the idea that the intellectual “spoke the truth to those who had yet to see it, in the name of those who were forbidden to speak the truth,” as Foucault says. Instead of claiming to speak the truth or have privileged access to it as intellectuals, Foucault and Deleuze discuss “the necessity” for individuals “to speak for themselves.” In continuation, Deleuze stresses: “Who speaks and acts? It is always a multiplicity, even within the person who speaks and acts… Representation no longer exists.”

Representation no longer exists, how should this postulate be understood?

First, each human being is never one fixed being or belongs to one identity group but is a multiplicity. Therefore, a focus on identity that is too rigid is a trap because it imprisons thought. In continuation, no one can speak on behalf of a person or a group because each person or group already is a multiplicity; or, if you should speak on behalf, you speak in several voices, precisely what identity-based politics rarely master, for example, due to strategic essentialism.

In his philosophy, Deleuze operates with an ontology of difference and repetition, where identity manifests after encounters. Deleuze would find it imprisoning to want a particular identity–that is, to restrict thinking to essential forms of being, whether referring to races, ethnicities, sexualities, etc. Thus, he, too, would be against the identity trap, although with different arguments.

To become with life

For example, part of the current focus on identity is trying to undermine the old dominant social order, or what Deleuze and Guattari would call the majority of being “white, male, adult, ‘rational,’ etc.; in short, the average European, the subject of enunciation.” Still, Deleuze and Guattari don’t tear down a dominant system by changing one ideal or one dominating identity with another. The problem is not that it is a man who is white, etc., but that a specific identity is favored over another, that some forms of life are worth more than others. Mounk addresses this problem and shows how the US, in several contexts, favors non-whites, i.e., discriminates. (He gives examples of the distribution of COVID-19 medicine, access to some schools, and certain groups having access to startup help). 

The problem, however, is not male versus female or black versus white, according to Deleuze and Guitar, because everyone should be equally treated, just as there ought to be room for all life forms. The problem is that we think and add authority to specific identities. Add authority to particular identities. Therefore, they suggest becoming imperceptible and impersonal–or simply forgetting about all these identity markers that become a prison. The current urge to seek an identity hinders people’s capacity to think for themselves. Hindering people to become with life.

For Deleuze, what is strange and unfamiliar makes a person think. For example, in the 1970s, Deleuze was active in the early French gay rights movement. He was a member of the group FHAR (Front Homosexuel d’action Révolutionnaire). For some, it might appear strange that a husband and father of two would care for other people’s rights, but why? Due to empathy, imagination, and selflessness, connecting with people different from yourself is possible. For example, you can fight for education even if you have no children or health care, even if you are not sick. This is trivial, yet for some, unfortunately, it is not due to selfishness or progressive separatism (nationalism is an example).

Another argument in favor of Deleuze is that his philosophy moves away from a philosophy of being towards one of becoming. Yet, becoming is not about the point from which something originates or the point at which it arrives. With this, Deleuze would agree with Mounk’s critique against “strategic essentialism” and “progressive separatism.”

Identities are fiction

In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and the psychoanalyst Félix Guattari write: “A becoming is always in the middle; one can only get it by the middle.” Becoming, therefore, does not represent an ideal, a norm, or a reference point. On the contrary, becoming produces new ways of living, sensibilities, and relating to things such as race, gender, or sexuality where everything intersects. No race or sexuality is prioritized for another.

To emphasize the strength of the concept of becoming, they write “becoming-imperceptible.”

The writer Chris Kraus quotes Deleuze for the sentence: “Life is not personal,” in her book, I Love Dick. That idea is incredibly liberating, which Kraus’ work illustrates because the individual life isn’t just about itself; there is always room for becoming someone else.

To put it more simply, identities are fiction.

Using Iris Murdoch’s concept, contemporary society needs a little dose of “unselfing” to improve the world. “Unselfing” means I turn my attention outward, away from myself and onto the world. As a result, I will see things as they really are and not through the lens of my selfish concerns. Unfortunately, this is difficult because many people’s vision is colored by their concern and interest, Murdoch calls it the “fat relentless ego” in The Sovereignty of Good.

The best way to avoid the identity traps is to prevent craving for one.