Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment
Francis Fukuyama
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment
Francis Fukuyama
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Yes, the world has gotten better for hundreds of millions. But Fukuyama reminds us that across much of the West, people have suffered dislocation and elites have captured the fruits.
The demand for recognition, Fukuyama says, is the 'master concept' that explains all the contemporary dissatisfactions with the global liberal order.
Identity is Fukuyama’s attempt to grant noneconomic politics a history and a future. Yet, in doing so, he falls prey to the same error that he charges identity politics with committing. His origin tale, based in thymos, for what he views as noneconomic politics leads him to continually misconstrue the element of economics, which is as crucial to thymotic 'struggles for recognition' as thymos itself is crucial to human nature.
Fukuyama’s analysis is flawed in several ways. Three decades ago, he argued that the human desire for respect and recognition was the driving force behind the universal embrace of liberal democracy. Today, he depicts the human desire for respect and recognition as the driving force behind the repudiation of liberal democracy. The reader’s hope for some account, or even mention, of this extraordinary volte face goes unfulfilled. Nor does Fukuyama squarely address the impossibility of explaining recent ups and downs in the prestige of liberal democracy by invoking an eternal longing of the human soul. What’s more, he fails to consider the possibility that after 1989 the obligation for ex-Communist countries to imitate the West, which was how his End-of-History thesis was put into practice, might itself have been experienced in countries like Hungary and Poland as a source of humiliation and subordination destined to excite antiliberal resentment and an aggressive reassertion of nationalism. Similarly, to blame the rise of white nationalism in America chiefly on the left’s profligate attentiveness to marginalized groups is to deemphasize the multiplicity of factors involved.
Mr. Fukuyama’s attempt to explain the theoretical basis of dignity is a bit of a mess.
While there is much that is commendable in Fukuyama’s analysis, not every particular is persuasive.
Fukuyama’s new pessimism is far deeper than his discarded optimism. The left-right dichotomy that formerly polarized liberal democracy dealt with the question of the proper size of government; compromise, at least in theory, was always possible. Today, he argues, we are dealing with problems of recognition and resentment, and they are more difficult to resolve. As Fukuyama pithily puts it: either you recognize me, or you don’t.' On this key point, I believe, Fukuyama is incorrect.
There is a certain banality in this analysis, which recurs throughout the book.
Leading political theorist Fukuyama...suggests that liberal democracy is in global crisis because of knotty, interrelated problems having to do with thymos, the human desire for dignity and respect.
He faults the left for failing to build solidarity around large collectivities (the working class, for example), instead focusing on 'every smaller' marginalized group. To counter this fragmentation, Fukuyama advises that 'successful assimilation of foreigners' might curb vociferous populism, required national service could encourage 'virtue and public spiritedness,' and basic civics must become a strong part of public education to foster informed, open-minded citizens. A cogent analysis of dire threats to democracy..
Political scientist Fukuyama...makes an ambitious and provocative critique of identity politics.