Suchergebnisse

Reflects on the nature of the political & its relation to democratic identities. Politics is defined as an encounter between struggles for emancipation & efforts to establish order through policy making. It is suggested that current debates over the political have been stymied by the identification of politics with the self of a community. Politics is understood as inherently anarchic, & thus lacking a particular central subjectivity or identity. The only universal value acknowledged is equality, but this value is understood less as pregiven than as enacted in the process of political struggles. In the act of struggling, individuals are subjectivized to the extent that they claim & demonstrate one identity while refusing others. It is concluded that current debates over the relation between universality & identity are misguided & should be replaced by discussions of the relation between the tribal & the idiomatic. It is in this conceptual universe & understanding of politics that issues such as ethnic nationalism, which now press on the world, might be most profitably addressed. D. M. Smith

"Party Identification and Its Implications" published on by Oxford University Press.