The Tyranny of Identity

The Tyranny of Identity
Author: Patrick Pietroni
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2023-09-22
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1000962172

The Tyranny of Identity is both a personal and highly interdisciplinary examination of the wide range of factors and disciplines at play in the formation of identity. It takes a novel and unique approach to this through use of metaphor, images, poetry and a wide range of academic sources to provide a holistic approach to the study of identity. This book uses the concept of Babushka dolls to show that we all have a series of activities during our lives that reside in our mind, body, spirit – each influencing the multiple identities we knowingly or unknowingly possess. This collage of factors and forces allows us to create an identity. The layers of identity unfold as the chapters progress and in doing so the book addresses the manifold ways in which identity intersects with nationhood, politics, education, the culture wars, family, religion, gender and contemporary institutions. The Tyranny of Identity is a wide-ranging, cross-cultural book that integrates and explores how the issue of identity has become a central issue in every academic discipline. This book is essential reading to all students studying identity and all readers seeking a deeper understanding of this complex topic.

The Tyranny of Virtue

The Tyranny of Virtue
Author: Robert Boyers
Publisher: Scribner
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2019-09-24
Genre: Education
ISBN: 198212718X

From public intellectual and professor Robert Boyers, “a powerfully persuasive, insightful, and provocative prose that mixes erudition and first-hand reportage” (Joyce Carol Oates) addressing recent developments in American culture and arguing for the tolerance of difference that is at the heart of the liberal tradition. Written from the perspective of a liberal intellectual who has spent a lifetime as a writer, editor, and college professor, The Tyranny of Virtue is a “courageous, unsparing, and nuanced to a rare degree” (Mary Gaitskill) insider’s look at shifts in American culture—most especially in the American academy—that so many people find alarming. Part memoir and part polemic, Boyers’s collection of essays laments the erosion of standard liberal values, and covers such subjects as tolerance, identity, privilege, appropriation, diversity, and ableism that have turned academic life into a minefield. Why, Robert Boyers asks, are a great many liberals, people who should know better, invested in the drawing up of enemies lists and driven by the conviction that on critical issues no dispute may be tolerated? In stories, anecdotes, and character profiles, a public intellectual and longtime professor takes on those in his own progressive cohort who labor in the grip of a poisonous and illiberal fundamentalism. The end result is a finely tuned work of cultural intervention from the front lines.

Identity

Identity
Author: Francis Fukuyama
Publisher:
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2019-09-05
Genre: Dignity
ISBN: 9781781259818

Currently in Bill Gates's bookbag and FT Books of 2018Increasingly, the demands of identity direct the world's politics. Nation, religion, sect, race, ethnicity, gender: these categories have overtaken broader, inclusive ideas of who we are. We have built walls rather than bridges. The result: increasing in anti-immigrant sentiment, rioting on college campuses, and the return of open white supremacy to our politics. In 2014, Francis Fukuyama wrote that American and global institutions were in a state of decay, as the state was captured by powerful interest groups. Two years later, his predictions were borne out by the rise to power of a series of political outsiders whose economic nationalism and authoritarian tendencies threatens to destabilise the entire international order. These populist nationalists seek direct charismatic connection to 'the people', who are usually defined in narrow identity terms that offer an irresistible call to an in-group and exclude large parts of the population as a whole.Identity is an urgent and necessary book: a sharp warning that unless we forge a universal understanding of human dignity, we will doom ourselves to continual conflict.

Identity

Identity
Author: Francis Fukuyama
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 203
Release: 2018-09-11
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0374717486

The New York Times bestselling author of The Origins of Political Order offers a provocative examination of modern identity politics: its origins, its effects, and what it means for domestic and international affairs of state In 2014, Francis Fukuyama wrote that American institutions were in decay, as the state was progressively captured by powerful interest groups. Two years later, his predictions were borne out by the rise to power of a series of political outsiders whose economic nationalism and authoritarian tendencies threatened to destabilize the entire international order. These populist nationalists seek direct charismatic connection to “the people,” who are usually defined in narrow identity terms that offer an irresistible call to an in-group and exclude large parts of the population as a whole. Demand for recognition of one’s identity is a master concept that unifies much of what is going on in world politics today. The universal recognition on which liberal democracy is based has been increasingly challenged by narrower forms of recognition based on nation, religion, sect, race, ethnicity, or gender, which have resulted in anti-immigrant populism, the upsurge of politicized Islam, the fractious “identity liberalism” of college campuses, and the emergence of white nationalism. Populist nationalism, said to be rooted in economic motivation, actually springs from the demand for recognition and therefore cannot simply be satisfied by economic means. The demand for identity cannot be transcended; we must begin to shape identity in a way that supports rather than undermines democracy. Identity is an urgent and necessary book—a sharp warning that unless we forge a universal understanding of human dignity, we will doom ourselves to continuing conflict.

Identity in Democracy

Identity in Democracy
Author: Amy Gutmann
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 259
Release: 2009-01-10
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1400825520

Written by one of America's leading political thinkers, this is a book about the good, the bad, and the ugly of identity politics.Amy Gutmann rises above the raging polemics that often characterize discussions of identity groups and offers a fair-minded assessment of the role they play in democracies. She addresses fundamental questions of timeless urgency while keeping in focus their relevance to contemporary debates: Do some identity groups undermine the greater democratic good and thus their own legitimacy in a democratic society? Even if so, how is a democracy to fairly distinguish between groups such as the KKK on the one hand and the NAACP on the other? Should democracies exempt members of some minorities from certain legitimate or widely accepted rules, such as Canada's allowing Sikh members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to wear turbans instead of Stetsons? Do voluntary groups like the Boy Scouts have a right to discriminate on grounds of sexual preference, gender, or race? Identity-group politics, Gutmann shows, is not aberrant but inescapable in democracies because identity groups represent who people are, not only what they want--and who people are shapes what they demand from democratic politics. Rather than trying to abolish identity politics, Gutmann calls upon us to distinguish between those demands of identity groups that aid and those that impede justice. Her book does justice to identity groups, while recognizing that they cannot be counted upon to do likewise to others. Clear, engaging, and forcefully argued, Amy Gutmann's Identity in Democracy provides the fractious world of multicultural and identity-group scholarship with a unifying work that will sustain it for years to come.

Organizing Identity

Organizing Identity
Author: Paul du Gay
Publisher: SAGE
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2007-02-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1848605099

"This book overturns the conventional thinking about organization and identity and puts in its place a wholly new theoretical synthesis. It is not just an extraordinarily incisive commentary on modern life but it is also a key to thinking about identity in new ways which will prove an indispensable guide as we move beyond social constructionism. Remarkable." - Nigel Thrift, Vice-Chancellor, The University of Warwick "I have to say that as usual I find very refreshing Paul du Gay′s courageous and unconventional approach, a clarity of vision that I find very appealing." - Professor Marilyn Strathern, University Of Cambridge Like many other popular academic terms, ‘identity’ has been asked to do so much work that it has often ended up doing none at all and, as a consequence, there has been a recent turn away from identity work. In this book, Paul du Gay moves identity theory in a new direction, offering a distinctive approach to studying how persons - human and non human - are put together or assembled: how their ‘identities’ are formed. He does through an engagement with a range of work in the social sciences, humanities and in organization studies which privileges the business of description over metaphysical speculation and epochalist assertion. At the heart of the book is an approach to the material-cultural making up of ‘persons’ that involves a shift away from general social and cultural accounts concerning the formation of ‘subjectivity’ and ‘identity’ towards an understanding of the specific forms of personhood that individuals acquire through their immersion in and subjection to particular normative and technical regimes of conduct. The book is written for postgraduate students and researchers interested in debates about identity, subjectivity and personhood in a range of disciplines – especially those in sociology, social anthropology, geography, and organization and management studies.

The Tyranny of Clichés

The Tyranny of Clichés
Author: Jonah Goldberg
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2013-04-30
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1595231021

“An indispensable and enduring field guide to the arguments the left makes—and the ones it tries to avoid.” —The Claremont Review of Books According to Jonah Goldberg, if the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist, the greatest trick liberals ever pulled was convincing themselves they’re not ideological. Today, “objective” journalists, academics, and “moderate” politicians peddle some of the most radical arguments by hiding them in homespun apho­risms. Barack Obama casts himself as a disciple of reason: He’s a pragmatist, opposed to the ideology and drama of the Right, solely concerned with “what works.” And today’s liberals follow his lead, spouting countless clichés such as: • One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter: Sure, if the other man is an idiot. Was Martin Luther King Jr. a terrorist? Was Bin Laden a freedom fighter? • Violence never solves anything: Really? It solved our problems with King George III and ended slavery. • We need complete separation of church and state: In other words, all expressions of faith should be barred from politics . . . except when they support liberal programs. With humor and passion, Goldberg dismantles these and many other Trojan horses that liberals use to cheat in the war of ideas. He shows that the Pro­gressive tradition of denying an ideological agenda while pursuing it vigorously under the false flag of reasonableness is alive and well. And he reveals how this dangerous game may lead us further down the path of self-destruction.

In the Name of Identity

In the Name of Identity
Author: Amin Maalouf
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing Inc.
Total Pages: 126
Release: 2012-03
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1611453240

An award-winning author explores why so many people commit crimes in the name of identity. "Makes for compelling reading in America today."--"The New York Times."

American Awakening

American Awakening
Author: Joshua Mitchell
Publisher: Encounter Books
Total Pages: 213
Release: 2020-11-17
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1641771313

America has always been committed to the idea that citizens can work together to build a common world. Today, three afflictions keep us from pursuing that noble ideal. The first and most obvious affliction is identity politics, which seeks to transform America by turning politics into a religious venue of sacrificial offering. For now, the sacrificial scapegoat is the white, heterosexual, man. After he is humiliated and purged, who will be the object of cathartic rage? White women? Black men? Identity politics is the anti-egalitarian spiritual eugenics of our age. It demands that pure and innocent groups ascend, and the stained transgressor groups be purged. The second affliction is that citizens oscillate back and forth, in bipolar fashion, at one moment feeling invincible on their social media platforms and, the next, feeling impotent to face the everyday problems of life without the guidance of experts and global managers. Third, Americans are afflicted by a disease that cannot quite be named, characterized by an addictive hope that they can find cheap shortcuts that bypass the difficult labors of everyday life. Instead of real friendship, we seek social media “friends.” Instead of meals at home, we order “fast food.” Instead of real shopping, we “shop” online. Instead of counting on our families and neighbors to address our problems, we look to the state to take care of us. In its many forms, this disease promises release from our labors, yet impoverishes us all. American Awakening chronicles all of these problems, yet gives us hope for the future.

Uncivil Agreement

Uncivil Agreement
Author: Lilliana Mason
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2018-04-16
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 022652468X

The psychology behind political partisanship: “The kind of research that will change not just how you think about the world but how you think about yourself.” —Ezra Klein, Vox Political polarization in America has moved beyond disagreements about matters of policy. For the first time in decades, research has shown that members of both parties hold strongly unfavorable views of their opponents. This is polarization rooted in social identity, and it is growing. The campaign and election of Donald Trump laid bare this fact of the American electorate, its successful rhetoric of “us versus them” tapping into a powerful current of anger and resentment. With Uncivil Agreement, Lilliana Mason looks at the growing social gulf across racial, religious, and cultural lines, which have recently come to divide neatly between the two major political parties. She argues that group identifications have changed the way we think and feel about ourselves and our opponents. Even when Democrats and Republicans can agree on policy outcomes, they tend to view one other with distrust and to work for party victory over all else. Although the polarizing effects of social divisions have simplified our electoral choices and increased political engagement, they have not been a force that is, on balance, helpful for American democracy. Bringing together theory from political science and social psychology, Uncivil Agreement clearly describes this increasingly “social” type of polarization, and adds much to our understanding of contemporary politics.