15 June 2006
Southlands College, Roehampton University, London
CRONEM Conference on Multicultural Britain:
From Anti-Racism to Identity Politics to …?
Multiculturalism without Essentialism:
Stuart Hall, Homi Bhabha and Amartya Sen
Toru Yamamori
[University of Cambridge]

Purpose
To demonstrate the unique combination of
theoretical standpoints within Sen’s
theory of multiculturalism
Ethical level : Liberalism
Ontological level : Non-essentialism

Outline

1. Introduction

2. Sen on Identity
ethics and ontology

3. Liberalism on Identity
ethics

4. Cultural / Post-Colonial Theories on Identity
ontology

5.Concluding Remarks
2. Sen on Identity

1970s and 1980s : Introduced the ‘epistemic’
use of identity in the field of economics

1990s - present : Critical of the ‘ethical’ use of
identity in political philosophy and the real
world
(‘beyond identity’)
Clarifying the ‘ontology’ of identity
(‘plurality and choice of identity’)
 plural
identity
being an Indian and being an
economist
being an Indian and being a
Caribbean
versus communitarians (C.Taylor and
M.Sandel) and S. Huntington
 identity
choice
constraints on choice
internal and external identity
there remains substantial choice at the level of
internal identity
Versus communitarians (C.Taylor and
M.Sandel)

beyond identity
an ‘epistemic’ use of identity: “trying to know
what others feel and what they see by placing
oneself in the position of others” (‘impartial
spectators’)
an ‘ethical’ use of identity: “counting them as if
they were the same as oneself” (‘identitybased reasoning/morality’)

Justice beyond national identity
plurality, choice and transcendence
3. Liberalism on identity
Kymlicka justifies privileging national identity on
three grounds:
(1) The first reason is normative:
“The freedom which liberals demand for individuals
is not primarily the freedom to go beyond one’s
language and history, but rather the freedom to move
around within one’s societal culture, to distance
oneself from particular cultural roles, to choose which
features of the culture are most worth developing,
and which are without value.” (p.91-92)
(2) The second reason comes from the
intellectual history of liberalism.
Kymlicka argues that almost all of
liberalist thought from J.S. Mill to J.
Rawls presupposes, implicitly or
explicitly, a nation as a unit where
individual freedom is considered and
guaranteed (ch. 4).
(3) The third reason is an empirical fact which
Kymlicka alleges.
“[T]he liberal ideal is a society of free and
equal individuals. But what is the relevant
‘society’? For most people it seems to be
their nation. The sort of freedom and equality
they most value, and can make most use of,
is freedom and equality within their own
societal culture. And they are willing to forgo
a wider freedom and equality to ensure the
continued existence of their nation.” (p.93)
Figure 1: ethics and ontology on
identity in liberalism and communitarianism
4. Cultural / post-colonial theories on identity

essentialism:
“the assumption that groups, categories or
classes of objects have one or several
defining features exclusive to all members
of that category” (Ashcroft, Griffiths and
Tiffin (eds.) 2000, p.77)

Edward Said’s Orientalism
4.1. Three claims of non- (or anti-) essentialism

non-essentialism of nation and ethnicity

non-essentialism of identity
(social constructionism 1)

non-essentialism of any notion
(social constructionism 2)

non-essentialism of identity
(S. Hall and H. Bhabha)
“The
subject assumes different identities at
different times, identities which are not unified
around a coherent ‘self’. Within us are
contradictory identities, pulling in different
directions so that our identifications are
continuously being shifted about. ……The fully
unified, completed, secure and coherent identity is
a fantasy. ……[W]e are confronted by a
bewildering, fleeting multiplicity of possible
identities, any one of which we could identify with
– at least temporarily.” (Hall 1992, p.277)

(1) non-essentialism of
nation and ethnicity

(2) non-essentialism
of identity
(including (1))

(3) non-essentialism
of any notion
(including (1) &(2))
4.2. Commonalities and differences between Sen and
Hall / Bhabha

plurality
historical or ahistorical?

choice
collective and individual
repetitive process
“Identity is not as transparent or
unproblematic as we think. Perhaps
instead of thinking of identity as an
already accomplished fact, which the
new cultural practices then represent, we
should think, instead, of identity as a
‘production’, which is never complete,
always in process, and always
constituted
within,
not
outside,
representation.” (Hall, 1990, p.51)
“this is the moment when the term ‘black’ was
coined as a way of referencing the common
experience of racism and marginalization in
Britain and came to provide the organizing
category of a new politics of resistance, among
groups and communities with, in fact, very
different histories, traditions and ethnic identities.
In this moment, politically speaking, ‘the black
experience’, as a singular and unifying
framework based on the building up of identity
across ethnic and cultural difference between the
different communities, became ‘hegemonic’ over
other ethnic / racial identities – though the latter
did not, of course, disappear.” (Hall 1987b,
p.163-164)
5. Concluding remarks
Ethical level : Liberalism
nothing new
added here
This is the purpose and a new
insight of this paper
Ontological level : Non-essentialism
（Constructionism） of identity

Cultural / post-colonial studies FOR Sen
Identity and agency
Identity claims are political manipulations
of people who seem to share one
characteristic and therefore it is a sort of
roll-call concept. Now it seems to me that
agency relates to accountable reason. The
idea of agency comes from the principle of
accountable reason, that one acts with
responsibility, that one has to assume the
possibility of intention, one has to assume
even the freedom of subjectivity in order to
be responsible. That's where agency is
located. (Spivak 1993, p.294)

Sen FOR cultural / post-colonial studies
a new universality /
constructive universalism
Universality means taking a risk in order
to go beyond the easy certainties provided
us by our background, language, nationality,
which so often shield us from the reality of
others. It also means looking for and trying
to uphold a single standard for human
behavior when it comes to such matters as
foreign and social policy. (Said 1994, p.xii)

Thank you very much!

Comments are welcome to
ty232@cam.ac.uk

Introducing the ‘epistemic’ use of identity into
economics

Criticising the ‘ethical’ use of identity among political
philosophy and the real world
(‘beyond identity’)
Clarifying the ‘ontology’ of identity
(‘plurality and choice of identity’)
But I won’t heed the battle call
It puts my back up
Puts my back up against the wall
(Sunday Bloody Sunday, U2)
Marcos is gay in San Francisco, a black in
South Africa, Asian in Europe, …. an artist
without a gallery or portfolio, a housewife
in any neighborhood in any city in any part
of Mexico on a Saturday night, a guerrilla
in Mexico at the end of the twentieth
century, …. (a communiqué by Zapatista)