1992 Articles

A Matter of Life and Death

West, Cornel

"What do we mean by 'identity'?" Since this term itself can be a rather elusive, amorphous, and even vaporous one, we need to have heuristic markings for it. The second is "What is the moral content of one's identities?"-because we all have multiple positions in terms of constructing our identities; there's no such thing as having one identity or of there being one essential identity that fundamentally defines who we actually are. And third, "What are the political consequences of our various identities?"