Smits/4
As both materialist and moral pluralist critics have pointed out, however, identity politics
faces serious problems, not least of which is its tendency to essentialize individual identity in
terms of group membership. Moreover, it effectively reduces all political conflicts to questions
concerning the assertion and recognition of group identity. Disputes over the allocation of
resources or ethical priorities are either subsumed into demands for recognition, or regarded as
secondary problems, solutions to which will naturally follow recognition and inclusion. Critics
have argued that identity groups aim only to assert themselves in the public sphere, and are
unprepared for the subsequent political business of negotiation and compromise necessary to
reach any agreement on divisive issues.
5
Those responding to the claims of identity groups
concerning specific policy disputes faced the practical problem of how to bridge the differences
between groups: to establish communication which would steer clear of the assimilation of
minority positions into the mainstream, and yet provide a way for the concrete experience of
others to be accounted, comprehended, and related to common political problems. The problem
was a difficult one, and identity politics theorists have been frequently criticized by liberals for
proposing a model of politics in which the inescapable specificity of identity makes recognition a
5
These criticisms are detailed by Nancy Rosenblum in Membership and Morals
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000,) 319-339.
Convention