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A review by colin_cox
Universality and Identity Politics by Todd McGowan
5.0
McGowan's Universality and Identity Politics offers a novel definition of universality. Early in the book, McGowan sketches what he believes is the predominant understanding of universality in today's political climate. He writes, "Both [convervatives and liberals] see universality not as a starting point but as something that derives from individuals coming together. We arrive at the universal, if we do, through the assembly of particulars" (39). For many, universality is a sentiment akin to either securing national borders and celebrating what citizens of a particular country or members of a particular race, sex, group, or creed share, or universality is institutional policies that celebrate and foster the importance of diversity and inclusivity. This is not to suggest that McGowan believes diversity and inclusivity are necessarily wrong (although he categorically rejects nationalism on the right, for example). Instead, his larger point highlights how flawed it is to imagine we can achieve universal emancipation by bundling or collecting a series of particulars. By elevating particulars and enshrining them as the starting point for universal emancipation, someone or something always remains excluded. Slavoj Zizek makes this point when discussing the LGBT signifier. Activists began using LGBT in the late 1980s as a more precise alternative to words such as "gay" or "homosexual." But from here, we see McGowan's point about "the assembly of particulars." LGBT became LGBTQ, then LGBTQ+ and so on. Today, whether one uses LGBTTQQIAAP or QUILTBAG, there are so many variations, it is a little hard to keep track. Again, this is not to suggest that the project of creating more inclusive language, terms, spaces, and communities is wrong. Instead, McGowan wants to orient his reader to an understanding of universality that begins not with the particular but with the universal. He writes, "But the recognition of the universal is the recognition of something absent in the social field. It is an absence that goes beyond any social authorization. Universality cannot have a direct manifestation because it is constitutively absent and emerges in the form of lack" (10). By using a word such as "lack," McGowan makes an unmistakable reference to psychoanalytic theorist Jacque Lacan, a move anyone familiar with McGowan's word should anticipate. Universal emancipation, therefore, is better understood not as a plus but as a minus. For McGowan, this is what a genuine leftist project focused on universal emancipation must look like.
By framing universality as a collective lack, McGowan highlights the one thing we all share as subjects. While it may seem negative, morose, or defeatist to claim that universality is best understood as a minus rather than a plus, McGowan claims it is not. As he sees it, contemporary particularist identity ideology "hides the alienating quality of all identity," thus revealing its "ideological function" (26). Moreover, for McGowan, this "ideological function" is intensely right-wing. In the conclusion to Universality and Identity Politics, he argues, "For too long, politics around the world has been staged on right-wing terrain. We envision a particular world with particular causes...In a world of competing particulars, there is no possibility for an emancipatory breakthrough" (211). This way of conceptualizing identity is beneficial to a capitalist system that profits from our inability to see what we all, in fact, share. Capitalism mobilizes particularity and eschews universality because it is profitable to do so. Capitalism cannot profit from universality in the way it profits from particularity because universality exists in lack or absence.
None of this is to suggest that McGowan sees particularity for conservatives and liberals as equally misguided. Conservatives deploy particularity for exclusionary purposes (e.g., Trump's Mexico border wall and Muslim ban), while liberals deploy particularity for inclusionary purposes. While McGowan argues both are illustrations of right-wing politics, the liberal expression is far-less damaging. What McGowan wants his reader to entertain is how best to engage politically. He writes, "The great leap forward consists in recognizing politics as the struggle between universality and particularity" (211-212). McGowan's proposition is engaging because it attempts to reconfigure the place of particularity. As McGowan has argued elsewhere, we only truly understand our particular identity by traveling through the universal, not circumventing it.
By framing universality as a collective lack, McGowan highlights the one thing we all share as subjects. While it may seem negative, morose, or defeatist to claim that universality is best understood as a minus rather than a plus, McGowan claims it is not. As he sees it, contemporary particularist identity ideology "hides the alienating quality of all identity," thus revealing its "ideological function" (26). Moreover, for McGowan, this "ideological function" is intensely right-wing. In the conclusion to Universality and Identity Politics, he argues, "For too long, politics around the world has been staged on right-wing terrain. We envision a particular world with particular causes...In a world of competing particulars, there is no possibility for an emancipatory breakthrough" (211). This way of conceptualizing identity is beneficial to a capitalist system that profits from our inability to see what we all, in fact, share. Capitalism mobilizes particularity and eschews universality because it is profitable to do so. Capitalism cannot profit from universality in the way it profits from particularity because universality exists in lack or absence.
None of this is to suggest that McGowan sees particularity for conservatives and liberals as equally misguided. Conservatives deploy particularity for exclusionary purposes (e.g., Trump's Mexico border wall and Muslim ban), while liberals deploy particularity for inclusionary purposes. While McGowan argues both are illustrations of right-wing politics, the liberal expression is far-less damaging. What McGowan wants his reader to entertain is how best to engage politically. He writes, "The great leap forward consists in recognizing politics as the struggle between universality and particularity" (211-212). McGowan's proposition is engaging because it attempts to reconfigure the place of particularity. As McGowan has argued elsewhere, we only truly understand our particular identity by traveling through the universal, not circumventing it.