Kochi, Tarik (2020) A dangerous text: Francis Fukuyama’s mischaracterisation of identity, recognition and right-wing nationalism. Borderlands e-Journal. ISSN 1447-0810 (Accepted)

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Abstract

Francis Fukuyama’s work on contemporary problems of identity and recognition portrays national and international liberalism as now under significant threat by the global rise of a reactionary and exclusionary identity politics. For Fukuyama contemporary identity politics, taking place as struggles for recognition and manifestations of resentment, are emerging as dangerous, illiberal forms of right-wing populist nationalism. In critiquing Fukuyama’s position I demonstrate how he appropriates the concepts of ‘identity’ and ‘recognition’ and puts these to use to sustain a version of neoliberal rationality and neoliberal politics. Such an appropriation denies the transformative and radical potential of intersubjective recognition and depoliticises and delegitimises any non-liberal claims and struggles of identity politics that might threaten to disrupt neoliberal political order, security and capitalist accumulation. Further, I argue that Fukuyama’s account of identity is dangerous in the way that it legitimises a right-wing nationalist discourse of blame targeted at the mischaracterisation of minority and left-wing ‘identity’ politics. His account is dangerous also in the manner that he detaches a contemporary extremist and right-wing nationalist discourse from the history of a less extreme, though very similar, neoliberal nationalist discourse which, since the 1980s, has mobilised the language of identity politics as a political strategy and weapon against progressive political movements and against the welfare state.

Item Type:	Article
Schools and Departments:	School of Law, Politics and Sociology > Law
Related URLs:	Publisher
SWORD Depositor:	Mx Elements Account
Depositing User:	Mx Elements Account
Date Deposited:	15 Sep 2020 07:10
Last Modified:	07 Sep 2021 09:42
URI:	http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/93776

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