ABSTRACT
In the Introduction to Part IV, I claimed that a Kleinian analysis can clarify the conditions under which a politics based on group identity would be consistent with respect for individual dierences among the members to whom that identity is assigned, and would therefore be innocent of the charge of “normalization” and “exclusionism” that the critics of “essentialism” have lodged against it. I am now in a position to make good on this claim. My argument is that the same structures and practices that determine whether a group is depressively integrated will determine whether the identity claimed for that group normalizes or excludes its (potential) members. If the identication that binds the members to the group is an idealizing identication, that is, if love of the in-group is predicated on hate for an out-group, then there is good reason to expect that dierences among the members of the in-group will be deemed dangerous and that (as Joan Scott worried) the “borders of identity [will be] patrolled for signs of non-conformity.” When the group-self is purchased at the price of a demonized group-other, in other words, expressions of dissent or dierence within the former will be experienced as oering aid and comfort to the latter: the need to nd traitors within the group goes hand-in-hand with the need to nd enemies outside it. us all the rage that is projected onto an external target cannot but return to the (unintegrated) group in the form of “witch hunts” that are ostensibly designed to protect it (but that inevitably work to destroy it). And under these conditions the pressure to prove one’s loyalty to the group will easily override whatever other identities are important to its individual members.
