ABSTRACT
The second point is that the rough-and-ready distinction I tried to make between ‘open’ and ‘closed’ forms of ethnicity is certainly conceptually underdeveloped, but may nevertheless have some purchase in the present situation. There are few movements without a strong appeal to certain shared forms of identification, and we know the positive role this has played in movements of the oppressed and marginalized, which I acknowledge. That, in my view, is why we cannot do without some form of ‘ethnicity’ (everybody has one, just as everyone is gendered). The question
then is whether the identity affirmed around which political mobilization takes place functions primarily as a mode of exclusion or is sufficiently open to difference as to constantly criticize its own ‘closure’ and attempt to move beyond it. This distinction is all the more necessary if, as I do, one accepts that the very notion of ‘identity’ always involves a certain degree of exclusion; and if antagonisms frequently arise precisely when that which has been excluded functions as a constitutive outside and returns to haunt and trouble the ‘closure’ which has been effected. (I share this position with Laclau and Mouffe, and with Judith Butler). Given that argument, the necessity to try to distinguish forms of identity which, as I put it elsewhere, are able to ‘live with difference’ from those which require to ‘consume, destroy or expel the Other’ in order to survive becomes all the more urgent. I do not get a clear sense as to whether or not Mahmood acknowledges this problem (even if my formulation of it is inadequate).
