ABSTRACT
The author argues that recent leftist criticisms of "identity politics" do not address problems of inequality and interaction that are central in thinking about contemporary democratic politics. She turns instead to a set of feminist thinkers who share these critics' vision of politics, but- who critically mobilize identity in a way that provides a conception of democratic citizenship for their inegalitarian and diverse polity. Radical democratic political action attempts to perform the paradoxical task of achieving egalitarian goals in egalitarian ways in an inegalitarian context. Leftist critics of identity politics are not unaware that the very arguments for the political relevance of identity arose as a response to certain conceptions of the political self and the political community. A conception of citizenship adequate to the world in which we live must recognize both the infuriating reality of oppression and the continual exercise of courage with which citizens meet that oppression.
