Akeel Bilgrami

Notes toward the definition of ‘identity’

many parts of the globe during the last few decades has given rise to widespread use of the term ‘identity’ as well as to a glamorous theoretical interest in the concept. However, there has been little clarity or rigor in its theoretical deployment. This brief essay will make a very small effort at correcting that. My main concern will be how we use ‘identity’ in the context of identity politics, not how the word surfaces in discussions of metaphysics, about which philosophers have already produced a flourishing and interesting literature. In politics, when we say an individual has a certain identity, we mean that he belongs to a certain type relevant to what we commonly call ‘identity politics.’ For some years now, in various essays, I have tried to impose some theoretical order on the concept by distinguishing at the outset between the ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ aspects of identity.1 Your subjective identity is what you conceive yourself to be, whereas your objective identity is how you might be viewed independently of how you see yourself. In other words, your objective identity is who you are in light of certain biological or social facts about you. Of course, subjective identity and objective identity are often closely related. It is neither routine nor plausible, at least in a political sense, to conceive of yourself as something you manifestly are not. Could I, born of Indian parents, think of myself as an African American? I suppose I could. One can imagine all sorts of things that go beyond reality. But since we are interested in the notion of identity in the realm of identity politics, we would be sensible to put aside self-conceptions that amount to fantasies.2

Chomsky and Philosophy

Book reviewed in this article: Noam Chomsky, New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind.

Dummett, Realism and Other Minds

The traditional problem of other minds has surfaced in Michael Dummett’s work as an occasion to develop his deep-going critique of the realist view of linguistic meaning.

Islam and the West: Conflict, Democracy, Identity

This short essay analyzes the deception and self-deception in talk of ‘the clash of civilizations’ and proceeds to diagnose what is wrong in the standard understanding of Islam in the Western media today by looking to the abiding history of colonial relations with Islam down to this day and also looking to the relation between ideals of democracy and the formation of religious identities. The essay closes with some remarks about the nature of identity and the importance to ones own agency of the distinction between the first and the third person point of view in Muslim self-understanding.

Reflections on three populisms

Akeel Bilgrami’s paper considers the populist surges of our times in three countries: Trump’s America, Brexit Britain, and Modi’s India, distinguishing the special features of each, and philosophically and politically analyzing the relations that populism bears to both liberalism and the capitalist political economies of liberal-democratic societies.

Identity and Identification

A distinction is made between subjective and objective identities and each is explored in the rest of the article, with a view to elaborating its philosophical significance and its relevance to politics, culture, and psychology.

Why Meanings Are Not Normative

1. This paper is a response prompted by a dissatisfaction with the prevalent discussion of the last many years on the subject of meaning and normativity following the publication of Kripke’s book on Wittgenstein’s discussion of rule-following. It will present an argument to put into doubt what is a fairly widespread assumption about the normative nature of linguistic meaning by looking at the relation that linguistic meaning bears to an agent’s linguistic intentions.