After identity [article]

The theorizing of cultural difference and identity is highly sophisticated in its explanayion of the relational nature of identities. It has provided an effective demolition of Enlightenment humanism an dits claim to speak for an undifferentiated humanity. It exposed its operations of exclusion and opened up spaces for those identities that have been denied inclusion in it srealm. But to achieve this has required it to concentrate on the construction of language and representation. It has not been able to address the economic categories of class, the material nature of the body, nor emotional life. Its subject was deracinated fromt he planes of existence which might define human being - corporeality and ways of life. Its rhetoric cannot conceal the fact that it offered few serious challenges to the existing order of things.