Abstract

Recent consideration of the politics of culture and identity has failed to capture an emergent trend in political practice that raises important philosophical questions for normative political theory. To rectify this, identity politics is examined in terms of two distinctions. Examining that politics in terms of the distinction between left and right, as well in terms of the distinction between normative discourse and the policies that discourse justifies, enables us to do more than account for three standard accounts of the politics of cultural turn: multiculturalism, conservative nationalism, and liberal nationalism. It also captures the newly emergent position of identity liberalism. This is a perspective that employs a progressive identity-based normative discourse typically considered to be the preserve of the multicultural left to defend a right-wing politics of assimilation.