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The Gray Area with Sean Illing

Francis Fukuyama’s case against identity politics

The Gray Area with Sean Illing

Vox Media Podcast Network

Politics, News, News Commentary, Philosophy, Society & Culture

4.511.1K Ratings

🗓️ 27 September 2018

⏱️ 92 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Is all politics identity politics? And if so, then what does it mean to condemn identity politics in the first place? That’s the subject of my discussion with Stanford political scientist Francis Fukuyama. In his new book, Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment, he builds a theory of what identity means in modern societies and how spiraling demands for recognition are tearing at the fabric of our politics. "The retreat on both sides into ever narrower identities threatens the possibility of deliberation and collective action by the society as a whole," he writes. "Down this road lies, ultimately, state breakdown and failure.” Yikes. Fukuyama’s book revolves around a question I’ve become a bit obsessed by: When do we see political claims as identity politics, and when do we see them as just politics? What’s obscured in the passage from one boundary to another? Whose agendas are served by it? And in a country whose narrative of progress and perfection is inextricably bound up in the success of past moments of identity politics, how did this come to be such a vilified term today? So I asked Fukuyama on the show to discuss it. This is a great conversation with one of the foremost political thinkers of our age. Recommended books: Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government by Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:40.2

It's late. You're almost home after catching that concert you and your friend's snack tickets to

0:44.8

with MX months ago. You're all speechless from the last hour spent singing your hearts out,

0:49.8

and the only thing playing in the car is the last song of the night, on a full blast, in your head.

0:56.0

Admit it. You want it stuck there. The live version, you can't get anywhere else.

1:01.1

Looks like you're getting goosebumps all over again. When the night's a hit, that's when you're with

1:05.9

MX. American Express. Don't live life without it. Do you respect the group identity or do you

1:13.1

respect people as individuals? The moment that you shade over into that belief that it's the group

1:19.6

that you're respecting, that's when identity politics begins to really seriously conflict with

1:25.5

some basic principles of a liberal society.

1:40.0

Hello, welcome to Asa Clanchon, the box media podcast network. My guest this week is Francis

1:44.3

Fukuyama. He's very well known for the broad end of history hypothesis and book and article,

1:50.6

but he just wrote a new book called Identity, which is all about identity and the modern conception

1:55.4

of identity and how that feeds into identity politics and whether all of that is threatening the

1:59.5

stability of modern liberal democracies. This is a question and a conversation about one of my

2:06.0

favorite topics, which is whether or not all politics is actually identity politics. As always,

...

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