Introduction

17

relation to minority identity in general, and to defend identity politics as

crucial to the future of minority peoples and their quest for social justice

and inclusion.

1. Identifiability as a quality exists at the heart of identity itself because

we must be able to distinguish a group before we can begin to imagine an

identity. Often we conceive of identifiability as involving visible differ-

ences connected to the body, such as skin color, gender traits, gestures, af-

fect, voice, and body shapes. These physical traits, however, are not uni-

versal with respect to different cultures, and there may be actions or

cultural differences that also figure as the basis of identifiability. Note as

well that identifiability exists in time, and time shifts its meaning. As a

group is identified, it acquires certain representations, and the growth of

representations connected to the group may then change how identifiabil-

ity works. For example, the existence of a group called disabled people

produces a general idea of the people in the group-although the exis-

tence of the group does not depend on every disabled person fitting into

it-and it then becomes easier, first, to identify people with it and, second,

to shift the meaning of the group definition. Fat people are not generally

considered disabled at this moment, but there are signs that they may be

in the not too distant future (Kirkland). Deaf and intersex people have re-

sisted being described as disabled; their future relation to the identity of

disabled people is not clear.

Two other obvious characteristics of identifiability need to be

stressed. First, identifiability is tied powerfully to the representation of dif-

ference. In cases where an existing minority group is not easily identified

and those in power want to isolate the group, techniques will be used to

produce identifiability. For example, the Nazis required that Jews wear yel-

low armbands because they were not, despite Nazi racist mythology,

identifiably different from Germans. Second, identity is social, and so is

the quality of identifiability. There are many physical differences among

human beings that simply do not count for identifiability. It is not the fact

of physical difference that matters, then, but the representation attached

to difference-what makes the difference identifiable. Representation is

the difference that makes a difference. We might contend that there is no

such thing as private identity in the same way that Wittgenstein claimed

that private language does not exist. Identity must be representable and