On a Critical Realist Theory of Identity

Abstract

The idea of identity politics has also been a grounding assumption of the new identity-based scholarly programs that have developed and grown in almost all universities and colleges since the 1960s. The student and intel- lectual activists who fought for women’s studies, black studies, Chicano studies, and other identity-based programs believed that better, more truth- ful, and less distorted scholarship on the lives and experiences of marginal- ized identity groups would be more likely to come about when the faculty in the academy itself became more inclusive and diverse. And this belief has been borne out: a wealth of new questions about economic disparity, social violence, and cultural hierarchies has been put on the table for researchers across the disciplines to address. As Juan Flores shows in his essay in this volume, the development of minority studies programs that have thought consciously about the relationship of identity to culture and to knowledge has enhanced our collective understanding of academic study generally and its claims to universality.