After Identity

Georgia Warnke is Professor of Philosophy and Associate Dean for Arts and Humanities at the University of California, Riverside.

• Introduction: reading individuals; 1. The tragedy of David Reimer; 2. Racial identification and identity; 3. Race and interpretation; 4. Sex and science; 5. Rethinking sex and gender identities; 6. Marriage, the military and identity; 7. Hermeneutics and the politics of identity; Conclusion.

'Georgia Warnke is a past master in the theory and practice of political hermeneutics. Here she turns her interpretative prowess to the logic of racial, sex, and gender identification and manages to generate a wealth of novel insights into familiar problems. Identifications, she lucidly argues, are ways of understanding ourselves and others; like interpretations of texts, they are unavoidably contextual, purposeful, and partial; thus any attempt to deploy them as all-purpose markers inevitably leads to the sorts of conflicts and quandaries that now pervade our public life. Warnke's is the most cogent foundational case I know for the sheer irrelevance of race, sex, and gender identifications in the major institutions of our society.' Thomas McCarthy, Yale University