What is the nature of social identities and what are they for? Specifically, when it comes to gender, should we work to defend the social and political relevance of gender identities or should we seek to downplay and dismiss them? Feminist responses in the last thirty years have tended to fall into one of two camps. On the one hand, some feminists, although rejecting traditional essentialist definitions of identity, defend gender neo-realism. ¹ A neo-realist approach to identities, they argue, is the only path to providing a critical or evaluative approach to identities and hence the only way to forge a viable political response to oppression. On the other hand, some feminists warn that emphasizing identity simply reinforces a conception of the subject that, in Simone de Beauvoir’s words, keeps women in their place as the “second sex.” ² In order to finally overcome the belief that women are other than, and derivative to, men, feminists endorsing this view argue that we must reject the very concept of identity.

While there have been some responses attempting to move beyond the false dichotomy between whether our identities are best understood as either real or socially constructed, for the most part they have been situated within the tradition of critical theory. ³ This book also affirms the need to find a third way, but takes a different approach by drawing on philosophical hermeneutics, particularly that of Hans-Georg Gadamer. The promise of a hermeneutic approach to identity is to avoid such a false dichotomy in much the same way that hermeneutic theory of interpretation avoids the “objectivism versus relativism” debate concerning textual meaning. ⁴ In other words, the hermeneutic theory of Gadamer, which defended the possibility of truth in interpretation without succumbing to either an objective theory of authorial intention or a relativistic theory of reader-response, proves a helpful resource for a feminist theory of identity. In the spirit of hermeneutics’ namesake, Hermes, the messenger between gods and mortals, a hermeneutic approach to identities lies “in-between” these two horns of realism and constructionism. A hermeneutic approach to social identities proves useful for avoiding both the metaphysically dubious efforts to defend the real or essential nature of identities and the politically problematic attempt to deflate any notion of identity at all. A hermeneutic approach thus esteems the relevance of social identities while at the same time offering a positive feminist social critique.

Although hermeneutics in general, especially in its early instantiations in the mid-twentieth century, has been accused of political impotency and conservatism, ⁵ and Gadamer’s hermeneutics in particular has been accused of anti-feminism, ⁶ this book defends hermeneutics against charges of both political irrelevance and anti-feminism. Admittedly, Gadamer’s ostensive interest was to develop a theory of textual interpretation and he nowhere explicitly makes the connection between interpretation and social identities. Yet, it is important to note that in order to execute his project, Gadamer devoted much effort to elucidating the fundamental hermeneutic nature of human existence. In order to clarify the nature of identities, this work draws on his claim that interpretation is not just an activity directed at texts but one that sustains our fundamental way of being in the world. The trajectory of this book is therefore consonant with Gadamer’s aim (following his teacher Heidegger’s) to broaden the scope of understanding beyond just texts to all human being-in-the-world. As Gadamer declared, hermeneutic philosophy is fundamentally a “practical philosophy.” ⁷ For Gadamer, hermeneutics-as-practical-philosophy reflects on real human concerns and interactions in the world in order to articulate how meaning is established. He writes:

And who would deny that there are real conditions to human life? There are such things as hunger and love, work and domination, which in themselves are not speech and language but which circumscribe the space within which speaking-with-each-other and listening-to-each-other can take place. There is no dispute that it is precisely such preformations of human opinion and speech that make hermeneutic reflection necessary. (Gadamer 1985, 179–180)

While this quotation may initially seem to endorse a type of realism about identities, it is in fact set in an essay arguing against the need to ground knowledge in what is objectively knowable. This essay attempts to rebuff an (early) Habermasian misreading that took Gadamer’s hermeneutics to be a defense of a universal account of language that denies the social practices that give rise to it (Habermas 1986). Gadamer maintains that it is due to the way in which language and praxis are co-constituted that we therefore need hermeneutics, as opposed to an allegedly more objective, critical theory. Hermeneutic reflection is necessary, Gadamer tells us, precisely due to our finite nature and inability to gain direct access to something called the “Truth” or the final or absolute position. Hermeneutics pertains to the experiences of life that require humility, openness, and an ongoing dialogic inquiry with others. Claims to objectivity that purport to resolve political disputes once and for all would seem to deny the need for ongoing interpretation.

One of the key features of Gadamer’s hermeneutics is his rejection of the subject–object dualism of modernity and his subsequent articulation of the event-like nature of understanding. An event is something that we are caught up in, actively participate in, and yet over which we never have full control. Stressing the event-like nature of understanding allows Gadamer to renounce subjectivism, but he is equally insistent on the creative moment of application that defines all true understanding. In other words, understanding may not be something we can fully control but it nonetheless requires activity that serves as a type of practical agency. Put in these terms, one could say that an interpretation is a type of “construction,” in so far as the interpreter adds or contributes something to the text, thereby “constructing” new meaning. But the language of interpretation is at once more subtle and rich than the overused term “construction,” which carries echoes of modernity in so far as it suggests an edifice-as-object built by an autonomous subject. Constructions come and go, can be built or torn down at a whim, may or may not prove a meaningful edifice for the surroundings or connections with others, may be built by a single individual, and can stand apart from the builder. An interpretation, however, aims not at a permanent, autonomously formed, objective edifice, but to create a bond, a connection with, another, oneself, and one’s environment. Interpretation is the primary way in which humans forge connections with the world and with others. My main claim, then, is that social identities are a form of intersubjective interpretation, that is, a means of understanding and forging meaningful connections with others. Taking my cue from Gadamer’s textually oriented hermeneutic theory, I will argue that to interpret another is neither to dominate the other with one’s preconceived ideas, nor to submit entirely to that which is allegedly “given” by nature or society. Rather, grasping the interpretive dimension of identities is to affirm the positive and creative potential therein. As the hermeneutic thinker Paul Ricoeur put it: “[I]nterpretation is the process by which disclosure of new … forms of life gives to the subject a new capacity for knowing [oneself]” (Ricoeur 1976, 94). Interpretation is a creative act by finite beings to build interpersonal meaning. A hermeneutic approach to identities affirms the humility born of finitude that fuels an ongoing inquiry as manifested in dialogue with others. At the same time, as a theory of interpretation, a hermeneutic approach provides a way to evaluate identities by distinguishing between true (i.e., productive and meaningful) and false (i.e., oppressive) identities.

While specifying the exact meaning of a hermeneutic approach to identity is the aim of this book, let me briefly summarize here what I take to be the salient features of a hermeneutic approach to identity. First, a hermeneutic account of identities affirms the contextual and dynamic, rather than essentialist and given, nature of our identities. In the second chapter I critically assess Linda Martín Alcoff’s use of Gadamer’s hermeneutics to defend her theory of social identities, which emphasizes both the epistemic and social relevance of identities. One of Gadamer’s central claims is that knowledge, like sight, requires a horizon that frames our understanding. Maintaining that our identities are like horizons, Alcoff argues for their fluid, mediated, and contextual nature. In other words, identities are less like fixed labels and more like a vantage point from which we understand the world. Crucial to both Alcoff’s and Gadamer’s use of horizon is the fact that the boundaries fixing our horizon are not constrictive but productive. Just as for Gadamer “horizon” proves an epistemically viable and necessary feature of human understanding, so, too, for Alcoff identities remain necessary and epistemically viable features of a meaningful human life. Against traditional advocates of gender essentialism, for example, the argument here is that such identities function as “sites of meaning making” and not as labels that limit or oppress. Against those who champion the universal nature of our humanity and decry identity politics, I defend Alcoff’s esteem of the necessity and productivity of social identities for knowledge and action. Identities do not detract from our communal existence but contribute to it. In the first part of the chapter, I expand Alcoff’s claims by bringing in additional textual references to Gadamer, a move which also serves as a way to introduce Gadamer’s hermeneutics to those who may be unfamiliar with his work.

While I agree with Alcoff’s appeal to Gadamer’s notion of horizon to defend the epistemic and social viability of identities, I take issue with her attempt to align her hermeneutic approach with an objective account of gender—what I refer to as her “identity realism.” In the second part of the chapter, then, I go on to argue that there is a contradiction between her affirmation of the hermeneutic value of identities and her attempt to defend a real and objective basis for identities like gender. For, I contend that even “post-metaphysical” defenses of realism, like that offered by Sally Haslanger whom Alcoff draws upon, ultimately conflicts with hermeneutics’ claim about the ubiquity of linguistic mediation. My critique of Alcoff clarifies my hermeneutic approach as firmly anti-realist.

A second feature of a hermeneutic account of identity is the plural nature of our identities. Georgia Warnke also draws explicitly on Gadamer’s hermeneutics and argues for an analogy between persons and texts, that is, identities of persons are like interpretations of texts. Just as Gadamer insists on the situated, purposeful, and partial nature of textual interpretation, so Warnke insists the same is true for our identities. Warnke argues that these three features render interpretations always plural. Therefore, just as there can be multiple interpretations of a text, whose legitimacy can be established only contextually, so there are multiple identities individuals may have based on the different situations they find themselves in. Against Alcoff’s insistence on the dominance of visible identities, Warnke argues that there is never one single identity that is true for all times and for all places and therefore none of our identities ought to gain “imperial” status. What serves to legitimate a given identity is its ability to cohere within a situation.

I maintain that Warnke’s account of “identity pluralism,” based on her analogy between the interpretation of texts and the identity of persons, is a more promising approach to identity to the extent that it privileges coherence over realism. Warnke’s emphasis on the text–person analogy that explains identities as interpretations highlights the importance of third-person ascriptions of identity (i.e., the ways we are identified by others) and contributes to the discussion of the nature of oppression. Borrowing from...