Identity and Difference: Understanding Subjectivity through Wittgenstein’s Family Resemblances
Paul Martorelli
Publication: Volume 3 Issue 1
Abstract
This paper examines how the traditional subject of identity politics might be reimagined to enable less regulated subjects capable of politically mobilizing on their own behalf. The paper reads the oral arguments of Hollingsworth v. Perry as a text that relies on and produces the modern subject, that is, a subject constituted as the sum and unity of its various identities. Studying Wittgenstein’s “family resemblances” as an account of a heterogeneous subject, the paper argues that this formation not only pluralizes the subject but also produces subjects capable of resisting the impulse to definitively determine membership criteria during political mobilization on behalf of particular identities.
Keywords: Political mobilization, Queer Theory, Subject, Wittgenstein, Hollingsworth v. Perry
Paul Martorelli (pmartore@wellesley.edu) is a visiting lecturer at
Wellesley College. He earned a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley with a designated emphasis in Critical Theory. His research and teaching interests center on expanding the boundaries of political theory by integrating it with feminist, queer, and critical-race theory. His current project examines how the strong normative visions of American identity justify and validate injurious immigration policies and practices