Identity must be theorized as simultaneously fixed by and escaping meaning.

Evidence

To think it only in terms of difference and not in terms of the relational position between the suturing, the arbitrary, overdetermined cut of language which says something which is instantly opened again to the play of meaning; not to think of meaning always, in supplement, that there is always something left over, always something which goes on escaping the precision; the attempt of language to code, to make precise, to fix, to halt, etc.; not to think it in that way is to lose hold of the two necessary ends of the chain to which the new notion of identity has to be conceptualized. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 222

Categorization

• DEFINE: Spells out the double structure — suture and supplement, fixity and escape — that any theory of identity must hold together.
• XREF: This dual structure carries directly into how anti-Muslim ascriptions are both fixed by discourse and never fully stable — a mechanism Islamophobia readings will rely on. — connects to: Non-identical thinking requires resisting the identity principle that flattens qualitative difference. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1246