The constitutive outside makes alterity both possible and impossible for identity

Evidence

What Michael Walzer famously called “Liberalism 1” constitutes one of the great discursive systems of the modern world, making in recent years virtually a clean sweep of political theory. Only a thin definition of culture and a highly attenuated notion of collective rights is compatible with the individualist emphasis at the center of this market-liberal conception. It does not recognize the degree to which the individual is what Taylor (1994) calls “dialogic”—not in the binary sense of dialogue between two already-constituted subjects, but in the sense of its relation to the other being fundamentally constitutive of the subject, which can position itself as an “identity” only in relation to what it lacks—its other, its “constitutive outside” (Lacan 1977; Laclau and Mouffe 1985; Butler 1993). The meaningful individual life is always embedded in cultural contexts within which alone its “free choices” make sense. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 363 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The constitutive outside exceeds dialectical negation by questioning positivity itself. — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 63; Social division is constitutive and cannot be explained by any positive ground — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 604; Individual identity forms dialogically through a constitutive outside, not autonomously. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2: Identity…, 363 (+13 more)

Broader Connections

• Individual identity forms dialogically through a constitutive outside, not autonomously. #corroborates (0.92) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 363
• Identity is constituted through exclusion of what it is not #expands (0.90)
• Modern identity is constituted through the exclusion of its own opposite #corroborates (0.88)
• Identity is constructed through opposition to a continuously reinterpreted other #corroborates (0.85)
• Identity construction is an exercise of power through exclusion #expands (0.85) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 371
• Authenticity as full self-identity is impossible because iterability makes self-presence unattainable in principle #corroborates (0.80) — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader, 767
• Without destruction of prior form, identity cannot sustain itself. #qualifies (0.75) — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 245
• Self-perception is impossible because the for-itself is contingency #corroborates (0.75)
• Non-identical thinking requires resisting the identity principle that flattens qualitative difference. #qualifies (0.75) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1246
• Freedom and unfreedom form a double bind under identity #qualifies (0.72) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2558