Identity Labels as Tools for Building Agency

Carolina Flores (University of California, Irvine)

23 June 2023, 11:00 (Lisbon Time – WET)

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: Identity labels (‘mother’, ‘non-binary’, ‘BIPOC’, ‘queer’) are pervasively used. At the same time, their use makes many people uncomfortable. Identity labels can seem reductive and limiting, constraining our agency in undesirable ways. Against these worries, we will argue that employing identity labels can be distinctively liberatory—when we employ them in flexible or playful ways. To argue for this, we offer a novel account of the cognitive role of identity labels as identity-centric frames, not mere categorization devices. Specifically, identity labels lead us to attend, explain, and evaluate in terms of social identities, shaping how we characterize groups and their members. With this cognitive role in sight, we diagnose common complaints about identity labels as being in fact complaints about the rigid use of identity labels. In contrast, switching between identity labels one applies to oneself in an open-ended way can express, enhance, and scaffold individual and collective agency in ways that are otherwise hard to achieve. As a consequence, we should not avoid identity labels. At a structural level, we would be well-served by the production and dissemination of a wide range of identity labels, and by social norms that encourage their flexible employment and make room for play. (This is joint work with Elisabeth Camp (Rutgers).)