Identity versus citizenship: Transformations in the discourses and practices of citizenship

The recent surge of theoretical interest in citizenship has been shaped in important ways by a growing sensitivity to the politics of identity. Citize nship, conceived as a matrix of rights and obligations governing the member s of a political community, exists in tension with the heterogeneity of soc ial life and the multiple identities that arise therefrom. This tension exp resses itself in the clash between the 'universal' citizen and numerous dis persed identities of which citizenship is but one. Citizens share the right s and obligations arising from that status, and the concept of 'equality' a rising from this shared status has very real implications for the politics of identity, since citizenship has traditionally claimed priority over othe r identities. In practice this has often resulted in the relegation of alte rnative identities to an extra-political or even pre-political status. Toda y these alternative identities have become overtly politicized and as a res ult the stability of the identity of 'citizen' has itself been destabilized and contested. The 'rise' of identity politics has thus ushered in a numbe r of challenges to, and transformations in, the discourses of citizenship. In this article we bring the resource of governmentality theory to bear upo n the changing conditions of a modern complex citizenship that is not confi ned to the political arena, and a conception of politics not confined to th e state. To this is added a neo-Gramscian consideration of counter-hegemony . This yields an agonistic vision of citizenship in which universal element s are not imposed from above, but are the outcome of projects in which soci al forces change themselves in constituting alliances with other political identities.