2 Argumentative Indians

In an arbitrary and capricious abuse of discretion on the night before my first exam, I decided to go to the NY Public Library to see Salman Rushdie in conversation with Amartya Sen on the topic of Sen's new book, Identity and Violence.

First, the 2 main pieces of the book's argument:

1. Identity is plural. We are a fractured bag of selves. I am an Ohioan, a law student, an economist, a male, a feminist, an American, a friend, a heterosexual, a supporter of gay rights, a human, a son, a brother, etc. Cf. neoclassical econ's homo economicus.

2. Individuals must make choices about the identity groups with which to align themselves.

Sen's conclusion is that singularity (the choice to see one's self as situated in only 1 restrictive identity group) is an (1) epistemic [i.e. descriptively inaccurate] and (2) ethical [i.e. it blinds us to commonalities we have with others and thus obstructs cosmopolitanism] failure.

Rushdie pushed Sen on a few points in the argument:

Rushdie: How much of an individual's choice among identity groups is "free" choice and how much is determined by aleatory factors?

Sen: The ability to think reflectively about ourselves is generic to all human beings. Cf. Chomsky's universal grammar. [WHERE is the evidence for this claim?]

R: Aren't you doing some wishful thinking? In Clash of Civilizations, Sam Huntington argues convincingly that singularity is on the rise globally. Isn't his thesis more descriptively accurate than yours?

S: People increasingly believe in Huntington's singularity, but that belief doesn't make the underlying description of singularity any more accurate.

R: Aren't you whitewashing the failures of Muslims and letting Islam off the hook too easily? (I know, can you believe Salman Rushdie would say something like that?!)

S: Yes, Islamic terrorism is bad, but the history of Muslim peoples has many positive aspects.

Sen mentioned in passing that a major flaw in most lines of communitarian thought is their insistence on seeing individuals as singular, situated in only 1 restrictive identity group. Anyone more familiar with communitarianism want to respond?

Thoughts? The obvious implication of Sen's argument is that if we see ourselves as plural, we'll identify (and empathize) with seemingly dissimilar people. Are there other less obvious implications of his argument?

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Update: [GC] Kenji Yoshino, a YLS professor who will be teaching constitutional law at NYU in the fall, has a review of Sen's book in the May 14 issue of The New York Times.