Hey Quincy,
The project and tone here don’t strike me as dealing in the adversarial, or as trying to set up the left, or anything else,
as an opponent. Is the essay
obliged to have an 'opponent'? Can't it be a thoughtful rumination on a topic, without having to nail its colours to a mast? Maybe the ‘weakness’ you see is that it refuses to be easily identifiable as occupying one side or another of the great ‘identity’ culture war that rumbles endlessly through millions of online think pieces. I think this is the essay's strength.
The only time the words Left or Right are used in the whole essay is in this passage. His characterisation of the Right here certainly fits with your example of the 'Uncle Remus' stories, whereas you seem to be implying that he is somehow blind to this negative aspect of identity appropriation or denial:
Quote:
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On the Left we often have writers saying they own their experience and no one else has the right to imagine experiences like theirs. On the Right we find the experience of others denied by a whitewashing of history, a pretense that values we identify with civilization have never been compromised by racism or other primitive ideologies.
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Certainly, a key point of the essay is to argue that in literature the freedom to inhabit other identities is a fundamental one, and this could be seen as in opposition to certain ideas on the left. But I don't think it does this in a way that attempts to make a straw man out of the views of the 'apparently identitarian left' and I don't see anywhere that the essay is 'bellyaching' about the issue of identity being politicised. I think it is taking what is often seen as a political question and attempting to broaden the scope of how we might look at it.
But you made me think some more about it, and for that I'm always grateful!
Non-adversarially yours.
Mark