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( This essay is a reaction to Benhabib. ) EDUCATION, DISCOURSE, ANDTHE CONSTRUCTION OF IDENTITY 1In order to see around of the strengths and weakness of identity politics as an approach to thinking nearly education, we need to make a unmistakableion that is implicit, but non explicit, in Seyla Benhabibs essay. For there atomic number 18 at least two distinct conceptions of identity politics at work in her discussion, and criticisms appropriate to matchless may not apply to the other. The first perspective considers identity a kinda static quality of persons, and earns the process of identity formation in predominantly passive terms the other perspective involves what Benhabib calls the fungibility of identity, suggesting that identities are more active and flexible constructions.2 Correspondingly, each of these views yields a different view of politics both of which, I leave alone suggest, can be seen as quite limited, but for different reasons. For example, many identity t heorists, and postmodern feminists generally, will balk at having Catharine MacKinnon put forth as an exemplar of their views. If she is an proponent of identity politics, it is only in a very specific sense, anticipate a reified identity that is decided for women, by men, who with their foot on womens throats do not allow them to speak for themselves. MacKinnon also has a crude, slavish conception of power, especially in her view of the state as monumental and fundamentally insensitive to womens concerns (as she says, the state is male3). As a result, her view of politics is strategic and somewhat opportunistic she appears willing to take form single-issue coalitions with any group to advance her cause, as she has with right-wing groups in her antipornography crusade. MacKinnons expressed sympathy for Clarence Thomas in the Hill-Thomas case is rather stunning, assumption her larger views on sexual harassment, and Benhabib places considerable weight on these comments as repres enting some larger dilemma faced by postmodern feminists in that dispute but I do not see that MacKinnons comments typify a position taken by postmodern feminists generally. MacKinnon is not postmodern in any sense that I can understand, and it seems rather misleading to characterize the weaknesses of identity politics and of postmodern feminism largely through her example. If she is an identity theorist, she has a quite reified and passive conception of identity, as I have said. For MacKinnon, there is no active component in the process of identity formation identity is constructed for women, imposed from without by respectable others and by hegemonic cultural norms and beliefs.