DAVID SIDORSKY
559
THE THIRD CONCEPT OF LIBERTY has served to revitalize and reinforce
the aspirations of particular historical communities. The success of such
transformation involves the recognition of the possibilities that are
latent in the third concept of liberty. Yet the very success indicates a
potential flaw in the application of this concept in contemporary poli–
tics of identity. For any such transformation has been achieved through
great efforts over a significant historical span and cannot be easily
reversed or readily changed by another application of the concept of the
transformative freedom of the group to create its own identity.
The black community in the United States, for example, has suc–
ceeded in changing the stereotypical caricatures of the group's identity,
which had received a high degree of popularization and even a marginal
degree of internal acceptance. These caricatures of black identity were
replaced as part of a process of the transformation of the civic condition
of the black community as well as of its self-identification. The further
direction of this effort to transform black self-identification, whether
along the lines of African nationhood or of Islamic religion, or along the
lines of an ethnic group which parallels the career of other American
ethnic groups in becoming co-opted into the civic culture of American
society, remains an undetermined aspect of the current politics of iden–
tity. Any such transformation is not readily reversible, but becomes
fixed by historical achievement. Accordingly, even with the successful
realization of a historical transformation of group identity, the con–
straints that history imposes upon the freedom of self-transformation
remain a challenge to any application of the third concept of liberty.
A similar illustration is the way in which the Zionist movement suc–
ceeded in transforming, at least in part, the religious status of the Jew–
ish community into the condition of modern nationhood. Such a change
of seemingly rooted characteristics of group identity can be represented
as a demonstration of the way in which an option to create an alterna–
tive form of self-identification can be realized despite historical adver–
sity. Yet the significant conceptual point is that after such a
transformation has been achieved, the constraints of history have not
been overcome. For the new condition must accept or come to terms
with a new sense of the continuing burdens of history. In the case of the
Zionists, the transformation to nationhood has placed upon successive
generations the subsequent burdens of defense of a sovereign state, the
establishment of a solvent economy, and the challenge of realizing
treaties of peace with neighboring states . The third concept of liberty is
challenged since after any transformation of the identity of the group,
there is no release from the burdens imposed by history.
