I, IS A RARE PLEASURE to have one's work closely and thoughtfully engaged. In “Rights as Critique and the Critique of Rights” Ken Baynes offers a critical analysis of my discussion in States of Injury of the pursuit of identity-based rights by contemporary progressive activists. As pleased as I am with this engagement, of course, I am also distressed by Baynes's misreadings of my work, and since distress always has its way with pleasure, it is upon those misreadings that the initial part of my response shall dwell. Then, I shall say a bit about the relationship of these misreadings to what I take to be our substantive differences on the question of certain kinds ofrights deployment in contemporary American political life.

CRITIQUE: REJECTION OR SCRUTINY?