ABSTRACT
Although originating from diverse vantage points, recent social theory about the concept of identity has been typically concerned with an erosion of the belief in an essence or foundational identity defining the person. Writers on postmodernism, for instance, argue that the individual’s sense of identity and biographical continuity has been superseded by fragmentation and superficial play with the endless flow of images and sensations encountered in consumer culture. Philosophers of various stripes have advanced a comprehensive epistemological critique of the idea of the rational and unified subject at the heart of post-Cartesian philosophy. Many psychologists, whose discipline has been concerned to proffer models of the self’s inner structure, now question the very notion of the self. And even in the literature on identity politics, with its typical emphasis on individuals identifying themselves in or with groups and categories, some writers challenge essentialist accounts of collective identities (the notion that all members of the collectivity uniquely share core features), and reject definitions of self in terms of birth or inner life experience (e.g., O’Hara 1989). In each of these discourses and others, the deconstructive critique of identity has attacked the idea of an underlying, coherent self. Identity fragmentation and multiplicity have been central themes.
