ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how the limits of performative analysis, when following an identity is at stake, can be counterbalanced by narrative analysis, performance and narrative being the two but unified modes of existence of an identity moving along a trajectory. It examines why and when the becoming of an identity in the sense of the identical and the identitarian is at stake, starting from the proper name is needed. The chapter focuses on the notions of trajectory and course of life, in order to clarify to what extent the first must be considered as a methodological device, while the second is the phenomenon to be analyzed. According to the methodological principle, the ordering structure that organizes the repetition of Manning's name into a life course is a matter of an endogenous, situated and ongoing arrangement of ordinary methods. The chapter looks in more detail at the idea of identity in the sense of the identical and the identitarian.
