ABSTRACT
People tend to think that their identity is who they are and that it is an essential and inalienable part of their selves, so that people have identities in a similar sense as they have bodies. The content of personhood may vary in different societies, as it depends on the core values of a particular society. The concept of personhood thus pre-exists for any person who is born in a society. It is the same with collective identities: they, too, are ready-made signs that the new emerging person is interpellated to identify with. The Strawman theory is just one extreme example of this wish of disidentification to justify civil disobedience. One of the core characteristics of the modern concept of self-identity is the ultimate authority that a person has over his or her Self: nobody but the person himself can say who he is.
