ABSTRACT
Identity as such is a modern invention. To say that modernity led to the ‘disembedding’ of identity, or that it rendered the identity ‘unencumbered’, is to assert a pleonasm, since at no time did identity ‘become’ a problem; it was a ‘problem’ from its birth-was born as a problem (that is, as something one needs do something about-as a task), could exist only as a problem; it was a problem, and thus ready to be born, precisely because of that experience of under-determination and free-fl oatingness which came to be articulated ex post facto as ‘disembeddedment’. Identity would not have congealed into a visible and graspable entity in any other but the ‘disembedded’ or ‘unencumbered’ form.
