ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to provide an anti-essentialistic framework for understanding identity and how this theoretical gambit undermines the traditional justification for the mistreatment of minorities, past and present. The issue of identity has almost become a fetish nowadays. Persons are trying to find their identities, while social interventions are expected to be sensitive to these modalities of identification. The problem does not lie with claiming one’s identity as much as with the ways in which identities are categorized in an objective manner, creating an illusion that a person or a community can be approached and understood in a monolithic manner. But, as many recent critics note, identities are not things, predicated on essential traits that can be easily identified and discovered. Communities, in this sense, can never be confronted but must be coaxed into the open. Personhood, therefore, is a construction that defies the identification usually associated with identity. Yet persons do not disappear but must be treated as revealing themselves through the stories they tell about themselves. Community-based work engenders these conditions where communities are engaged not through a preconceived identity, but through solidarity.
