ABSTRACT
This chapter asks whether identity is fiction. A review of Kwame Anthony Appiah's book Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity focuses on labeling and social forces that categorize us. The author introduces the concept of perimeters as aspects of physical reality that get internalized and can come to define how a person defines themself. Perimeters act like labels and can override a person's individuality and their story. Examples of this process are given. A discussion of Jenny Erpenbeck's novel Go, Went, Gone (translated) shows the similarities between the United States and Germany. The place for identity as an analytical concept is reconsidered.
