Crisis of identity-politics Attempts at Rethinking the Self

Abstract

Present-day societies are defined by various terms, including the concept of network society, virtual reality, information age, or globalised society. The social gap along the access to power/information/financial capital is ever more visible and interpretable within this context of global capitalism. These societies are permeated by new information networks and radical technological transformations, despite of endless networked connections and open-ended content-creation. Contemporary social life is characterized by fragmentation, partiality, emphasis on differences, and the dissolution of a “metalevel”. In the postmodern condition the prefix “post” refers primarily to the “aftermath” of the grand narratives of commonality and universality. The increasing social gaps have intensifying consequences on identity-based politics, giving voice to the silenced narratives of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion, geographical region, continent, or nationality. At the beginning of the 21^st century, we are witnessing the re-negotiation of identity-based politics. In my essay I trace the process of this re-negotiation in late modern societies of both the centre and semi-periphery, with special focus on the social and cultural differences of those locations. Drawing on the potentials of personal ethnography, the essay attempts to forge a shift from the partial and difference-oriented micropolitics to a post-identity-political platform that can evade reactionary fundamentalism, where the starting point of mutual action is not an attempt to answer the question of “who we are?”, but the building of a common future on the basis of our answer to “what we want”.