Identity formation mechanisms: a conceptual and genealogical analysis

This paper individuates and analyses the mechanisms through which human beings are driven to construct and/or recognize their identity in modern Western societies. At the conceptual level, distinction is made between self-formation, self-relation and self-representation. The theoretical background for self-formation is given by philosophical hermeneutics (background practices and experience) and social anthropology (rites of passage and liminality). It is then argued that a concern with self-relation and self-representation emerges in specific historical moments of dissolution of order, like the axial age, the collapse of the Roman Empire or the end of the Middle Ages. Such events led to two distinct types of responses: subjectivation (a concern with self-control and ascetism) and individualization (an affirmation of the self). Modernity emerges with the successful Unking of these separate threads through the "verbalization of ascetism": a public declaration of self-identity based on a scrutiny of one's own true needs, desires and belongingness, and the subsequent indexing of conduct to this identity.