When people need ‘identity’, it means they are fed up with anymore oppression and ready to fight. To me, the concept of ‘identity’ is very identical to ‘sovereignty’. Not simply a metaphor, it is the fundamental rationale for a subjective to position itself in a society, whether a State or a person. Within the socially constructed world, an identity may operationalise one’s uniqueness, but sometimes also undermine one’s chance to be normalised.
On one hand, both concepts give people power to feel stronger, solid and united in a community of the sameness, or at least similitude, along with its territorial borders against all the intrusions. On the other hand, they also make people identify, and even differentiate, self from others, so that the ‘self’ becomes a weapon to defy the ‘others’, with a symbol, an ideology, or a shared imagination.
Is it really good? I can simply say it is ‘practical’, in terms of instrumentality, collectivism, self-safeguarding, and -manifestation. However, it would always remind us we are ‘still’ different and separate. If there were nothing to do with ‘superior’ versus ‘subordinate’, ‘good’ or ‘bad’, or ‘morally correct’ or ‘incorrect’, why would people need ‘identity’, as a nation of ‘sovereignty’? Stemming from the sense of ‘equality’, and ‘distinction’ is just the threshold of achieving it.
On one hand, both concepts give people power to feel stronger, solid and united in a community of the sameness, or at least similitude, along with its territorial borders against all the intrusions. On the other hand, they also make people identify, and even differentiate, self from others, so that the ‘self’ becomes a weapon to defy the ‘others’, with a symbol, an ideology, or a shared imagination.
Is it really good? I can simply say it is ‘practical’, in terms of instrumentality, collectivism, self-safeguarding, and -manifestation. However, it would always remind us we are ‘still’ different and separate. If there were nothing to do with ‘superior’ versus ‘subordinate’, ‘good’ or ‘bad’, or ‘morally correct’ or ‘incorrect’, why would people need ‘identity’, as a nation of ‘sovereignty’? Stemming from the sense of ‘equality’, and ‘distinction’ is just the threshold of achieving it.
