What are the mechanisms of identity formation? Is the process conscious or not? Can human subjects control it? Could it’s construction be life-long, the same way Castoriadis presents the notion of “education”? Judith Butler would tell us that the never-ending process of identification belongs to the imaginary, while the identity -or the multiple identities- one assumes, are discursively constructed , within a play of difference and exclusion. Laclau, affirms that the constitution of identity – social in particular- is in fact an act of power. The ontology of identification has been re-conceptualized through postmodern psychoanalytic, feminist, social, cultural theories and philosophy. It is believed that the differentiation of post-modern to modern times is the quest for “open options”, for the “recycling” of the elements one adopts -or consumes as commodities as parts of their identity, in contrast to the concrete “self” modernity was praising. If we may address the era emerging right now as Alter-modernity, using Bourriaud’s term, then the contemporary nomad, the “radicant”, excludes from his identity all ties to geographical borders and positioning, forming a self that can exist and integrate in presumably all contexts. Call them flâneurs, vagabonds, tourists, players or radicants, the human subject’s pursue of “belonging” is an infinite journey, towards what one cannot really have, through the fragmented and discontinuous human relationships. And however identification is articulated, this theatrical representation of the self is stated in a series of everyday practices, that we have come to recognize as a kind of “performativity”.
