Identity

Identity. Fragments, Frankness is a dense and powerful essay on the notion of identity and on how it plays in our contemporary world. In contrast with various attempts to cling to established identities, and to enclose identity within dubious agendas, Nancy shows that an identity is always open: to alterity and its transformations. Ultimately one does not have an identity but has to become what one is, without ever returning to a same but solely to difference and singularity. Jean-Luc Nancy shows the impasse of a certain conception of identity, as the “identity of the identifiable,” which always refers to some permanent, given, substantial identity, such as “the French.” To such identity, he opposes the identity of what identifies oneself, invents itself in an open process of exposure to others and internal difference.