Table of Contents
Part I "Identity Can be a Complicated Matter"
1 Learning the Language of Identity 3
Identity Questions: A Lexical Puzzle 3
Declaring One's Identity 7
An American Concept 13
The Idea of an Identity Crisis 15
Identity according to Erikson: An Anthropological Notion 20
Identity after Erikson 22
A Question of Language 26
Plural Identity 29
2 Of What Use Is the Concept of Identity? 39
Is There Such a Thing as Identity in This World? 39
The Comedy of Identity 43
The Principle of Individuation 47
The Logic of Proper Names 51
Identity Criteria 55
Is Identity Relative? 58
Part II "Who Am I?"
3 Identity in the Subjective Sense 65
"Who Am I?" 65
An Identity at Once Objective and Subjective 68
How Can Identity Be Subjectified? 71
To Be the Same in One's Own Eyes 74
The Prince and the Cobbler 81
Recovering One's Own Self 84
4 The Disembedded Individual 88
The Right of Subjectivity 88
To Be or Not to Be Oneself? 92
The "Apprenticeship Years" 100
Modern Identity 104
Exercises in Self-Definition 108
Becoming a Modern Individual 113
The Future of Individualism 121
Experssive Identity 129
Part III "Who Are We?"
5 Collective Identities 135
"Who Are We?" 135
A Linguistic Difficulty 136
The Analogy between a Person and a People 143
The Logic of Collective Bodies 146
The Moral Person as Fictive Person 153
The Historical Identity of a City 159
A Sociological Definition of the Nation 162
The Enigma of Collective Individuality 167
6 The "We" as Instituting Power 174
The Individuation of a "We" 174
The Composition of a "We" 181
The Instituting Power 191
Envoi 195
Works Cited 201
Index 207
