Postmodernity and the identity crises

Postmodernity is characterized by the liquefaction (Z. Bauman) of social and individual structures. Identity, as the trace left by belonging to communities such as family, neighborhood, or church, the last root of the individual caught in the flows of social (professional, economic, or spatial) mobility – becomes in turn a construct, a process, shaped by personal choices and decisions. Inventionism speaks of the set of identity tools that a person can use to paint an image, a self, or a convenient identity adapted to their temporary goals. Psychology has taken on the task of monitoring a person’s capacity to identify, their personality’s plasticity; politics determines the resources that may contribute to identification. Yet, people are still unaccustomed to their cultural emancipation. Initially diagnosed as resistance, rigidity, or difficulty in giving up a designated role within a total institution such as the army, the identity crisis was later associated by Erik Erikson with the age at which individuals assume their first significant decisions – the beginning of maturity, or in psychological terms, adolescence. Today, identity crises – understood as disorientation, lack of assumption, or absence of designated cultural roles – have spread across all ages, intensifying at moments of social status changing. Under conditions of extreme social fluidity and instability, the identity crisis can become a permanent feature of the postmodern personality’s psychic structure.