Identity

Identity. Fragments, Frankness is a dense and powerful essay on the notion of identity and national identity, and on how they play in our contemporary world. In contrast with the various attempts to cling to established identities, or to enclose identity within dubious agendas, Nancy shows that an identity is always open: to alterity and its transformations. Against cynical initiatives instrumentalizing the question of identity towards anti-immigrant policies, Nancy attempts in this book to problematize anew the notions of identity, nation, and national identity. Nancy's seeks to show that there is never a given identity but an open process of identification that always retains an exposure to difference, never returning to a self-identical subject, such as "the French." 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. To such identity, he opposes the identity of what or who identifies itself, and invents itself in an open process of exposure to others and internal difference. An identity is never given, but "makes itself by seeking and inventing itself." One does not have an identity, but is his or her identity. An identity is an act, not a state. This is an important book, at the center of current events and discussions on national identity, and providing a much needed philosophical clarification on such a complex and strategic notion.