W(h)ither Identity

What to do with the concept of identity in a post-identitarian framework? In the aftermath of poststructuralism, the concept of identity has been increasingly contested within and beyond academia for either prompting cultural essentialism or falling back onnaïve constructivism that relativizessocial differences.The aim of this volume is neither to outline a new definition of identity nor to deepen the criticism of essentialist or the constructivist approaches. However, far from radically dismissing or completely devoting oneself to the concept of identity,it isworth taking a closer look at the question,“What are we talking about when we talk about identity?”and, in doing so, moving beyond identity. This certainly entails understanding identity as positioned at the nexus of contemporary controversies about modes of subjectivation, articulations of equality, and forms of collectivization.

The articles inthis volume tackle the question of cultural identity from various disciplinary and thematic perspectives not only to discuss contemporary cultural constructions and discourses of identity but also to concentrate on practices, strategies, and modes of identification, counter-identification, and disidentification. As a result, the volume addresses the performative and political dimensions of cultural identity and concentrates on diverse modes of creating suspicious, paradoxical, and ambiguous identities-in-difference.