Identity Lost or Identity Found? Celebration and Lamentation over the Postmodern View of Identity in Social Science and Fiction

Abstract

Abstract One persistent topic in the recent wave of so-called postmodernist thinking is that of individual identity. The insertion of the problematizing adjective ‘so called’ suggests at the outset that there is some doubt as to the kind of thinking that may be called ‘postmodern’. Indeed, the adjectives ‘postmodern’ and ‘postmodernist’ are frequently used in social science and humanities writing nowadays. Sometimes they stand contrasted to ‘modern’ and ‘modernist’, sometimes not; sometimes they are used synonymously, sometimes not. I have no ambition to sort out various semantic confusions once and for all, but I wish to propose a temporary order for the purposes of this chapter. I shall use the word ‘postmodern’ to denote a special kind of attitude, a sensibility that has its roots in one or another kind of disenchantment with what Lyotard (1979/1987) calls ‘The Modern Project’. It often comes in one of two versions: despairing or celebratory.