A Few Thoughts on Identity
There is a peculiar obsession with identity today: some deconstruct or dilute it, others produce endless multiplicities of it, while still others resist this proliferation as excessive or even castrating, and wish to resort in an identity concept that is exclusive and symbolic. What unites these conflicting engagements is that they revolve around a notion that has been philosophically disproven and that is metaphysically untenable.
Today, when we say “I am,” we usually mean “my identity is,” “I identify as,” or “I feel like.” This language game finds wide application in a perpetual play of divisions and is itself rooted in a conceptual split: in the 20th century, the term identity was detached from its logical-philosophical context and redeployed to explain psychological and sociological observations. From these new applications it developed into a tool for claiming positions and positioning claims. Nowadays, it permeates all spheres of society and shapes global discourses, as well as the desiring machines that algorithmically cater to almost any form of imagined self-identity. Time to take a step back and reflect.
In the sphere of logic, identity stands for the abstract, universal condition that an entity has a relation only to itself and nothing else. Politicised and commodified ideas about identity, however, often revolve around commonalities and differences, which is inherently contradictive from a standpoint of formal logic. This contradiction points to a tendency to suspend logic in favor of particular worldviews or belief frameworks.
Classical logic formalises identity as reflexivity:
∀x: x = x
a principle holding true only within an idealised, symbolic space.
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While in our experience there is repetition and iteration, each experience and entity is singular, but lacks inherent existence and therefore identity. Nothing is completely independent, uncaused, or unchanging. This is the essence of the buddhist doctrines, elaborated and formalised by thinkers like Nagarjuna. He infers that because all phenomena arise dependently upon causes and conditions, they must be empty of essence, and therefore, without ultimate foundation in the world.
The world is matter and mind, mind is experience and experience is dependent and singular. Subsequently the inference chain
a = a ⇒ a = a
collapses into
a ≠ a
when referring to anything outside of the logical space, within which it is true, but nonsensical, true nonsense, so to speak, true as no senses are involved.
This is not to say that there is no point in claiming identity within certain language games. However, when its differential and linguistic forms are invoked with intentionality, the purpose and clarity of the underlying concepts need to be questioned, and their validity measured against their real-world effects. In a cyclical game where all positions and tokens are conditioned and contingent, what can truly be won? What is the value, if not losing the game to itself?
