The anchoring of personal identity

Abstract

Many postmodern authors have claimed the dissolution of identity due to the multiplicity of personal relationships, to the variety of experiences or to the huge social changes in process. Nonetheless, I argue that, in spite of not being possible to sustain an essentialist conception of the subject, there are many elements that preclude an absolute dissolution of identity, anchoring the subject to a certain personal identity, but in a problematic, conflictive, and changing way. Furthermore, the dissolution of identity would not necessarily be beneficial for subjects nor groups, as long as the demand of interaction rights comes close to the maintaining of acknowledgeable identities. The problem would rather be the difficulty to accede to valuable identities in the prevailing life conditions, making difficult to produce positive self-discourses, and thus generalizing processes of identity ?fragilization?.