Identity and Not Identification: Arriving at the Infinite Point Where Not-to-Be Is to Be
Identity and Not Identification: Arriving at the Infinite Point Where Not-to-Be Is to Be

Summary/Abstract: Central to this paper are two concepts: one is “being” and another “identity”. Both concepts are intertwined in the personhood of the person; but, from a specific perspective that this paper espouses, “being” is viewed as absence since we cannot locate it in the present, except in its state of non-being (with the future always already moving into the past before ‘I’ can fully experience it in the present), whereas identity is constructed through the consciousness of being (that there is in fact an ‘I’ that knows itself as ‘I’ in the historical present); identity is viewed as “present” and a product of society and circumstances. This paper argues that all notions of identity made outside a notion of “being” or “absence” – I use them interchangeably because I cannot think of a moment in which I am in the present and which has simply moved on to become my past – result in a politics of resentment; genuine struggles descend into extremism and their concerns are restricted to narrower terms of identification rather than a more accommodative and inclusive notion of identity. The politics of identity must confront its limitations in the quest for absoluteness, because of the tendency to arrive logically and prescriptively towards a monolithic understanding of reality where the historical present, as in the position I occupy in the political historical context, is privileged over the fact that the “present” is never really the present but the past or the future. No identity is possible without an insight into the presence of another being (which is possible when I view my own present as a passing one) within the field in which one exists as a self. In other words, I am entitled to assert my selfhood, like in attempting to preserve my self-respect. I cannot fix the event in the absolute present, but must look at it as an attempt to engage in dialogue with another being outside the “self” that is simultaneously both ‘I’ and ‘me’ as far as my physical and psychological needs are concerned.

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