Dis-Identity as Living Identity

Abstract

We present the concept of “dis-identity” as an intra-personal and inter-personal phenomenon of a person’s inner life and interpersonal relations. Disidentity manifests itself both in people’s inner monologues and in their dialogues with other people. Although the principal meaning of inner monologues is “discourses with one voice”, they do, in fact, reveal intrinsic polyphony and alterity, i.e. dialogicity between different voices, which come both from different parts of the same person and from other (imagined, internalized) persons. This dialogicity leads to the concept of disidentity and to its main forms: from a spatial perspective, we distinguish “inside” – disidentity from “inside vs. outside” – disidentity; from a temporal perspective, we distinguish diachronic from synchronic disidentity. Literature offers vivid examples of inner monologues in which disidentity emerges, one of these being Arthur Schnitzler’s novella Fräulein Else (1924). In order to explain the concept of disidentity we analyze some passages taken from this work.