Relational Identity (or Identity When One Has No Power over the World)

Abstract

Modern sociologists agree in that individuality is the structure of personhood typical of modern subjects. It is characterized by a sense of autonomous agency based on an independent, self-awareness which forms the core of personal identity. Individuality fosters a certain emotional detachment from outside reality—which is processed through rational control—and a concomitant sense of power over the world, materialized through technology and work specialization. Enlightenment thought saw Western history as a trajectory culminating in the triumph of the individual, who had outgrown all emotional (mythical) bonds with external reality, embracing rationality and science instead. The hypothesis of this book, however, is that emotional bonds and communal belonging are unavoidable, as they constitute the indispensable foundation of ontological security; without them, truly isolated subjects would feel all the weight of their powerlessness in the face of incommensurable natural forces. What gradual male individuality involved was not a progressive emotional detachment from the world but a progressive unrecognition of their emotional bonds instead, which continued to be acted in an unconscious level. Understanding this process may be the key to unlocking how the patriarchal order works. But first we must turn to the mechanism of identity operating at surface level, where, in fact, individualized traits were gradually superseding relational ones in masculine identity.