Contemporary identity is self-fashioning rather than fixed essence

Evidence

We live in an epoch in which identity is defined no longer as a permanent essence but as a process of autoconstitution or ”fashioning,” to reclaim the term used by Foucault, a process at whose heart a multiplicity of possible figurations unfolds. Today everyone lives multiple lives, at the same time and successively. — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 232

Categorization

• DEFINE: Foucault’s ‘fashioning’/‘self-fashioning’ term is defined here as autoconstitution against fixed essence.
• XREF: connects to: The appearance of abundant identity options masks structural pressure toward situational selves — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 37; Structural modernization necessarily transforms subjective identity — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 82; Identity can be denaturalized to reveal its crafted and contingent nature. — Mary Bucholtz and Kira Hall, Identity and Interaction: A…, 94 (+15 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: The appearance of abundant identity options masks structural pressure toward situational selves — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 37; Structural modernization necessarily transforms subjective identity — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 82; Identity can be denaturalized to reveal its crafted and contingent nature. — Mary Bucholtz and Kira Hall, Identity and Interaction: A…, 94 (+15 more)

Broader Connections

• Individual identity forms dialogically through a constitutive outside, not autonomously. #complicates (0.85) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 363
• Identity is constructed through opposition to a continuously reinterpreted other #complicates (0.78)