Social identity is constituted by one’s free manner of adopting it.

Evidence

A Jew is not a Jew first in order to be subsequently ashamed or proud; it is his pride of being a Jew, his shame, or his indifference which will reveal to him his being-a-Jew; and this being-a-Jew is nothing outside the free manner of adopting it. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1238

Categorization

• XREF: The genealogy of this idea runs straight into Beauvoir’s ‘one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman’ and Sartre’s own Réflexions sur la question juive. — connects to: The person is defined as a free relation to oneself; Social identity theory is primarily a theory of group freedom. — Cristian Tileagă, The Nature of Prejudice: Society,…, 392; Individual identity forms dialogically through a constitutive outside, not autonomously. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2: Identity…, 363 (+4 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that being-a-Jew is ‘nothing outside the free manner of adopting it’ dissolves any pre-social essence of identity — a dense, paradigm-shifting move worth sitting with.

Broader Connections

• Individual identity forms dialogically through a constitutive outside, not autonomously. #contradicts (0.82) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 363
• Social identity theory is primarily a theory of group freedom. #expands (0.80) — Cristian Tileagă, The Nature of Prejudice, 392
• For social individuals, freedom is a positive relation to the environment #expands (0.78) — Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 3668
• Identity is both a source of agency and increasingly constructed rather than given #expands (0.75)
• Communitarian personhood defines identity through community rather than the Cartesian I #complicates (0.72) — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 434