things as race, religion, language, ethnicity, kinship, tradition, and even sex and
life, while the methods and tools of individual identification have become more
and more accurate. Is this a contradiction? If so, do we still know what we are
talking about when talking about identity? Is there anything that deserves to be
called a theory of identity that we can identify without stumbling from one
battlefield of disputation to another?
In socially relevant domains, identities are borders, borders that separate
independent countries, distinct ethnic groups and races, languages and their
speakers, genders and sexualities, exclusive clubs, self-governing companies,
and autonomous individuals. These units erect and defend their borders
jealously. However, fixed as we may imagine them being, these borders are fluid
and shifting. This is what identity apostles most fear; and it is hardly
coincidental that the obsession with identity has reached new highs at a time
when, in the Western world, migration across national borders is widely
perceived as a threat.
Identity in whatever sense means sameness, but if we leave it at that, we are
running in circles. Although Socrates saw many things, and although Leibniz’s
idea of the indiscernibility of identicals was and still is the clearest and most
coherent definition of identity ever proposed, we have to recognize that the
importance of identity then and now is different. This being so, identity today is,
above all, our crown witness of a changing worldview imparted to us by
scientific insights, technological innovation, and consumer capitalism—for
better or worse.
Aspects of identity that are relevant to our present understanding include the
following. First, the social and psychological concerns with identity are a
product of modernity. This implies, next, that the concept is anchored in Western
thinking. There therefore has to be an admission of the changeability of identity,
both of any particular identity and of the concept. As part of modernization and
Westernization, it spread around the world, prompting reflection about what is in
the object and what is in our disposition to categorize the world around us. In the
West, admonitions to avoid essentialism are of relatively recent origin, and with
regard to identity not always heeded. By contrast, it has long been a guiding
principle of Buddhist thought that identity is in the mind and not in the world. In
keeping with such non-essentialist views, identity has moved from absolute
sameness to perceived similarity, common interest, shared gods, shared space,