Nowadays, there is no limit to the kinds of subjects to which an identity crisis
can be attributed: neighbourhoods, streets, markets, villages, towns, cities,
countries, entire continents, military alliances, political parties, churches,
companies, banks, football teams, schools, and on and on. This is not just an
inflationary figure of speech, but a symptom and a manifestation of the
uneasiness that many experience in the face of the rapid changes characteristic of
our time: ‘I no longer recognize the country/town/neighbourhood/street I grew
up in.’ A sense of loss of something familiar and the inability to keep up with
change is seen as a deviation from the ‘normal’ state of affairs, an identity crisis.
A second source of the proliferation of identity crises is branding. City branding
is a gold rush of consumer capitalism, and just one of many. Without an identity,
you are nothing, the you, in the event, not being a person but a ski resort (Vail,
like nothing on earth), a city (Welcome to fabulous Las Vegas), a country
(Incredible India), a continent (Inspiring a Great Africa), anything that sells.
When it no longer does, it must be suffering an identity crisis.
A vital part of every identity—of a person, a group, a corporation—is that it is
different from other identities. It does not exist naturally but must be marked off,
exhibited, enacted. This is what marketing is about, not just in the corporate
world. Image, reputation, and recognizability play a similar role in enacting
personal identity.
Acts of identity
In his comedy As You Like It, William Shakespeare has one of its characters
declare: ‘All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players’.
Some three and a half centuries later, sociologist Erving Goffman published his
book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, which is devoted to the question
of how and following what kind of prompts ‘all the men and women’ act on the
stage of society. People have a sense of who they are; they are self-conscious or
self-confident and act accordingly. In any event, they act. Goffman’s
‘dramaturgical analysis’ was a new approach to understanding personal identity
as a role-play that is constantly under review by actors who absorb and respond
to the feedback of socially relevant others.
Identity is an ensemble of features, costumes, fashion items, behaviours, speech
styles, and gestures, collaboratively manufactured with others and hung on the