Wealth, Money, Power. The lexical triplet that has become synonymous with the successful human in the eyes of many. We seek social-psychological constants to define ourselves in terms of financial standing, purchasing power, class, race and religion; the negotiated relationship between one’s perception of oneself and how one is perceived by others poses a challenge in collective and individual social psychology within volatile social structures. The constant ebb and flow of society’s river makes it difficult for the human to define his or herself within its confines. We may wonder why, in any case, we need to form reductive definitions of the self in the realm of identity; there is an underlying collective desire to achieve an applicable set of defining criteria as a functioning paradigm of self-identity in cultural taxonomies. The task of achieving self-affirmation and recognition is more arduous where there is a lack of clear cultural constants; in the absence of fixed sociocultural markers providing a semiotic lens through which to mould one’s personal identity, the grip we have on social categories and definitions may be slipping. What is one to do to remedy the weakening grasp on social identity markers?
Identity politics is no new narrative. Its emergence as a socio-political concept can be traced back many years through the vista of social and political history. The type of identity politics I circumscribe here is, by its nature, concerned with the relationship between political society and the self. This echoes some of the scholarly contributions of Sartre concerning the dilemma of human purpose as something entirely defined by ourselves; no serious reader of Sartre could forget his important assertion that existence precedes essence. If one accepts this stance as a truism, one would have to – as a sequitur – concede that we are in full control of our decisions and therefore possess full existential responsibility in creating and fulfilling one’s role and function. In the context of post-industrialism, capitalism and the pursuit of material wealth, the angst of attempting to find meaning and purpose within ourselves is further exacerbated; to exist in contexts of capitalist hegemony and democracy in a society rife with contradictions poses difficulties in fixing one’s place in the external world.
Breaking free from the expectations and paradigms that society throws at us has emerged as a dominant postmodern theme. ‘Once you label me, you negate me’; when this was posited by Kierkegaard, he certainly wasn’t surrounded by the modernist habits and customs of adverts, homogenous fashions or 21st century technological advancement. The need to assume an identity using labels and concrete paradigms seems to be increasingly urgent for modern society; one is constantly battling with the desire to self-affirm on the one hand, and society’s creation and ascription of identity labels on the other. In other words, how can one formulate their individual purpose, identity and function, where there exists a dominance of societal pressure and aesthetic paradigms of anthropological conformity? For those scholars who have explored the theme of life in the absence of an external meaning, there tend to be negative corollaries. A philosophical example is Camus’ L’Étranger, in which Meursalt is unfortunately executed for what is essentially his natural behaviour in the absence of external meaning defined by predetermined morals and principles; the message one reads from the text is that living freely to a full extent in society is very difficult. Meursalt was found guilty by a group of humans who, as Camus puts it, could have made the judgement at an entirely different time of the day; this cleverly highlights the sheer absurdity of life.
As globalisation continues to dominate the world’s stage, finding valuable existential meaning and establishing individual purpose will inevitably evolve. Indeed, the absurdity of life and the lack of a concrete function need not be negative; where the external world lacks purpose, it is a chance for the human to become master of his or her destiny and be creative in finding meaning.