Improperty

Abstract

"In the long-winded and often tiresome discussions devoted to the problem of possible meanings of the word “postmodern” the notion of identity is undoubtedly one of the key terms around which the vying sides construct their basic arguments whether they be “conservative” or “progressive.” The most familiar issue is, of course, whether the postulated postmodern identity (if it exists) is in fact just a developed form of the modem identity, or whether it is a new phenomenon that radically breaks with the modem as an authoritarian paradigm. Such discussions, although they have been pursued for at least the last three decades, have not led to any satisfying conclusions. One of the points of this essay will be that the reason for this might be at least partially due to the overhasty neglect in the analyses of the construction of an identity, and especially in its postmodern mutation, of the second term under our surveillance, that is to say, the nature of property and its effects." (fragm.)