The fluidity of the postmodern age is mostly reflected in the relativization of the previous reference (value, aesthetic, ideological, national, cultural, subcultural, gender and other) points around which some of the possible identities are built. The beginning of the current "crisis" of identity began, as is often interpreted in social theories, with the process of globalization, that is, with the redefinition of hitherto known, and recognized by others, identification frameworks. In addition to the technologization and medialization of society on a global level, the contemporary culture of consumerism as well as the different lifestyles it shapes offer each individual the freedom to make one or more identity choices.
Identity and new challenges
In this sense, identity is mostly perceived as a potential for different forms of expression and play. It depends on how we perceive ourselves, but also how we present ourselves to others, which, according to the postmodernist interpretation, makes it a kind of dramatically constructed form. In addition, every modern individual is a parallel "owner" of several (types of) identities that are not mutually exclusive (at the same time we can be, say, a Frenchman or a Montenegrin or a Russian, but also a European, a citizen of the world or, on the other hand, a student, i.e. a lawyer, at the same time, a sports fan or an avid fisherman, etc., just as the "content" of any identity is not always the same, but depends on the contextual interpretation). Namely, modern times are democratizing the process of identification, i.e. it offers the possibility to (re)define ourselves relatively easily, given that identity is a narrative that is created/imagined on a social and psychological level, but it also makes it fragile, unstable due to constant fragmentation and new challenges.
However, any kind of identity exists on the basis of an imagined sameness and a shared feeling, for example, of ethnicity, regional affiliation, professional orientation, lifestyle, etc. it keeps the concrete (identity) fiction real, i.e. it recreates it in the play of real or imagined differences. In order to be Us, we always need some Others. And considering that identity is created on a cultural and social level, its constructive character is more visible in postmodern society than in traditional, even modern, which interpreted it as a relatively stable category. Therefore, the contemporary postmodern identity is (no longer) an imposed given, as interpreted by essentialist theories, but is constantly being discovered and defined again and again, first of all, in the dialogue with the so-called to others. In other words, the social content of different identity forms changes depending on the interpretation of the relationship between existing, (re)known identities. The postmodern age
The constructivist approach, as opposed to the essentialist approach, is reflected both on the social and individual level through the constant questioning of one's own identity within a national, ideological, professional or some other (in)formal structure. Thus, the socially acceptable processual nature of identity in a postmodern and consumerist-oriented society, on the one hand, frees us from social shackles on the micro and macro level, while on the other, it calls into question the existence of a stable, coherent self, which again seems confusing, insufficiently reliable in interaction with other, same or completely different, identities. Also, the problem of identification in postmodern society is that it is also played out, similarly as in traditional societies, by accepting some identity matrix. Although standardization and unification is voluntary, in the end, it is also an expression of a certain offer or acceptance of a desirable recommendation.
The postmodern age in which we live and through the daily dynamics of individual and collective social, economic and political relations shows that the hitherto known systems of cultural differences are increasingly difficult to survive, given the constant movement of people, information, goods and capital. First of all, modern technology, media, pragmatic national or personal interests, inside and outside, relativize existing cultural and national frameworks, change the concept of space, as well as ethnic and national distances (closeness and distance between geographical points, i.e. regions and their inhabitants, and the perception of the foreigner and otherness in general in the everyday dynamics of intertwined social relations). This, in a way, changes not only the ethnological "map" of the modern world, but also reconstructs the aforementioned individual sense of belonging, so, in addition to the survival or strengthening of national identities, forms of supranational identification are increasingly expressed (through, say, belonging to the so-called culture of the world , European, Latin American, etc.).
Producing new identities
Especially the mass media and the (popular and consumer) culture they indirectly produce do not know cultural, national, political or any other boundaries. Globalization, namely, implies the broadest form of identification, in which national identities are transformed by themselves, given that the main political and economic decisions are made from world power centers, that new cultural values and standards appear, as well as new forms of expression, understandable to all or most , in the form of popular symbols, heroes, myths, etc.
Therefore, as a result of the general medialization and virtualization of the world, the importance of territorial features is lost, and, after all, locality is becoming more and more fragile, regardless of whether it is viewed from a national or a wider, even global framework. After all, like the postmodern personality, she is filled with contradictions, destabilized by the movement of people and displaced by the emergence, as A. Appaduraj would say, of new types of virtual neighborhoods. In fact, borders, in the territorial and political sense, are becoming increasingly irrelevant, with the space (of action and interaction) expanding and narrowing at the same time, bearing in mind that a new type of "global locality" is emerging, i.e. phenomena of sameness and simultaneity.
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