Identity Crisis as a Political Challenge of the 21st Century: Theoretical Approaches to Research, Evaluating, and Understanding

Abstract

The article presents an overview of the latest challenges to sustainable political development highlighted in contemporary research. Among these challenges is the advent of the Anthropocene epoch, with transhumanism, including the large-scale development of artificial intelligence, and the crisis of group identities. Rapid and sometimes abrupt cultural changes that have occurred in the recent decades, transformations in the relations between people, between humanity and nature, are leading to the manifestation of a crisis of group identity, ranging from local to national identities. As a result of analyzing academic publications, the author concludes that in recent years there has been a large-scale growth in works on identity issues, the concept of identity being increasingly common in the political vocabulary. The article identifies two points of view on identity: the first one posits the fact that identity is based on differences and disagreements that need to be overcome, while the second one insists that differences should be maintained and preserved. The author justifies the idea that the response to the identity crisis may be to use the possibilities of “soft” constructing identity values and social memory within the framework of identity policies aimed at shaping national identity, which includes a range of regional and local identities. Such an answer is a complex and controversial process associated with the acquisition of the nation’s subjectivity. Self-identification and the acquisition of various identities constructed by dominant groups lead to an awareness of the subjectivity of diverse groups and to new risks and conflicts in the struggle for values. Nevertheless, the recognition of identity crises as an urgent political challenge, the study and understanding of emerging conflicts, and the search for positive ways out of them make it possible to combine global optics with the interests of the nation state, the individual and small local groups.