Punctualizing Identity

Questions of identity, the nuance of self to context or culture, continue to dominate despite a fashion to imagine ‘structures’ of class, status and ethnicity as becoming less demanding and, hence, more fluid and open to choice. In contrast to a picture of individuals suspended in fluids of their own making, this article introduces the idea of identity being punctualized: a ‘revealing’ of each specified identity within the here and now; and in response to the ‘demand’ of others. Accepting there is a positioning effect, requiring those making demands to be in a position to make their specific reading on identity, the article draws on Henry James’s novel The Ambassadors, to illustrate a timing effect, in which each ‘call’ demands a display of identity that annuls other ‘calls’ – precisely by overtaking these in the here and now. These demands arguably overlap with Heidegger’s formulation, in which the demanding relation is general and is presented as the effect of technology: technology transforms everything in nature, including ourselves, into things ‘standing in advance’. Relations are not attenuated, so much as it matters more what identity is being produced (and when).