Identity is a crucial, yet rather blurry category in political science and research. The countless heterogeneous concepts of identity have led to claims for the abandonment of the whole term. That way, identity is being dissected into its different meanings and getting replaced by numerous sub-terms.
In contrast to this development, I am discussing identity with a focus on its inherent and internal contradictions, thus sketching a productive approach to the term. I will illustrate that not only the meaning of identity can be found within its contradictions, but that they are even constitutive for the term and belonging together.
The most important contradictions are 1) the relation between the identical and the non-identical, 2) the relation between collective and individual identities, 3) the relation between internal and external elements of identity-building, 4) the relation between fluid and static moments of identity.
I will analyze each of those contradictory, yet related pairs with a specific concept of mediation that goes back to Hegel. That way, a contradictory relation can be described in which two elements are opposed to each other, while at the same time they are constituted through each other, mutually including and excluding each other simultaneously. More importantly, their contradiction remains and does not dissolve into an integrative synthesis.
The understanding of those contradictions and their specific relations provides a crucial insight into the term identity as well as into the relevance of accompanying normative questions. It becomes clear that each aspect of identity can be repressive as well as emancipatory. Therefore, identity itself cannot be used as a normative category. Yet the analysis of its contradictions allows for normative approaches.
