ACTUALIZATION OF THE STUDY OF IDENTITY PROBLEMS IN THE MODERN WORLD

Abstract

The article provides an interdisciplinary analysis of the modern study of the problem of identity, the specifics of the study of personal and collective identity, the change in the vector of its research in the 90s of the last century. It has been clarified which factors motivated the development of identity research. When studying identity, the emphasis is on collective identity. Its study involves the study of cultures and histories in the form of various types of cultural and historical memory. The study of identity is interdisciplinary and international in nature and involves the concepts of culture and memory (history). Cultural or collective identity provides an opportunity to return to the study of the past. This allows us to assert that the conceptual triad «identity-culture-memory» not only exists now in a close relationship, relying on each other, but also constantly changes its conceptual meanings under mutual influence. Therefore, all three concepts not only underwent significant semantic changes. As an important element of this triad, the study of the phenomenon of identity in the world is rapidly developing such areas of interdisciplinary research as identity politics, memory politics, public history and historical politics, which are interconnected, but each of them has its own specificity and area. This testifies to the constant mutual development of the very phenomena that they denote and explain. It can be determined that this deep semantic transformation clearly indicates that the world is approaching significant changes in ideas about the time of human existence, which will destroy the modern idea established for more than 200 years about the meaning of the dimensions of the present and the future in people’s lives. Now it becomes clear what importance the prerequisites for the rapid development of not only such fields of study as CulturalStudies, MemoryStudies, but also gender studies, in particular, the study of gender and queer identity, etc., have acquired in the last 30 years. These interdisciplinary fields of research are now being manipulated, scorned, silenced, and long-term forgotten by power structures and influence groups.