Identity Discourses in Western Late Modernity and the Notion of “Liminal Space”

Abstract

Constructing narratives that can combat people’s unease about their sense of belonging, by providing a sense of certainty and steadfastness, is a recurrent affect in the history of humanity.1 Perhaps change is, however, the only constant in this history. Over a hundred years ago, Max Weber bemoaned the transition to a rationalized modernity as “the disenchantment of the world,”2 which in turn had been inspired by similar concerns expressed by Friedrich Schiller in his poem “The Gods of Greece” (“Die Götter Griechenlands”) at the end of the eighteenth century.3 Intensifying scholarly debates across the humanities and social sciences, asking questions about what people experience as fundamental changes to the fabric of their lived realities and how they cope with it, further indicate that Western societies are in transition in the present day. There is, however, disagreement over whether the human condition simply observes changes or whether it transforms into a qualitatively new stage, one that has been termed postmodernity, late modernity, and liquid modernity.4 Nevertheless, there is a consensus among scholars that contemporary realities unfold in contrast to social imaginaries that have defined Western societies and senses of belonging since the “global transformation” took place in the nineteenth century. This transformation still “underpins core aspects of contemporary international relations,” as Barry Buzan and George Lawson contend.5 Even today, social imaginaries are narrated—and criticized as such—in grand terms, often with a focus on the nation and a (however conceived) glorious future.