Narratives of absence

Abstract

This chapter addresses the construction and limits of the category of personal identity in European human rights law. In particular, it examines the way in which this category has been shaped by notions of absence, loss, and lack. Accounts of these experiences feature heavily in the case law pertaining to personal identity; the cases themselves often concern claims about the way in which an individual’s sense of identity has been impacted, obstructed, or held back in some way by State action (or inaction). The chapter shows how the category of personal identity in European human rights law has been constructed in the light of these claims and how it is underpinned by certain narratives about how absence is to be managed. These are rooted in European human rights law’s vision of the individual; and the deeper argument of the chapter is that European human rights law’s category of personal identity is inseparable from this vision. The effect is that the category of personal identity here has been constructed as a limit (in the light of claims that have been made about the sense of identity) but that it also contains within itself – and cannot be treated as separable from – the limits of European human rights law’s vision of the individual.