TRANS-INDIVIDUATION
UND DESIDENTIFIKATION

Ali Akay

 

  

The identity of the individual is a central problem of our time. We have inherited this situation from the creation of the nation-state, and also, before it, the creation of kingdoms in Europe. The European Enlightenment is one of the factors through which the individual has come to be seen as a person who belongs to a collectivity. This was a moment in history when we ceased to speak of “geography, latitudes and longitudes”, and began to speak of politics in new terms, in which the subject, the people, became a central element. We have been using the idea of “citizenship” since the creation of the nation-state, and it has become a very positive formulation, with strong connotations of freedom.
Hobbes placement “people” before the notion of “citizenship”, eliminating the concept of a multitude, something that is very relevant to us today, with respect to contemporary sociological use of the terms . The legacy of the nation-state is for us a serious problem because of the many crimes this entity was responsible for during its history, a history that we are still experiencing and from which we must absolutely exit, if we are to move forward into our new situation and the creation of new kinds of multitudes.
The historical development of the idea of the individual belonging to a collective community possesses a number of bifurcations. The French sociologist Gabriel Tarde (1843-1904) interpreted the subject of the individual in terms of Leibniz’ ideas of the monad. Tarde added to the Leibnizien monad the concept of open doors and windows. It means that Leibniz’s cabinet has ni door neither windows. It is a closed monad whereas the individual of Tarde is a poreuse one and not closed to itself. This is a trans-individuality, the poreuse one and for that reason we can call that crossing individual situation of the person as a desidentification in itself because of the open relationship to the whole possibility of the global individuation.
This is a moment in the history of philosophy when we see the notion of the individual as an integrated person, as an indivisible subject of consciousness. This development of the indivisibility of the person makes one person belong to himself. Sociology has further developed the difference between society and the individual as a long process of the separation of the individual from the societal (social). Later, at the beginning of the 20th century, in Durkheim’s work, the individual was separated from the collective and exists as a part of the society.
In our current approach to sociology, in part because of the influence of the positions of Durkheim, society and the individual are not able to understand, I think, the position of the individual today. During the last two decades the notion of multiculturalism has begun to have a central role in the debate in the social sciences and in the arts. But unfortunately this has been only, in the main, in the context of the contentious subject of immigration. Immigrants have the possibility of creating new kinds of culture in the societies in which they are involved, and they can choose to accept assimilation or the differences of the cultures (a new demand of young citizens, especially from post-colonial countries). We can call this the culture of immigrants. On this point the idea of “a people” is very problematic because what we call people according to Hobbes are those who belong to a nation-state. How we can talk about “a people” when immigrants are only immigrants and not citizens? To have citizenship demands a naturalization of the individual coming from another culture. In Europe it is possible to be a member of a nation only if one has citizenship of the nation.