Human identity and human reflection today: A philosophical and personal overview

Human 'identity' is not a given. In other words, human beings are seldom born with a clear sense of who they are and what is their individual and collective purpose in a larger society. Instead, it is up every human animal of the species to invest meaning in his or her life -- or so implies the popular post-modern conception of human identity, shouted from every self-help book on the shelves. Find your true self! Build your best self! Make your identity matter in today's multicultural world! But according to academic and postmodern critical theorists of identity such as Michel Foucault, 'identities' are not something that certain people have or do not have, or even something that people find. Rather, identities are about particular people in specific situations. (Gauntlett, 1998)

Once upon a time, anthropologists and historians of philosophy...
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