Cultural identity as a factor of social exclusion

Abstract

It is mandatory to begin by recognizing that «identity» is an inevitable word. But it is that, whether we like it or not, the «search for identity» has become fashionable and its reaffirmation as a kind of essential property, in which the soul or genius of the people resides. It is good that this identity essentialism be criticized (and I will also do it with philosophical tools), that the contingent nature of all identification be remembered, the changing history that makes all identity a process, a reality in perpetual movement. It is true that this issue is usually addressed within the framework of globalization, against whose supposed uniformity and homogeneity, ethnic and cultural identity responses or the reaffirmation of identitary nationalisms have emerged. But here we are not trying to raise it in the abstract plane of geopolitics, but in the very concrete of social coexistence.