Identity is a word that has multiple connotations. Paradoxically, there is not just one but many kinds of identities, whose characteristics, origins and development processes are quite different from one another. Individual identity, for example, is often brought into question at the very moment it is affirmed: Saint Augustine explains that sense of doubt in fact characterizes the fundamental moments in one’s life. The ego becomes aware of itself by a process of elimination: I am all, minus that which I am not. Given the multiple and different identities that exist today, the contemporary era is marked by a substantial contradiction: perhaps for the first time in history human identity itself is being brought into question. This is certainly an unsettling thought.
Between the I and the We, individual and collective identity, are numerous intermediate stages, yet they all converge towards the ultimate concept of a national identity as a development process as opposed to something static and homogeneous. It is not a photo, but more like video footage, much like a story with many images moving within it. This story can occasionally develop and feed false myths. In the past, pseudo-historians have constructed national identities, raised statues to people who never existed, created legends out of fictional deeds as a glue for the social cohesion and unity of a country and to provide the shared memory necessary for the construction of a common future.
National identity is thus more of a verb, an action, something that is “done”, rather than a noun. It is always born out of construction, even if it rarely ever follows a clear-cut blueprint laid out beforehand. Quite the contrary actually, it is often the fundamental role of spontaneity as opposed to officialdom in the process that drives the development of identity. However, institutional moments too play their role as memory and origins are necessary as well. It is often the memory of the dead that makes real those values necessary for the future. The value given to identity is at its highest at precisely the moment when identity is most threatened. Take for example US citizens after 9/11; as of that moment, many understood what being a Westerner meant in terms of sharing a cultural identity.
Some take a different approach. It often happens that the traditional definition of Nation today is, prosaically, that of a co-op high-rise, a sort of club where one pays a fee to be admitted, where there is little interest in the past and much is invested in the future. In contemporary society identity also counts as far as the economy is concerned; firms and multi-nationals invest in identity and operate on values such as trust, performance, innovation, and responsible citizenship. In corporations identity is imposed, but it does become a totem of sorts for the employees, certainly the target of easy sarcasms, yet brought to the attention of all.
For others, the nation is a choice, a moral precept that one continuously must renew, and has little to do with places, origins, memory and traditions. Yet there are many who refute this model and hold they are Italian not because they choose it, just that they are, “…and that’s that.” Italian cultural identity is very strong, but this does not necessarily automatically translate into a national identity, even if it has contributed to that national identity. Worth noting is that two thirds of the laws upon the unification of Italy concerned identity. It seem that this identification however has not yet come to pass. There have been two great unification projects in Italy’s history, both failures: Alessandro Manzoni’s linguistic unification, and Fascism’s attempt, with its artistic and architectural avant-gardes. It is worth examining the wisdom of taking other new but similar avenues today, given the country’s tendency towards fragmentation.
In this vein, some hold that only a subjective private identity survives in Italy today, and that it is not doing too well either. Yet it is impossible to build a future on individualistic excesses among other reasons because there are many intermediate identities (regional, provincial, and municipal) between the personal and national ones. It is precisely local identity that provides the cohesion for a community: yet only national identity can bridge the local and global dimensions. As of the Second World War, national identity has steadily gotten weaker, among other things due to the typically Italian, inveterate tendency towards self-denigration. Today, it becomes ever more difficult, because fragmentation is paradoxically held as a sort of defense mechanism against that very same weakening.