Gori, Roland <br/><br/>
The desire for identity: a recurring and dangerous nihilist mirage? 

 -  2025.<br/>							 
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<br/><br/> The question of identity is at the heart of the desire to belong to a cultural, religious, community, or national community. It determines both adherence and repulsion, demands for integration and isolationism, the desire for brotherhood and the desire for murder. Every human being is both irreplaceable and multiple, at the intersection of complex networks of belonging that have made us what we are, a “composite identity.” Identity is the product of a discourse. An essentialist conception of identity exposes us, sooner or later, to the fascist temptation to disavow the “composition” of the multiple identities of a people, a community, or even an individual. The supposed identity results from the social, religious, economic, and political interactions in the crucible of which the identifications of individuals and social groups are formed. The history of the Mediterranean, more than any other marine expanse, has revealed the power of this intermingling, for the better of human civilization, for the worse of its conflicts.