For something to say in the meantime I casually observe that these days everybody is bound, at one moment or another is his life, to have the feeling of being a failure. We are agreed on that.<\/p>Michel Houellebecq, Whatever<\/em>^{1<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 1 <\/a> - Michel Houellebecq, Whatever<\/em>, trans. Paul Hammond (London: Serpent\u2019s Tail, 1998 [1994]), 30.<\/span><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Much has been written about fear of the Other and the foreigner. The latter, an exemplary figure for Georg Simmel, embodies the constant and paradoxical tension between the near and the far, here and elsewhere. This position of the Other is often idealized in the figure of the monster or the barbarian, a liminary character who always occupies the border between two worlds: the known and the beyond, the world ordered by the signifier and chaos. The monster is a \u201ctypical\u201d figure, because it personifies the cosmic and spiritual forces which have not yet been \u00adsubjected to the rational order of logos. Its appearance thus \u00adcoincides with the irruption of the subversive into the social. The \u201cOther,\u201d the monster, is the antithesis of common sense, disturbing our registers of meaning and threatening social order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another kind of fear exists, one more specific to our \u00adcontemporary world, which shares this anthropological fear of the Other: the fear of being ignored and unrecognized<\/em> by otherness. The history of \u00adcontemporary social struggles demonstrates, in this respect, a passion for recognition which is manifested in repeated declarations of pride and in the \u00adprofusion of battles for respect and identity (pride marches, the recognition of specific identities, etc.). Individuals today would like to be identified and seen for what they are intrinsically while at the same time feeling that they have worth in the social fabric. These demands have not arisen out of nothing; they appeared alongside a new normalcy of \u00adbehaviour which emerged, in the West, in the mid-twentieth century and which \u00ademphasized individuality, authenticiy and independence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This individualism of behaviour is manifested in the increase in demands for autonomy and freedom from former hierarchical and \u00adcommunal structures. Zygmunt Bauman uses the term \u201cfluidification\u201d^{2<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 2 <\/a> - Zygmunt Bauman, La vie liquide<\/em> (Rodez\/Paris: Rouergue\/J. Chambon, 2006).<\/span> to describe our society, which is characterized by emancipation from the identity imposed by tradition and by the idealization of the cult of the \u00adaesthetic construction of the self (to create your own life freely, like a work of art). The maxim \u201cbecome what you are\u201d might be seen as the rallying cry of this contemporary \u201cindividualism,\u201d a term that is often \u00adcompromised but which must be understood, in a broad sense, as the capacity for \u00adself-definition. Individualism, too often understood as \u00adexaggerated \u00adselfishness and detachment from any social bond, is above all a constantly ongoing personal project: claiming the right to master one\u2019s singularity by means of the demand to control one\u2019s life and of resistance to an identity that has been imposed and assigned from without. For Charles Taylor, for example, individualism is also, and above all, expressed through moral conviction and the goal of achieving the Good Society, in which a \u00adrelationship with transcendence is interiorized.^{3<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 3 <\/a> - Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity <\/em>(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989).<\/span> Individual thus intend to make their own ethical choices while at the same time forming social bonds which are freely entered into.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This new model, however, even as it increases an individual\u2019s \u00adfreedom at the expense of the community, creates new problems. Modern individuals are certainly free, but naked; subjected to \u00adthemselves, to the constant search for bearings in a world that has become a horizon of meanings<\/em>. More simply, what had previously been supplied by the original \u00adcommunity (identity, marriage and hierarchical status, culture, \u00adorganization of time, rituals, etc.) has become today something very much constructed by oneself out of reservoirs of knowledge and skills unevenly distributed throughout society: individuals become individual trajectories<\/em> in search of their personal identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless, this identity is never \u201cshaped\u201d in complete isolation. It is constantly engaged in a specular relationship with the Other and the world. It comes to terms with the \u201cgiven\u201d as well as with ready-made \u00adelements; it adopts attitudes and ways of living and doing that it borrows from the mediations it enters into. For Fran\u00e7ois de Singly, \u201cThe individual becomes singular only through a process of composition.\u201d^{4<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 4 <\/a> - Fran\u00e7ois de Singly, L\u2019individualisme est un humanisme<\/em> (La Tour  d\u2019Aigues: L\u2019Aube, 2005), 17.<\/span> In other words, we do not \u201csculpt\u201d ourselves in a narcissistic relationship with ourselves; rather, we are a kind of patchwork that borrows from others and needs their recognition. This is the paradox of the process through which our behaviour becomes autonomous: the more individualization advances, the greater the need for security and social bonds becomes apparent. The difference between individualistic and non-individualistic societies is thus not characterized, in de Singly\u2019s view, by a decrease in social bonds but in \u201cthe importance granted to more personal and elective bonds.\u201d Autonomous contemporary individuals do not refuse the social; on the contrary, they over-value every form of attachment as long as it is a part of the process of constructing their identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What remains of our singularity if the Other is no longer there to provide us with a positive image? Nothing, other than emptiness and fear. The absence of any relation or connection to bonds which would provide us with a negative image makes an ontological definition of the self impossible. Put simply, individuals who do not feel recognized are led to believe that their subjectivity has little value. The fear of being \u201c\u00adundefined\u201d and the humiliation of feeling underestimated are thus the most widespread forms of modern anxiety, insinuating themselves into all the empty spaces and sites of uncertainty within modern identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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