New identities.

New identities. - The article discusses two topics. First it refers to the tension between rational thinking and drive desires emphasized so strongly by Freud and establishes the necessity of subjecting the Kantian models of the self to critical scrutiny as they play down this tension. As a result of this review, the relationship between motivation and substantiation (the point on which conflicting views of the Subject normally clash) appears less problematic. Second, the article inquires how the (in Freud's view) greater significance of the concept of identification over and against the concept of identity can change our understanding of cultural identity, marked as it is by international political theory. The answer proposed is that narratives of identity are not original but rather constructions serving to provide purpose-oriented labels for Subjects in the international arena. In other words, narratives of identity are not the province of an a priori positionist form of metaphysics but are connected with complex historical and critical processes of identification and exchange. But this should not be taken to mean that anything goes. Few of these narratives satisfy the requirements of plausible identification processes, and the success of these processes depends on the history of the relations between Subjects in determinate contexts. This second thesis also forces a Kantian to switch theories. The article attempts to show that it is not least this approach to the problem that enjoins us to adopt a less Kantian and more Hegelian view of the collective Subject.