The problem of post-national identity: the historiography of the question

The article analyzes contemporary foreign literature devoted to the study of possible forms of post-national identity and the determination of ways and conditions for their implementation. The analysis of the problem of post-national identity and its interpretations shows that while they are more described in the theoretical space of modern social and humanitarian knowledge than are realized in everyday practice. In the current situation, it is necessary to talk about a large-scale criticism of the post-national concept and even the growth of a skeptical attitude toward the prospects for the formation of post-national identity in general. It is noted that the dominant subject of the study is the search and determination of acceptable forms of the European identity. The dominant context of analysis is its comparison with national identity. One can agree with the thesis that Jurgen Habermas is probably the embodiment of the post-national concept of the European political identity. Without exaggeration, we can say that he provoked the emergence of a whole line of research with his works. The reflections of Habermas directly or indirectly actualized a number of topics. First of all, this is the question of the conditions and reasons for the emergence of new forms of identity, which have received such a general designation as "post-national identity". Secondly, it is the question of what forms the identity of this kind can and should acquire. Thirdly, it is what it can and must be expressed and manifested in. In particular, this is the question of the necessity to complement the social and cultural identity with the political identity and the issue of the relationship between citizenship and identity. All of them are related in one way or another, because an explicit or implicit interpretation of post-national identity in a supranational format, for example, inevitably entails the question of the feasibility or impracticability of the conditions for the realization of this particular identity format. In modern literature, the thesis prevails that the post-national identity does not dominate or is opposed to the national one, but is in the relations of complementarity, correlation and interdependence with it, ripening not outside but inside the latter. This thesis can be presented in the context of the discourses of globalization, the crisis of the national state, global citizenship. The trend towards interdisciplinarity in the study of post-national identity under modern conditions turns into a mosaic of its definitions and interpretations.

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