New shared identity is also political!
Curator’s note (Amelia @teirdes and me happen to be curators for the digital assets track, trying to point out connections and focus points so that the different sessions can complement each other nicely).
For this track we have two main points (see), one being the interplay between citizen action and political action. Amelia noted that “we have a deficit of political will to invest in common institutions at this time”, and that’s probably why you explore building these shared identities without state support. But building these new identities political nonetheless, since it’s about managing common and public identity, and the communities you build might become the new political entities in the feature.
A particular question would be: Could building parallel, new, non-state identities eventually reform the state identity idea and the political system as a whole? So far, I have only examples where it was the other way round (like, say, the Erasmus program contributing to citizens feeling and living in a more pan-European way, with a third of Erasmus students being in international romantic relationships as per a recent study … that’s not without effect on perceived “European” identity).
What I like about this session is the ambivalence, where citizen action of building their own non-state identities is apolitical and political at the same time. How do you imagine the relations to the powers-that-be? Is it opposition to the state, or can it be even cooperation?