Identity In the Age of Detachment

“Who are you?” 

There goes the million-dollar question!

No, but really, do you know who you are? Behind your job, relationships, age, gender, history, etc., do you understand your life, or your desires, the things that make your existence worthwhile? No, I don’t really know. Maybe that’s why I have such an obsession with astrology: I’m a Capricorn! “Oh, so you’re that ambitious woman who doesn’t play when it comes to money,” they would respond (yeah… let’s just call it that); or shoving my life into clearly cut aesthetics, which at this point change faster than the average length of a TikTok video.

What is my ‘true self’? Is that even a real thing? You know what they all say: when in doubt, read some Hegel! Conveniently enough, Hegel’s dialectical framework is useful for explaining the identity crisis of the modern age. Hegel explained the dialectical process through a marriage analogy (which in itself is a whole other crisis that would require its own separate rant) where, in the early stages, one “may feel his interests and purposes to be identical with those of his spouse” (Cohen, 1994). Instead of the honeymoon phase, it is generally called “undifferentiated unity.” Past the rose-colored lens period (here, the succession of the second stage from the first does not imply causation), the couple encounters “differentiated disunity,” where “one or both may revolt against fusion, and become hostile to continued connection” (Cohen, 1974, p. 236). Seemingly a hopeful romantic, Hegel called the last phase of his dialectical process “differentiated disunity”; in other words, it is when a discovery of a unity not antagonistic “to the individuality of each” is found (Cohen, 1974).

Applying this concept to the development of historical stages, we could see a translation into the transition from pre-capitalist society, where undifferentiated unity reflects the communal living and productive style that hindered individuation, to a capitalist society that carries out differentiated disunity when it causes the breaking free of man from his instruments of labor. In contrast to the collective notion of pre-capitalist societies, the capitalist order hinges on the notion of selfhood (Cohen, 1974). What awaits in the future, predicted Marx, is a “new… revolution in the mode of production” which would overturn capitalism and “restore the original union” of man and nature “in a new historical form.”

What deserves our attention the most is the transition from pre-capitalist to capitalist society, as it would provide us with some insights into the sense of alienation and loss of identity we experience today. To go from undifferentiated unity to differentiated disunity is a process of detachment, which Cohen terms the ‘freedom of detachment’ (Cohen, 1974). Now what is being detached from man are the means of production: the land on which the farmer farms and the tools which the craftsmen use, once fully tied to them (in a way, the instruments they worked with ‘engulfed’ them) (Cohen, 1974). Marx posited that the “decomposition of the Original Union existing between the Labouring man and his Instruments of Labour” necessitates the development of capitalism. In pre-capitalist societies, direct producers cannot feel the constraint that comes with the freedom of detachment because they did not see and treat themselves “as separate from whatever compromises that freedom in a way that would enable him to think of it as impeding him, or dictating him” (Cohen, 1974). The peasants and artisans then saw a union between themselves and their instruments, and did not “experience [them] as in opposition to his will, for it envelops his will” (Cohen, 1974). This intrinsic relationship of man and nature, although it is one of nature’s dominion over man (of which he is not conscious), is fundamental in the development of his sense of identity. As will be explained, I use the word ‘sense’ here because the seemingly established identity of those in pre-capitalist societies in reality represents a faux form of selfhood. During the ages of slavery and feudalism, the notion of ‘social mobility’ as we know it today did not exist. You are a slave because you were born one. You are an artisan or a peasant because your parents were that, passing down to you the instruments they worked with. Your life is predefined for you (talk about destiny), and your job encapsulates a large part, if not the totality, of your identity. The peasant cannot switch from job to job and does not possess any skills other than those required of him.

An eruption takes place under capitalism, where “man splits himself off from nature, and splits it apart, exercising a destructive freedom” (Cohen, 1974). In other words, man is no longer in control of and controlled by the means of production, and his rights over them as well as his subordination to them are abolished (Cohen, 1974). Moreover, gone are the days when the specificity of labor matters. Who cares if you are the best basket weaver in town if the other guy has transferable skills across departments? Under capitalism, abstract labor comes to the forefront, “for it matters neither to the laborer nor to his employer what concrete labor is performed. Each cares only about how much exchange-value he will obtain from its performance” (Cohen, 1974). This is obviously very different than the emphasis on concrete labor of pre-capitalist society, where, for instance, the harvest of the peasants to the lord or the artisans' products depend on the quality of their concrete labor. To “homogenize tasks across and within all branches of production, so that workers may move from job to job doing much the same simple things” in different settings is the goal under capitalism (Cohen, 1974). An important implication of this ascendance of abstract labor is that “the man who performs it is not stamped by any concrete work process” (Cohen, 1974). The non-specialized labor of the worker is the result of the division of labor in the ever-automating productive process, which extracts all of labor’s specialized character (Cohen, 1974). However, “the moment every special development stops, the need for universality, the tendency towards an integral development of the individual begins to be felt” (Cohen, 1974).

The modern person is alienated and is abstract in his individuality. We did not escape constraint (in actuality, constraint is all that we feel); we have only “won the freedom of detachment” (Cohen, 1974). In other words, unlike the craftsman “fastened to this work facilities and surroundings, absorbed into a particular cell within the body social” (Cohen, 1974), the proletarian, free from this bondage, in reality is stranded, enjoying independence but losing the solace of possession familiar to the craftsman. So, the exclusion of the peasants from the land and the stripping of the artisans of their tools, turning them both into propertyless workers, signifies an independence, a detachment from this particular machine and this particular job (Cohen, 1974). Of course, with this “freedom” came the utmost misery, but it opened up the path for individuality nonetheless. “Alienation is the cost of rescue from envelopment by his natural and social environment which is man's estate before capitalism” (Cohen, 1974). And so our mindless search for a personality we can claim for ourselves is the price we have to pay. Even as abstract individuals whose real purpose in life is buried by the disunity of man and nature, the human hunger for self-fulfillment still drives us to seek some sort of identity; whether this is through astrology, personality quizzes, or lifestyle aesthetics, at the end of the day, it must be recognized that we are trying to craft a selfhood, to reach a self-fulfillment that cannot be truly reached under the capitalist order. Instead, like everything else under capitalism, the identity crisis is compromised and commodified so we can consume the existential emptiness away.

We need to keep in mind, though, that the process does not end with differentiated disunity; it is rather for the development of capitalism to take place, fragmenting our merged relations with instruments of labor to create a new labor where alienation ceases to exist. It is in this communist society that “nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity” (Cohen, 1974). Rather, everyone can do and be anything they desire, as it is society that is responsible for general production. What is interesting about this concept is that jobs no longer have meaning. No one is a fisherman, writer, or teacher, “for he is in none of these activities entering a position in a structure of roles” (Cohen, 1974). It is all the activities that man can take up in his day that are integrated without engulfment (Cohen, 1974). This means we can engage in a variety of activities without being tied down to any one of them. This allows us to explore and do what we desire fully, building the foundation for an identity, a selfhood. Furthermore, it is in this negation that we can clearly see the “fixation of social activity,” the domination of labor over man. By making central our role in the division of labor, our selfhood is defined in a parochial manner: you paint, so you are a painter. In contrast, “In a communist society there are no painters but at most people who engage in painting among other activities” (Cohen, 1974).

The path out is truly through and forth, not backward. To dwell in the romanticism of the pastoral, like some critics of capitalism, is to "wish to return to that primitive abundance" that saw man dominated by nature without even the consciousness to resist it. In the same vein, the bourgeois opposition to this primitive past is just its antithesis, and it will never achieve anything beyond being pre-capitalism's antithesis. 

Bibliography

Cohen, G. A. “Marx’s Dialectic of Labor.” Philosophy & Public Affairs, vol. 3, no. 3, 1974, pp. 235–61. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2264980.