Deconstructing and Renouncing the Conditioned Identities of Gender and Nationality in Modern Society

ABSTRACT
This paper investigates the convoluted societal processes to which the individual is exposed from an early age in order to form and acquire their sense of identity, and aims at dismantling these very processes by exhibiting their flimsy and unsubstantiated underpinning rationale. The compelling role of gender has often been excluded from deliberations and studies regarding the issue of national identity and nationalism as culturally constructed forms of identity and "imaginary" figments of historical unity (Rodó-Zárate, n.d.). In this light, the scope of this paper is threefold; firstly, to investigate the idea of identity under the prism of gender and explore the correlation of national identity with that of the gender identity; secondly, to consider the significance of intersectionality in the formation processes of identification and identity; thirdly, to discuss vulnerability in terms of social positions by providing a brief illustration of the current Greek political landscape in order to associate the socially and culturally enforced identification as vulnerable bodies imposed upon certain individuals as an impediment in their living livable lives. In this essay, national identities are perceived as another form of oppression functioning in tandem with patriarchal notions and the normativities asserted by white male hegemony. In other words, national identities, as well as gender identities are conceptualized as conditioned identities that are socially and politically constructed.

“...There is in effect something that humans are and have to be, but this is not an essence nor properly a thing: It is the simple fact of one's own existence as possibility or potentiality ...” (Agamben, G. ,1993, p.42)

In this globalised era, with human mobility from one place to another being all the more facilitated alongside with the advent of technology , individuals are exposed to various stimuli and can obtain the means to question the didactics of patriotism and nationalism enforced upon them. However, the question of belonging and the politics of belonging remain some of the most intricate issues that seek to be addressed. As Hedetoff and Hjort (2002, p.5) pinpoint that "today belonging constitutes a political and cultural field of global contestation, anywhere between ascriptions of belonging and self-constructed definitions of new spaces of culture, freedom and identity". Although their "today" is almost two decades ago, their claim remains to be true.
One would expect that with the emergence of multicultural and multilingual communities people would finally come to terms with each others' differences and find a way to conviviality. Unfortunately, globalization has not led to the forfeit of extreme nationalist ideologies. Within these first two decades of the 21st century we have become witnesses to an intensification of racism and sexism, an “unrelenting march of global capitalism,” the “increasing militarization of various nation spaces,” the break out of wars, the rise of fundamentalism leading to violent displacements and a vast flow of refugees (Shome,2016,

p.347); phenomena that bear as their aftermath the decline of the state allowing the authoritative powers to employ oppressive measures to manage citizens' strikes and protests and violate basic human rights as they do so. Islamophobia in Europe, with Greece's case in particular -where the in power right wing party orders the evacuation of refugee shelters on a daily basis, while having the support of the country's overwhelming majority of the population-, multiple rape cases of protesters in Chile by law enforcement officers, the concentration camps in China, and the maltreatment of Black bodies by the police in the US are only a few instances were nonconformity is met with violence. As acutely noted by Shome (2016) “dissent challenges the conformity required by the neoliberal privatization of the nation” (p. 347). Therefore, discussions on issues of national identities and the nation as an apparatus for oppression are now more critical than ever.