The problem of multidimensional personality identity in postmodern society

Research Article
How to Cite
Kovtunenko I.V., Kudryashov I.A., Bondarenko Y.B. The problem of multidimensional personality identity in postmodern society. Humanities of the South of Russia. 2025. Vol. 14. No. 1. P. 158-174. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18522/2227-8656.2025.1.11 (in Russ.).

Abstract

Objective of the study is to consider postmodern trends in the process of personality construction by an individual belonging to postmodern society, based on the material of the novel by Ch. Palahniuk “Fight Club”.   The methodological basis of the study consists of psychoanalytic and gender approaches to cultural phenomena as a concentration of traumatic processes of identification by an individual of his / her Self, as well as the provisions of the concept of Z. Freud’s theory of repression and the “supernatural”, the postmodern theory of the binary opposition “activity – passivity”.   Results of the study. In the format of the philosophy of culture that dominates society in a particular period, traumatic fears associated with the construction of an individual’s identity are always revealed. This problem is traced multidimensional on the material of the novel “Fight Club” by Ch. Palahniuk. In the novel the entire psychological palette of the identity crisis of the narrator, who is a prominent representative of the postmodern society, is exhaustively revealed. Based on the material of this text, the study analyzes cultural and philosophical patterns that manifest themselves in the narrator’s narrative about his existential crisis, which worsens as he develops a sense of social inferiority and dissatisfaction with his current identity grows. It is established that this dissatisfaction leads to the fact that the narrator: 1) joins the countercultural movement in order to assume an exaggerated form of his socially prescribed gender role, which leads to a false sense of artificial maturity of his personality; 2) chooses communicative interaction with female characters not for romantic attachment, but due to hidden psychologically destructive motives; 3) assumes at least partial the responsibility for the death of an individual who is perceived as having a “holistic” but contradictory identity.   Prospects of the study. The problem of understanding the psychological and gender identity of an individual in the postmodern era is of particular scientific interest due to the need to analyze cultural and philosophical patterns of personality fragmentation, which is predetermined by traumatic prescriptions dominating the social ideology of consumer society.  
Keywords:
postmodernism, personal identity, gender binary categories, trauma, consumer society culture

Author Biographies

Inna V. Kovtunenko, Southern Federal University, Rostov-on-Don, Russia
Doctor of Philological Sciences, Professor
Igor A. Kudryashov, Southern Federal University, Rostov-on-Don, Russia
Doctor of Philological Sciences, Professor
Yuriy B. Bondarenko, Don State Technical University, Rostov-on-Don, Russia
Candidate of Philological Sciences, Head of the Department of Career Guidance and Support for Talented Youth

References

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Article

Received: 12.12.2024

Accepted: 25.02.2025

Citation Formats
Other cite formats:

APA
Kovtunenko, I. V., Kudryashov, I. A., & Bondarenko, Y. B. (2025). The problem of multidimensional personality identity in postmodern society. Humanities of the South of Russia, 14(1), 158-174. https://doi.org/10.18522/2227-8656.2025.1.11
Section
CULTURE AND GLOBALIZATION