2 The Assumption of “Identity” and “Collective Entities”

Identity is often treated as given: individuals “have” an identity, groups “are” collectives, and social categories appear as ontological anchors. Physics might talk about initial conditions; sociology and culture speak of intrinsic essences. In both cases, the assumption is the same: these entities exist independently, with boundaries and properties that are natural and fixed.

Yet identity and collectives are never observed in isolation. They emerge relationally, through patterns of interaction, construal, and alignment. Individuals are individuated not by intrinsic essence but by their placement along perspectival clines within social and symbolic fields. Collectives are stabilised by repeated construal: shared practices, communicative acts, and relational coordination. Boundaries, roles, and traits are enacted, not decreed.

By naturalising identity and collective entities as fixed, we again project modulation — inevitability and decree — onto what is properly modal: relational potential realised through social and symbolic cuts. The seeming stability of groups and identities masks their dependence on interpretation, alignment, and contextual scaffolding.

Recognising identity as relational rather than intrinsic preserves explanatory power. Individuals and collectives retain coherence, yet this coherence is understood as enacted and maintained through relational patterns, not imposed by metaphysical decree. To see the frame is to see the fluid architecture of identity itself: shaped, stabilised, and construed rather than given.