Troppa identità

I try to retrace the intellectual story that led, both in the United States, with Brubaker and Cooper, and in Italy, especially with Remotti, to question the massive recourse to the identity paradigm as a ‘strong’ interpretation of historical and cultural dynamics. In this context I discuss, as a case study, the so-called Chalcidian colonies. I argue against the current assumption that the Greek colonies inherited from their respective homelands a set of characteristic cultural traits that gave them a distinctive identity since the time of the foundation.