In this introductory chapter we will deal with tracing the contours of the old and new epistemological glasses necessary to read a new identity reality. The first moment of identity is that of abandonment from the usual thought, that is of bewilderment. We have to lose our cognitive habits through an écart, a reckless movement. Collective identity, in fact, must flee both from the deception of the universalisation of time (“we have always been like this”) and from the pitfall of geographical isolation (“only we are like this”). Another way of conceiving identity comes to us precisely from Jullien’s écart, which should not be translated as gap: it is not identity separation from Others. It is the opening of a distance that puts things in a reflective relation to one another. It is tension between them.