Authentic Human Legal Subjectivity According to the Narrative Approach

Anthony Giddens focuses on the relationship between individual identity and modern institutions, arguing that the reflexivity of modernity reaches the very core of the self. The self thus becomes a reflexive project, one that is clearly influenced by institutional changes. Giddens writes:Modern institutional reflexivity, or “the regularized use of knowledge about circumstances of social life as a constitutive element in its organization and transformation”, influences identity by mediating its institutional dimension. This leads to the intertwining of personal and social transformation, with law playing a significant role. Giddens also argues that individual subjectivity conditions one’s identity. In other words, an individual possesses identity precisely through personal relationships with oneself and others, and through the ability to direct one’s own life. He suggests that changes in identity need to be experienced, shaped and sometimes reconstructed through a reflexive process—in which personal and social transformation are intertwined. In my view, this is closely related to the legal sphere and discovering authentic subjectivity through and within modern law. This process is associated with empowering the individual by granting them certain rights, and by assigning them duties and responsibilities for their actions. This means that personal identity is a right that is bound up with being human, as every human being becomes a person from the moment they acquire legal subjectivity.