Power Shaped Self

This chapter deals with the way power is structured and its influence in the creation of the self. Emphasis is primarily placed on two concepts of power developed by Michel Foucault and Norbert Elias, as well as on militarism as a form of power organization that significantly shaped the collective identities of modernity. At the level of individual identities, we are dealing with the issue of how the bureaucratic organization of the state, through the use of the surnames and IDs of its citizens, created, modeled, manipulated and consolidated their collective and above all individual identity.