A critical inquiry into postmodern anxiety, fear, indifference, obsessive attention seeking, and the disappearance of privacy and of public space, the book offers penetrating insights into what its author terms the troubled identity, and also into the cultural canon, the weakened sense of belonging, and the inflation of key political concepts. Blending political theory and philosophy of culture, the book exposes the tension between thought and action, politics and literature, power and dissent in postmodern politics and culture. A polemical book of an Eastern European, it raises the pivotal issues of present Europe's cultural identity and political existence.

The book maps what Leonidas Donskis terms the troubled identity, that is, the identity that constantly needs assurance and confirmation. It is on why and how the search for identity becomes everything for a postmodern person, an identity builder and shifter. Our infatuation with it replaces the former search for the meaning of life, becoming a mode of discourse, self-discovery, self-interpretation, and a perfect chance to reshape ourselves as the other in our country. Identity protects and hurts us. Through an identity-building-and-shifting process, argues Donskis, we can move from political majority to cultural minority, or the other way around.

A blend of political theory, social theory, and philosophy of culture, the book will show the relationship and tension between thought and action, politics and literature, power and dissent in modern politics and culture.