This work brings together many trends of current thinking - Lacanian psychoanalysis, deconstruction, neo-Hegelianism and political philosophy - to illuminate the question of identity in the contemporary world. In addition, it provides concrete studies of some of the more important new political identities which have emerged in recent decades. The essays in Part One - by Ernesto Laclau and Lilian Zac; Rodolphe Gashes; and Claudia Hilb and Slavoj Zizek - explore the theoretical dimensions of the issue of identity formation. The essays in Part Two deal with: the logic of apartheid in South Africa; the spread of Islam; the Palestinian diaspora; the explosion of national identities in former Yugoslavia; the Greens in Germany; and the spread of Rastafarianism in Britain.