Riflessioni critiche su identità personale e identità sociale in Margaret S. Archer

In this article I critically consider some of the assumptions underpinning Margaret S. Archer’s notions of personal and social identities, at the aim to show the major inconsistencies affecting the paradigm named «critical realism». I then consider the case of trans(sexual) identities in order to check if critical realism might be successfully applied to those particular manifestations of personal and social identities and under what conditions. My conclusion is that faced with such case critical realism clearly shows its weaknesses, especially in the terms of a lack of flexibility in taking into careful account concrete dynamics of social change emerging from «marginal» and «liminal» individual experiences, which would at least potentially expose the difficulties in the model.