The Dissolution of the Self: Reification and the Primacy of Relation

This essay argues that the self is not an enduring entity but the effect of a recurrent operation: the appropriation of experience as “mine.” Through an analysis of temporality, it shows how continuity—structured by memory and anticipation—is organized around a functional center, which is subsequently reified as an independently existing subject. This misinterpretation generates a structurally unstable identity, since the self depends on the continuous maintenance of a temporal coherence that cannot be secured, giving rise to phenomena such as death anxiety. The essay contends that the dissolution of the self is not the elimination of an entity but the cessation of appropriation. When this operation is no longer enacted, experience persists without ownership, disclosing an irreducibly relational field in which differentiation remains without reification. Extending this analysis to collective identity, the essay highlights ethical implications of shifting from identity-based structures to relational coherence.