Page 131 - Communication and the Evolution of Society

108 Communication and Evolution of Society

actions, we can also be used in such a way that a corresponding
sentence presupposes not the complementary relation to another
group but that to other individuals of one’s own group.

1) We took part in the demonstration (while you sat
home).

2) Weare all in the same boat.
Sentence (1) is addressed to another group, sentence (2) to
members of one’s own group. Sentences of type (2) have not
only the usual self-referential meaning, but the meaning of self-
identification—we are X (where X can signify Germans, citizens
of Hamburg, women, redheads, workers, blacks, and so on). The
expression I can also be used for purposes of self-identification;
but the self-identification of an I requires intersubjective recog-
nition by other I’s, who must in turn assume the role of thou. By
contrast, the self-identification of a group is not dependent on
intersubjective recognition by another group; an I that identifies
itself as we can be confirmed through another I that identifies
with the same we. The reciprocal recognition of group members
requires I-thou-we relations.
This has consequences for the construction of a collective iden-
tity. I would like to reserve the expression collective identity for
reference groups that are essential to the identity of their mem-
bers, which are in a certain way “ascribed” to individuals, cannot
be freely chosen by them, and which have a continuity that ex-
tends beyond the life-historical perspectives of their members.
For the construction of such identities, I-thou-we relations are
sufficient; we-you relations are not a necessary condition (as
I-thou relations are for the construction of a personal identity).
In other words, a group can understand and define itself so ex-
clusively as a totality that they live in the idea of embracing all
possible participants in interaction, whereas everything that
doesn’t belong thereto becomes a neuter, about which one can
make statements in the third person, but with which one cannot
take up interpersonal relations in the strict sense—as was the
case, for instance, with the barbarians on the borders of the
ancient civilizations. I cannot here go any further into the logic