The formation of identity and extreme sports

Identity is fundamentally a Western concept. Weber and Foucault outlined the ways in which identity is formed in western cultures identifying historically and socially grounded techniques for the formation of the self. The modern self is no longer a certainty, nor is it the founder of the experience of the knowledge or the fundamental precondition of experience, but rather, a form composed of historically analyzable experience. The experiences of the self that respond to the need for identity are not inventions of the individual but models that the individual finds in his culture, proposed by society. Extreme experiences help provide a fresh answer to the question “Who am I?” and help define a new kind of man and his integration in the world. Today man defines his identity exploring his limits and trying to go beyond any form of rigidity, distancing himself from the repetitiveness and functionality associates with roles. Practicing extreme sports, above all, meets this need for versatility, change and redefinition of the self in an open dynamic way. Indeed these sports constitute a search for the beyond, a desire for broadening and opening, which requires the effacement of personal identity, considered to be narrow and limited, and the creation of sudden disorder in order to gain a new order and reorientation.