[5] The subject is constructed in late modernity against the backdrop of a fragmented world of competing and contrasting identities[6] and lifestyle cultures.
[8] The question of the self, argues Mandalios (1999), always intersects with the Other or non-self (e.g. stranger, outsider or opposite) who signifies the particular uniqueness or core aspect of the self; while the self performs this same process with its other as was originally worked out by the German philosopher Georg Hegel.
Zygmunt Bauman, who introduced the idea of liquid modernity, wrote that its characteristics are about the individual, namely increasing feelings of uncertainty and the privatization of ambivalence.
Bauman stressed the new burden of responsibility that fluid modernism placed on the individual: traditional patterns would be replaced by self-chosen ones.
[10] The result is a normative mindset with emphasis on shifting rather than on staying—on provisional or temporary in lieu of permanent (or "solid") commitment—which (the new style) can lead a person astray towards a prison of their own existential creation.