This paper discusses the relation between the transition from
authenticity (a technology for shaping identity through the pursuit of
originality) to “profilicity” (a technology for shaping identity through
the curation, display, and validation of profiles) and the transition
towards postmodernist philosophy in the 19th and 20th century. By
analyzing core passages from the works of Friedrich Nietzsche,
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Jacques Derrida, and Jean Baudrillard, it is
argued that their philosophies of interpretation, language-games,
signs, and simulation are compatible with modes of identity formation
under conditions of profilicity. More specifically, it is suggested that
performative, immanent, and constructivist views of interpretation,
language, signs, and hyperreality typical of postmodernism
correspond to a performative, immanent and constructivist conception
of (individual and collective) identity in profilicity.