The dissertation Inner and Outer Identity examines identity as a processual structure that emerges from the tension between bodily experience and its representation. The inner dimension of identity encompasses affective, somatic, and psychological processes, while the outer dimension is shaped by performative strategies, images, and normative frameworks that render the subject legible within the social space. Identity is therefore understood not as an essential quality, but as a dynamic configuration of relations. The dissertation focuses on moments of destabilization, in which a disjunction
occurs between lived experience and representation. Crisis is interpreted as a moment in which identity reveals itself as a construction and simultaneously as a field of possible transformation. The body is understood as the primary medium of this process – a site where identity materializes, is performed, and transformed. The research is situated within the contemporary social context characterized by pressure for performance, productivity, and permanent visibility. It examines how these conditions influence the formation of the subject and how they may contribute to its fragmentation. The aim of the dissertation is to formulate a model of identity as a bodily grounded and culturally conditioned process, and at the same time to define the possibilities of its transformation within artistic practice. The analysis also includes transgressive and antagonistic figures from cinema and theatre, which serve as model situations of identity destabilization. These characters allow the mechanisms of splitting, projection, and power configurations to be examined in a concentrated form. They are understood symbolically and narratively as fictional characters through which the processes of disruption, transformation, and reorganization of the subject can be explored.