The upsurge of right wing populists and new authoritarian forces fueled the debate on the future of the subject. Following Hegel and Lacan this article analyzes how the renaissance of reactionary ways of subjectification goes hand in hand with a destructive circle of suppression and recurrence. The modern crisis of identity is strongly connected to the figure of the other; at the same time the projections of this other reveal the ambiguity of a subject unable to confine its inner realms. (...) Is it possible that the continuous crisis of the modern subject is based on religious and cultural-historical imaginations of identity? Do we have to get rid of this concept of identity to quit the destructive circle? (shrink)