The fragility of the modern unstable world has created both theoretical and methodological crises, and opened up opportunities for discursive and political-pragmatic transcending the boundaries of linear normative constructions of Modernity. The inclusion of the concepts of identity and identity politics paradigm in the interpretation of political reality, and in instrumental practice appropriate strategies and technologies that lead to improving the performance of scientific research, and at the same time - to the aggravation of the uncertainty and destructive due to the use of political practices, guided around them. The subject field of these concepts is diversified and fragmented, reflecting the multiplicity of referents and generating conceptual and political-instrumental competition. The aim of the research is to trace the theoretical response to changing reality, which is poorly described by the traditional institutional paradigm of political science and requires the incorporation of socio-cultural meanings, which then becomes a catalyst and legitimizing basis for certain political practices. The authors address the conceptual positions of the theories of protest identity (M. Castells) resentiment (F. Fukuyama), pseudo-politics (M. Lilla), politics of life (A. Giddens), tribes and new tribalism (M. Maffesoli) and retrotopia (Z. Bauman).