This paper investigates the logic of explanation according to which identity is an attribute or a feature of subjects like states and nations. Drawing examples from the scholarship on identity in Central Europe, especially Estonia, it argues that the story by which identity is customarily told is circular, presupposing the very subject for which it seeks to give an account. The puzzle, then, is how to overcome the perspective of a subject already formed in order to account for its becoming. The paper deploys the concept of performativity to address that puzzle. Performative approaches do not treat identity as an attribute or a property of the subject – something that subjects such as individuals or states express. It conceives subjectivity explicitly in processual terms, not as a source but as an effect of identity claims. Identity then is not something that states, groups or individuals have, but something that groups and individuals do. Reframing identity research from doers to deeds opens up the discussions of actor‐ness and subjectivity without dictating what kind of subjects can be realized.
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