The essay analyses the relations between production of subjectivity and processes of identification in the context of today’s neoliberal governmentality. The hypothesis is that a radical change in the classic institutional framework derives from the unprecedented articulation of these two categories. The dissolution of the modern ordering logic makes way for a government in the sense attributed by Foucault: an immanent, practical and managerial government which, albeit adopting identity depotentiation mechanisms, does not contradict the new sovereigntists’ populisms, characterized by an essentialist rebound of identity claims.