The pitfalls of identity: collective singularity, plurality and democratic politics

• Grant number: 21/11387-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: April 01, 2022
• End date: July 31, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy
• Principal Investigator: Ricardo Ribeiro Terra
• Grantee: Adriana Pereira Matos
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This research project intends to investigate the relationship between collective identities and democratic politics. Considering that the debate about the different identities and their political and social roles has gained strength in recent years, I intend to argue that a significant part of the studies on the subject focus on institutional politics, assuming structures and freezing collective identities, without paying attention to their formation processes. By acting in this way, they end up suffering from what Kwame Anthony Appiah calls "Medusa's syndrome": they transform collective identities into fixed, rigid and unitary structures, when in fact they are complex, malleable and plural processes. Based on Seyla Benhabib's democratic theory (object of my master's study, funded by FAPESP, process 2017/05438-5), the research will seek a dual approach: without disregarding the importance and consequences in the official public sphere, in representative institutions, in the legislative and judiciary, it will give space to the unofficial public sphere, with its various forms of interaction and informal and less structured political associations. This way of approaching the problem makes possible to highlight the pitfalls of identity for democratic politics, and to defend that it is not necessary to give up agency and the subjects' freedom of choice to delineate a vision of politics that considers collective identities. (AU)