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RESEARCH PAPERS

No. 62

Essence and contingency with respect to identity

DOI
https://doi.org/10.12795/themata.2020.i62.04
Submitted
May 1, 2020
Published
2020-12-29

Abstract

The article questions two approaches related to the condition of Identity. Firstly, the one that makes the subject with an identity (person or group) one with essential features, which, at times neglected, at times acknowledged and accepted, posess an intrinsic mark towards the “being” of the subject (forgetting the possible mutations that could happen to be). On the other hand, another approach is questioned: the one that supposes that, without innate characteristics, the subject is an arbitrary construction, historically determined by discourses that create it, therefore mutable according to the relative success the general imposition of those discourses have. For both paradigms, different roles for discourse and language have been assumed, giving it an instrumental role (in the first approach, where an objective reality exists beyond the linguistic element) or a performative role (in the second approach, where discourse is constitutive and makes the subject and its character). Finally, the article will present an epistemological position that will reduce the place for abstractions or presuppositions. The discussion will rely on both traditional sociologic theory as well as several philosophy postulates which deal with the issue.  

References

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