Identity, Ethics, Politics. Towards a Feminist Phenomenological Notion of Embodied Identity

The project aims at the development of a notion of identity within the context of a multicultural society. It presumes that such a notion should be ethical, meaning that the self is no longer considered as distinct from the other, and the other as strange to the self. Self and other at the same time should not be opposed to each other and should not coincide. Furhermore, the notion should be political, ipmlying that identity is constituted in a process of relating to power structures in society, such as gender, ethnicity, religion, nationality, health, to name only a few, which give them different opportunities and chances in life.
In order to develop such a notion, this project will confront different strands of thought in contemporary theory: Ricoeur's hermeneutical notion of narrative edentity, Merleau-Ponty's notion of the body and embodiment and the feminist philosophical conceptions of identity of Irigaray, Benjamin and Butler. The project concentrates on the embodiment of identity, intersubjectivity and the situatedness of individuals within normative practices.