Book, Sovereign self, O: essay on identity drift[LS]

Language: Brazilian Portuguese. Taking stock of the present time and the various definitions of identity possible today, the renowned French historian and psychoanalyst Elisabeth Roudinesco analyzes in this book the nature and dangers of what she calls identity drift. After twenty years, emancipation movements seem to have changed direction. They no longer ask themselves how to transform the world so that it is better, but are dedicated to protecting populations from what threatens them: growing inequalities, social invisibility, moral misery. People display their suffering, denounce offenses, give free rein to their affections, as identity markers that express a desire for visibility. In contrast, another way of submitting to identity mechanics is consolidated: isolation. This is Elisabeth Roudinesco's thesis in The Sovereign Self, a provocative book in which the author asks herself: what caused the emancipatory engagements of the past, notably anti-colonial and feminist struggles, to close in on themselves in such a way? In light of Freud and Lacan, the works of Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Aimé Césaire, Fanon, Judith Butler, Foucault and Derrida, Roudinesco weaves the threads that unite debates about identity, gender, race, intersectionality, post-colonialism, nationalism, Republic, extremism and religion, seeking to identify the meaning of contemporary changes in the relationship with otherness.