The Grain of the Real within the Identity Cover Image

Зрното на реалното во идентитетот
The Grain of the Real within the Identity

Author(s): Katerina Kolozova
Subject(s): Social Philosophy, Contemporary Philosophy, Ontology, Identity of Collectives
Published by: Институтот за општествени и хуманистички науки – Скопје
Keywords: identity; Real; François Laruelle; self; Alain Badiou;

Summary/Abstract: How are we to think our situatedness within an identity, such as that of a “Woman” - or any other identitary subjection - in correlation with the Real, as François Laruelle’s theory would propose us to do? Or, rephrasing the question, how can we think the problems of identitary subjection while escaping the vicious circle of philosophy thinking itself - conceptualization in relation to another conceptualization, detached from the reality of that which is subject to the particular process of generating truth? How can we produce truths that establish a relation of fidelity (in Alain Badiou’s parlance) to the reality that is being questioned, by way of stepping out of the enclosure of the philosophical self-mirroring? Or rather, how can we proceed with the act of theorizing a particular sample of our social-cultural reality that is an identity in which we are inescapably always already finding ourselves, without falling into the trap of becoming accomplices in the perennial play of Philosophy’s own auto-referential self-legitimization? That is to say, how can we theorize by way of drawing legitimacy-in-the-last-instance for our insights, not from the doctrinal compounds made of philosophical/transcendental material, but from the authority of the real upon which resides the reality that is at stake in that quest for understanding?

  • Issue Year: 3/2004
  • Issue No: 1
  • Page Range: 9-27
  • Page Count: 19
  • Language: English, Macedonian