Autonomy and Emancipation: The Challenge of Identity Construction

Abstract

Identity acts as a nucleus to the subject's references, their memories, their choices of life, to the construction of their history. Identity is, therefore, a minimal cellular basis from which life develops in its poetics of creation. The construction of identity thus has potential for the development of a critique, the establishment of a grammar of rules and conditions, for standing before the world. The path towards emancipation implies in exercising an external look at one's identity, the inherent existing narrative, to discover the paradigm of the minimum base from which one's life develops. With the increasing complexity of the postcolonial world, no straight or easy answer is at hand. The effort should draw towards the construction of conceptual tools that can enable reflection and critique. The humanities education, is one possible tool towards autonomy and emancipation once it encourages knowledge, construction and appraisal. The reflections brought to light through this work intends to fertilize the discussions about identity construction in the Brazilian present day context, characterized by a discourse that foster ruptures and decreases the possibilities of one’s identity. For this purpose, the current challenge of emancipation, will be developed through 6 analytical semantic dimensions which express the diversity and complexity of the actual scenario: Understanding identity, (CIAMPA, 1987; RICOEUR, 1990), as the synthetic goal of existence has the dynamism to give new possibilities to the frontier-men (HARTOG, 2004; LEVINÁS, 1972), whose challenge is the gain of consciousness of one’s own movement in the world. Marked by perversity (HONNETH, 2003) the present world enforces political, social, motivational, and subjective domination (CASTORIADIS, 1987). This scenario compels the frontier-men towards an emptied signifier alienating his possibilities of recognition. The search for emancipation (HABERMAS, 1983) asks for a critical look at the current formation of people's strategic thinking.