The Sovereign Self: Pitfalls of Identity Politics

by Élisabeth Roudinesco, Catherine Porter (Translator)

The toppling of statues in the name of anti-racism is disconcerting, as is the violence sometimes displayed towards others in the name of gender equality. The emancipation movements of the past seem to have undergone a subtle the struggle now is not so much to bring about progress but rather to denounce offenses, express indignation, and assert identities, sometimes in order to demand recognition. The individual’s commitment to self-definition and self-appreciation, understood as the exercise of a sovereign right, has become a distinctive sign of our time. Elisabeth Roudinesco takes us into the darker corners of identity thinking, where conspiracy theories, rejection of the other, and incitement to violence are often part of the mix. But she also points to several paths that could lead us away from despair and toward a possible world in which everyone can adhere to the principle according to which “I am myself, that’s all there is to it” without denying the diversity of human communities or essentializing either universality or difference. This bold and courageous interrogation of identity politics will be of great interest to anyone concerned with the state of our world today.

228 pages, Paperback

Published January 24, 2023

About the author

Élisabeth Roudinesco est la seule à avoir su, avec la précision de l'historienne et l'expérience de la praticienne, faire revivre en une fresque documentée les doctrines, les hommes et les femmes qui ont incarné en France cette révolution de l'âme.
La seule aussi à avoir mis en perspective les théories, les mouvements et les débats qui n'ont cessé d'animer le milieu psychanalytique français depuis 1885 : de l'arrivée à Paris de Freud, venu assister aux leçons de Charcot à la Salpêtrière, jusqu'à la récente mise en cause des thérapies psychanalytiques, en passant par l'extraordinaire aventure lacanienne.

Reviews

[Benjamin]

There are some, few and far between, moments of insights within this treatment of identity politics; moments where Roudinesco appears to grasp the problematics that concern her so. However, her ability to respond critically is altogether too conditioned by her personal anxieties that quickly reduce to a compulsive need to defend the French republic and its classical enlightenment values and to very quickly dismiss those that make her uncomfortable by claiming them to be fanatical and unreasonable. Her tone across this work is horribly dismissive as she elects to speaks down to those she disagrees with, all the while struggling to accurately characterise the examples she does elect to use to illustrate identitarian thinking. Her concerns are not fictional so much as they rely upon a disproportionate reading of our current condition that absolutely refuses to listen to the calls for justice that are implicit within these movements. Instead of choosing to understand these claims and unpick them, Roudinesco is content to further simplify and reduce these claims into absurdity and then clutch at her pearls. There is very little of intellectual value in here, and certainly no ideas that have not been more clearly, succinctly, and accurately put forward by other thinkers.
Unfortunate for someone capable of so much better.