The Social Making of the Self

Programme / Program

How do social and political norms influence and shape the building of individual identities in modern liberal democracies?
Political theory, social and cultural studies and philosophy of mind have proposed different answers to this question and highlighted irreducible aspects of the involvement of intersubjective relations within the process through which personal identity is constituted.
Bringing together the resources of these different disciplines, the goal of this interdisciplinary project is to provide a renewed and original framework to understand and assess the impact of social norms on the constitution of the self, and the effect that changes in traditional conceptions of personal identity may have on political theory.
The project intends to demonstrate the complementarity between these domains of analysis so as to shed new light on the political challenges related to the definition of individual identities. It will give rise to a fruitful collaboration between French and American young researchers whose various domains of expertise will be instrumental in finding new ways of articulating the social and the individual, and in developing conceptual tools for understanding contemporary political trends.

Main events

• New School for Social Research, Philosophy workshop, March 5, 2020: Pierre-Jean Renaudie, “The tragic Irony of Life”
• Harvard University Conference, March 10, 2020: “Thinking the Self along the Tear of Traditions”