Identity and Difference ― Contemporary Debates on the Self

This collection offers the first comprehensive account of the notions of identity and difference in the debate on the self that cuts across disciplinary boundaries in the Humanities. It invites the reader to explore the breadth and scope of this topic in various fields such as Philosophy, Cultural Studies, Politics, and Race Studies. Key themes explored in this collection include: the question of agency and first-personal awareness in humans and animals, authenticity in Michel de Montaigne’s Essays, racial identity in South Africa, the limits of the narrative constitution of the self, the possibility of autonomy for the ‘postmodern’ subject conceived as de-centred, the use and abuse of the notion of ‘human nature’ in political theory and in the current political context of multiculturalism, the feminist notion of the erotic and of sexual violence, and an exploration of the paradox of self-deception and its possibility. 

Rafael Winkler is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. His research interests include 19th and 20th century European thought with a particular focus on the phenomenological tradition, as well as German idealism, epistemology and early modern philosophy. He has published several articles on Nietzsche, Heidegger, Bergson and Husserl.