Identity

identité

Worked through in 35 videos · 57 passages.

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Summary

Dominique Pagani does not reject identity, but ontological identity, which presupposes being rather than becoming and rests on something already there, birth or race1. In everyday language, identity corresponds for him to the philosophical category of substance2. He conceives it instead as dialectical: it contains difference, presupposes the relation to the other, and exists only as the result of a process tied to its conditions3. He recalls that for Hegel difference is the work of identity, whereas Marx and Sartre place difference first. On the logical level, the principle of identity A = A, derived from Parmenides, presupposes that the subject can say "I am I"4. Personal identity, in his view, requires a continuous act and depends on memory and on recognition by others5. In politics, he sees ethnic, sexual or regional identities as an illusion that diverts attention from class struggle. For him, French identity is not given: it is forged over the course of history6.

Summary produced automatically from 57 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.

Season 14 · 4 Feb 2026The return of fascism

6:40The illusion of identities (Blacks against whites, Corsicans against French) already amounts to progress toward fascism.
54:39To neglect social class is to serve the illusion of identities; French identity is not given, it is forged over the course of historical events.

Season 13 · 15 May 2025Imaginary identity

3:45The "stock" refers to Celts invented by anthropologists: the identity being claimed is nowhere to be found.
30:41In everyday language, identity corresponds to the philosophical category of substance, that which has always been there.
58:53Identity begins with wars of identity: a country must be given one whose name means limit.

Season 13 · 20 Sept 2024Sickness, misfortune, evil

48:57Against "become what you are," Goethe's "die and become": knowing how to become and change matters more than affirming one's identity, which is repetitive.

Season 12 · 14 Aug 2024Too late?

1:57:30Divides of sexual, racial, or generational identity distract from the gravity of the threat.
2:10:13The worst of politics always plays on identities, as with the partition of India.
2:13:18France's identity is its non-identity: the mixture of contributions.

Season 12 · 24 Jun 2024For a “fresh and joyful” apocalypse?

1:28:29Identities are ontological: action changes nothing about them, one either is or is not; confining political debate to them impoverishes it.

Season 12 · 4 Jan 2024I am not who you think I am: the elusive identity

14:55Sex, language, age, origin: in Mignon all the determinations of an identity card fade away.
1:02:03Identity is name, first name, address, dwelling; Mignon has only a caravan.

Season 12 · 12 Dec 2023“I is another”, or contradictory identity

24:51The self indicates the identity between the one who was sick yesterday and the one who is well today.
52:13Identity does not persist on its own like Mont Blanc: a continuous act is required for the self, the plant, or the sound to persist.

Season 11 · 13 Nov 2022Dialectics of hesitation and decision

44:06Descartes maintains the identity of the wax even though all the predicates by which it had been defined have changed.
49:00The principle of identity, from Parmenides, grounds scientificity; before A = A, one must be able to affirm "I am I."

Season 10 · 27 Jan 2022#8 Philosophising under threat

1:30:52As soon as one reasons in identitarian terms, the same pattern returns: wicked France plunders Brittany.
1:33:21Color revolutions invoke a supposedly marginal ethnicity oppressed by the state one wants to bring down.

Series · 17 Nov 2021Left-washing: are the woke the most asleep?

30:45General humanist values are hijacked in favor of an ontology reduced to pure identity.

Season 10 · 6 Oct 2021#10.2 Dialectics of identity and difference

1:46:54He is wary of the ontological sense of identity. French identity lies in the richness of the contributions colliding within it.
2:17:01He is not against identity but against ontological identity, which rests on an already-there, on race.

Season 10 · 22 Sept 2021#10.1 The eternal irony of the community

1:07:25An imaginary identity loses itself in the infinitesimal of parts that disintegrate, like a cancer.

Series · 19 Jul 2021Being born human is not enough to be human

4:46Knowing when the mountain ceases to be a mountain is a problem of language, not of natural science.
6:54The "I" is the identity that man adds; without absolute identity, there is no absolute movement.
8:21"I am I" founds the principle of identity A = A, without which there would be no mathematics.

Season 9.2 · 27 May 2021#9.22 Science and/or philosophy of “artificial intelligence” (part 2)

1:24:21Mathematics rests on the principle of identity A = A, which presupposes that the subject can say "I am I."

Series · 21 May 2021Heidegger, or panzer-philosophy

28:14When conditions differ to such an extent, one wonders whether it is the same "I": an almost metaphysical problem.

Season 9.2 · 28 Apr 2021#9.20 From signal to sign: Einstein

21:30Nothing is more precarious than an imaginary identity; wanting to preserve one's integrity at all costs is paranoia.

Series · 7 Apr 2021#1 Mignon, or the song of silence

30:32Regional, racialized, gendered identities have become a posture of the dominant voice; Mignon escapes any assignment.

Series · 18 Jan 2021#10 The two Klemperers and Bruno Walter in Wagner

22:37He opposes not identities but identitarianism, which attributes naturalistic functions to them; identities can add up.
1:21:15Identities exist only on condition of being made into results, not origins; to be cultured is to leave one's culture.

Talks · 16 Jan 2021The world before, the world after (part 2)

53:02Racial identities belong to the imaginary, like the "Hamites" invented for the Egyptians; the real differences, such as blood type, are not those.
56:10All forms of opposition are allowed, provided they are not class struggles, because those unite people.

Talks · 24 Nov 2020Between sea and mountain, the standing stones of Valinco (the Corsican Neolithic)

40:07The ancestors did not speak of "Corsican-ness" but followed the paths of transhumance; identity is shifting, come by water.

Season 9.1 · 8 Oct 2020#1 Benefits and harms of amnesia…

18:40The identity that persists through change is suspended in part on an effort of memory.
20:27If others do not recognize you and memory loses its supports, identity wavers.
35:16In Rousseau's amnesia, "I did not know who I was, nor where I was": identity disappears.

Season 6 · 30 Jan 2020#6.4 The logic of the subject in the face of the reconstitution of Nazism

3:28It characterizes the ancient subject; true identity is the result of a relation, not of a substance.

Talks · 6 Dec 2019“The Brass Band's Journey”, by Dominique Memmi

1:32:11Identity changes according to place: despised on the island, the Sardinian kids become fully Corsican and French in Africa.

Season 6 · 23 Oct 2019#6.1 The logic of the subject

1:10:17"Know thyself": know in yourself what remains the same; the same is the syntagm of identity, the opposite of the other.

Talks · 31 Mar 2018Tonight, we repoliticise (part 2)

1:53:39For Hegel, identity is primary and difference is its work; for Marx and Sartre, difference is primary.
2:03:51The process of being is a self-differentiation, a self-determination, that is, a liberation.

Season 4 · 4 Feb 2018#4.4B Objections to Dominique Pagani

10:49Current temptation to shut oneself into religious, ethnic, sexual identities, held to be ontological, due to birth rather than history.

Season 4 · 24 Sept 2017#4.0 Presentation of the 2017-2018 workshop: Nerval's “Angélique”

12:54Fantasized identities (men, women, homosexuals, Christians, Muslims…) mask reality; the victim of napalm does not care about the identity of whoever is bombing them.

Season 3 · 1 Aug 2017#3.3 From Ulysses to Daedalus

1:03:40Our pseudo-identity is made up of conflicts.
1:11:02A reactionary notion, ontologically marked, which presupposes being rather than becoming.

Talks · 17 Jun 2017Adotevi: Negritude and negrologists (2)

38:52Whether one is Breton or something else is not the issue: it is a matter of political struggle against everything that destroys man.

Talks · 8 Jun 2017Adotevi: Negritude and negrologists (2017)

19:12When one has an identity, one does not ask the question; when one asks it, it is too late.
21:05The return of identities has causes: the region has the nation it deserves and vice versa.

Season 1 · 28 Jan 2016#1.8 Between crisis and war: philosophising?

5:06A principle formulated positively as identity or negatively as non-contradiction; it is never found in the sensible world.

Season 1 · 10 Dec 2015#1.5 Between crisis and war: philosophising?

1:00:15"Know thyself" aims at what remains invariant in oneself, which neither the body nor character guarantees.

Series · 8 Dec 2015Michel Clouscard, the paths of praxis (2/2)

26:28There is no identity in nature: the plain and the mountain are only two moments of the same process, seen on a geological scale.
34:21Identity is dialectical: exclusive, it contains difference and presupposes a relation to the other.
41:27Against the dogmatic thesis and the skeptical antithesis, identity exists as the result of a process, bound to its conditions and capable of evolving.

Talks · 23 Jun 2015L'île du Peuple: the debate

57:23Man is a knot of relations: once undone, nothing remains at the center; today's obsession with identity is a false problem.
1:00:34Identity is not posed outside difference; it takes time and work, and lies in the course, like the meanders of a river.

Series · 28 Dec 2014N for Niger

5:13African conflicts are passed off as identity quarrels or ethnic wars, whereas millions of deaths imply another stake.