The ambiguity of identities according to Étienne Balibar

Abstract

The work exposed hereafter intends to examine the ambiguous character of identities according to the analyses of the French philosopher Étienne Balibar. The text will focus on his works from the late eighties, where there is a distancing from the circle formed around Althusser and an approach to the philosophies of difference of Foucault, Deleuze and Derrida. We will seek to explain how the author, through the prism of Marxist class conflicts, will denounce the echelonment process of individuals in a hierarchical fashion within the capitalist world-economy based on multiple identity processes which respect the logic of maintaining the existing international social structure. The background of such analyses is the rise of xenophobic and neo-fascists movements which have not ceased to increase in today's Europe as a reaction to a profound crisis of the nation-state, its institutions and the fragmentation of ideally established communities.