A RICŒURIAN ANALYSIS OF THE NARRATIVE CONSTRUCTION OF IDENTITIES BASED ON ESPOSITO'S BIOPOLITICAL STUDY ON NAZISM

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to investigate whether Paul Ricœur's theory of narrative identity is able to explain the identities formed by the reductive biomedical discourse of Nazism, according to Roberto Esposito's studies on the enigma of biopolitics in the case of Nazi Germany. In this sense, the study is divided into three parts, one presenting Esposito's considerations on Nazi thanatopolitics, another elucidating Ricœur's theory of narrative identity and a last part of convergence between the two. The focus of the first topic is to present the enigma of biopolitics – that is, why does a policy aimed at promoting life end up resulting in death? – and Esposito's biopolitical interpretation of Nazism, the greatest historical example of biopolitics that becomes thanatopolitics; From this interpretation follows the observation of the symbolic set of Nazi ideology, which values ​​a reduction of political, historical and social dimensions to a biological and medical vision. The second topic deals with two of the three paradoxes of identity presented by Ricœur in a conference (1995), which deal with the temporal problem of personal identity and the problem of the intersubjective constitution of the 'I'. The resolution of the paradoxes takes place through narrativity, which leads to considerations about narrative identity. The third topic positions the Ricœurian lenses for the analysis of the biomedical reductive ideology of Nazism, according to what was presented in the study by Esposito. In this way, it was possible to conclude that the process of generation of identities by the Nazi ideology can be understood by the theory of narrative identity, with regard to the hermeneutics of the Self and the Other and the importance of narrative mediation as a condition for the construction of all and any personal identity.