A questão racial na constituição do self: análise crítica a partir de Seyla Benhabib e Sueli Carneiro

Abstract

The present work seeks to analyze the conception of self that is based on Seyla Benhabib's theory of interactive universalism, demonstrating that although it constructs new categories to interpret the theory of universalism in a more complete and complex way, it does so with an emphasis on the issue of gender, without , however, point out another device that is equally important and constitutive of the self, the device of raciality, discussed by Sueli Carneiro (2023). The reflective power of these two philosophers is crossed in order to think about a practical political philosophy that can encompass the structural issues of Brazilian society. It is for this reason that the question posed by Benhabib is reformulated in this study when he seeks to reconstitute the legacy of modern universalism, questioning “what is alive and what is dead in the moral and political universalist theories of the present after the criticisms leveled at them by communitarians, feminists and postmoderns?” (Benhabib, 2021, p. 30) for “what is alive and what is dead in the theory of interactive universalism after a critical analysis of racism?”. By demonstrating this limitation, we present how the philosophy thought by Sueli Carneiro demarcates that the formation of the identity of black people in violently racist societies, such as Brazil, goes through an overly complex combination of gender, race and class markers, which has highlighted a deficit both theoretical, as well as political practice, making it impossible to integrate the different expressions that constitute the self of black women in multiracial and pluricultural societies. Taking advantage of the model of reflection on the modern philosophical tradition, implemented by Seyla Benhabib, in which she approaches the positive points of this thought and moves away from those that she considers insufficient for the improvement of the critique of universalism, placing herself in favor and, at the same time, time, against the philosophical canon, is that we point out the problem of racial deficit in its analysis, because Benhabibi's ethics, which is based on contextsensitive universalism, which is a precursor to the continuum between the generalized other and the concrete other, needs to be interconnected with racial criticism to remedy the gap described. Thus, the question that the work raises is that the self needs to be constituted through the racial grid as much as it needs to be based on the gender grid, as this is a way of correctly embodying subjects, taking into account their contexts, your identity and more than that, opening the doors to your ability for ontic and ontological self-determination. The process of destitution of the being of black people, through epistemicide and the consequent exclusion from the educational field cannot be left out of this reflection, since they are formative for the conditions of possibility that build white supremacy, constituent of the white hegemonic Self, historically central in classical philosophical conceptual architecture, which is why the defense of quotas for admission to universities is also brought to the debate.