Autenticità, identità e politica. Il problema del «noi»

The politics of advanced democracies, in recent decades, has been described by various authors as both a field of conflict between collective identities based on status affiliations, and as a sphere dominated by the individualist logic of ego-assertion. The article addresses this apparent paradox by starting from the significance, for political philosophy, of the affirmation of the ethics of authenticity, of the right and duty to be oneself; and draws attention, in particular, to the obstacles and opportunities for the definition of collective belonging encountered in the field of progressive politics, i.e. oriented towards the expansion of rights and the recognition of dignity for oppressed groups. The author argues that the recourse of progressive politics to the language of identity derives from having lost the ability to combine collective and individual preferences in a project for a just society; that the counter-push of identity claims is fuelled by the search for the authenticity of the self; and that it ends up producing effects of depoliticisation and fragmentation of collective subjects. The article then explores, from a normative perspective, the possibility of a post-identitarian «We», capable of escaping the individualising tendency that arises from the search for individual authenticity, and of overcoming the exclusionary tendency of identity politics. To this end, it reflects on the appropriateness of rethinking the category of identity, separating it from the ideal of personal authenticity, and relocating it in the context of a politics of solidarity.