Our aim is to take the Iliad as a textual basis, together with other classical and more contemporary sources, to analyse from a philosophical perspective issues present in Homer’s text relating to political identity, conflict and desire. At the heart of the military and political enterprise of the Trojan War, we can identify the actions of Aphrodite and the predominant role of erotic desire, a paradoxical, ambiguous and potentially transgressive force capable of threatening the very limits of political organisation. An analysis of the text of the Iliad will allow us to construct a hermeneutic reading that places eros at the centre of the forces that drive the events recounted by Homer.
Utopia is an inter- and multidisciplinary field that imagines and reflects on cities that do not exist, yet are plausible. From this, its political dimension follows—one that has been associated with the capacity to generate critique, compensation, and transformation of existing reality (counter-spaces). This article analyzes the identity dynamics present in selected representative narratives of the most significant feminist utopian typologies from the 18th and 19th centuries, with the aim of assessing their political value. Identity traits give rise to dynamics that condition inclusion and/or exclusion, revealing that power networks have been transformed but not eliminated. In all the cases studied, ideal cities are also cities marked by various non-emancipatory relationships.
This article examines the dialogues and tensions between the decolonial turn and post-foundational theory in relation to the subject as a key axis for understanding the political and political identities. While the decolonial approach highlights the historical structures of the coloniality of power, knowledge, and being, it tends to oscillate between a structuralist and an ethical understanding of the political, running the risk of essentializing the subaltern subject. Post-foundational theory, in turn, provides tools for thinking about political subjectivity from the perspective of contingency, but it often overlooks historical macro-structures, which also shape identities. The article argues that a critical dialogue between the two perspectives opens up new lines of inquiry for rethinking the production of political subjects in contexts of subjection to structures, while at the same time avoiding moralizing or determinist forms of reflection.
