Ehi tu! Identità, rapporti di forza e pratiche discorsive

This paper explores the role of language in the construction and dissolution of our identities. It starts from an anti-essentialist view of subjectivity, understood as a relational, unstable, and historical process. A necessary step is to shift the focus from language as a neutral tool of communication to discursive practices – composed not only of words but also of bodies, desires, and power relations – in an intertwining that would be dangerous to overlook. Drawing on Althusser’s concept of interpellation, critically revisited by Butler, the paper argues that the “subjectivizing” power of language can be understood only by attending to its relational dimension, always unstable, asymmetrical, reversible, and exposed to conflict. Recognizing the linguistic, and therefore precarious, nature of our identities may thus serve as an effective antidote to the risks of “identity drift” inherent in an essentialist conception of identity.