ADRIANA PEREIRA MATOS

This research project intends to investigate the relationship between collective identities and democratic politics. Considering that the debate about the different identities and their political and social roles has gained strength in recent years, I intend to argue that a significant part of the studies on the subject focus on institutional politics, assuming structures and freezing collective identities, without paying attention to their formation processes. By acting in this way, they end up suffering from what Kwame Anthony Appiah calls "Medusa's syndrome": they transform collective identities into fixed, rigid and unitary structures, when in fact they are complex, malleable and plural processes. Based on Seyla Benhabib's democratic theory, the research will seek a dual approach: without disregarding the importance and consequences in the official public sphere, in representative institutions, in the legislative and judiciary, it will give space to the unofficial public sphere, with its various forms of interaction and informal and less structured political associations.