ADRIANA PEREIRA MATOS

dentity politics has invaded every space in contemporary debate, but even though it's everywhere, few agree on what it is. This research presents an attempt to untangle things, seeking to understand how collective identities began to enter politics and how this has been transformed. How the occasional adoption of essentialist strategies—intentionally or thoughtlessly—became the dominant logic and how this creates the illusion that one is fighting for justice, equality, and democratization when the result is far from it; not only illusorily advancing the real founding demands of the initial identification, but also sabotaging the very ideals they claim to defend. This thesis will seek, with a delimited trajectory, to present a glimpse of the debate, following those who have pointed out the logical problems of identity politics for decades, pointing out some of these identity illusions, and arguing that, to truly fight for justice and democracy, it is necessary not to lose sight of the end, the goal. Analysis and criticism, after all, can be made from many starting points, and they take different forms depending on this—as Marxist critiques of identity politics clearly demonstrate. Here, we begin from a position within democratic theory to analyze how demands that claim to be democratizing, for equality, freedom, and justice, in fact take other forms.