"Well, if identity is only a game, if it is only a procedure to have relations, social and sexual-pleasure relationships that create new friendships, it is useful. But if identity becomes the problem of sexual existence, and if people think that they have to "uncover" their "own identity," and that their own identity has to become the law, the principle, the code of their existence; if the perennial question they ask is "Does this thing conform to my identity?" then, I think, they will turn back to a kind of ethics very close to the old heterosexual virility. If we are asked to relate to the question of identity, it must be an identity to our unique selves. But the relationships we have to have with ourselves are not ones of identity, rather, they must be relationships of differentiation, of creation, of innovation. To be the same is really boring. We must not exclude identity if people find their pleasure through this identity, but we must not think of this identity as an ethical universal rule."
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Atheists from FranceAcademics from FrancePhilosophers from FranceHistorians from FranceSociologists from France
Original Language: English
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"Sex, Power, and the Politics of Identity", interview in The Advocate, June 1982, as translated in Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth (1994), pp. 166
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Michel_Foucault
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Michel Foucault
1926 – 1984
französischer Philosoph
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