Questions of Subjectivity: Philosophy and Literature

1. Who we are

The group “Questions of Subjectivity: Philosophy and Literature” develops research on the relationship between Value(s) and subjectivity and deals mainly with the problem of how the concept of subjectivity has been created, but also criticized, in the philosophical and literary traditions of the West. Being part of the CultureLab, this research is subordinated to an overarching research on the relationship between value and culture and the many ways in which human values and the human activity of valuing are always embedded in cultural forms of life, which have a given context and a history.  The group was created in 2017 after the new Scientific Committee of IFILNOVA concluded that there was a whole set of researches being carried separately that could be united into one single research-line. Those researches included, first, the work of an EPLab group on Ethics and Subjectivity. This group was focusing mainly on Foucault, although also on tensions and complementarities between his critique of subjectivity and the conceptions of the subject arising from the phenomenology of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty. Many concerns of this group dovetailed well with the research being carried out by another group working on the plurality of the subject in Philosophy & Literature. This second group (which belonged to the now extinct AELab) resulted from the FCT-funded project “Nietzsche and Fernando Pessoa on the Plurality of the Self”. It was mainly concerned with literary authors who have posed the question about the plurality of the subject within the context of modernism. Thirdly, in 2017 Professor António Caeiro was integrated in IFILNOVA as an expert on Ancient Philosophy and Culture. At IFILNOVA, he now works on the Greek and Roman texts that constitute the basis of Foucault’s genealogical critique of subjectivity, as well as on the roots of the idea of plurality of the subject in the Greek and Roman literary traditions, particularly in Greek lyrics

2. Members

Marta Faustino (Coordinator. Research Fellow, IFILNOVA)
António Caeiro (Professor, IFILNOVA)
António Cardiello (Postdoc, IFILNOVA)
Ana Falcato (Research Fellow, IFILNOVA)
Gianfranco Ferraro (Postdoc, IFILNOVA)
Pietro Gori (Research Fellow, IFILNOVA)
Paulo Lima (PhD, IFILNOVA)
Bartholomew Ryan (Research Fellow, IFILNOVA)
Fábio Serranito (PhD, IFILNOVA)
Luís de Sousa (Research Fellow, IFILNOVA)
Hélder Telo (PhD, IFILNOVA)
Giovanbattista Tusa (Research Fellow, IFILNOVA)

Collaborators

Philipe Farah (PhD student, Universidade Nova de Lisboa)
Vittorio Lubrano (PhD student, Universidade Nova de Lisboa)
Antonio Moretti (PhD, Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele, Milano)

Activities

Publications