The Modern Self Prognosis: Freedom, Power, and Globality
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21847/2411-3093.2025.742Keywords:
Modern self; Otherness; Transmodern globality; Emancipation.Abstract
This paper critiques the modern self as a hegemonic construct constituted through the rational, mythical, and colonial matrices of Western modernity. It challenges the presumed universality of this self, showing that its authority depends on the systematic suppression of alternative identities and their rational voices. Positioned within the broader colonial matrix of power, the modern self appears both as the subject and instrument of a universalizing project that privileges Eurocentric rationality while marginalizing subaltern epistemologies. Tracing the historical and conceptual trajectory of this formation, from its original sources in classical and early modern philosophy to its Enlightenment consolidation, the paper argues that the “modern self” constitutes as a normative ideal of humanity, predicated upon the continual invention of the “Other” as inferior. Consequently, claims to universal reason are shown to be inseparable from exclusionary and hierarchical practices. Drawing on decolonial and liberation philosophy, this paper seeks to deconstruct the coercive imposition of the modern self and to reconstruct subjectivity through an affirmation of the pluriverse of philosophical traditions and lived experiences.
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