How to Humanize ‘Feral Children’: Constructing ‘Proper Identities’ in Liberal and Illiberal Legal Discourses

Abstract

The subjects of this article are the mechanisms of constructing the identity of the collective subject of sovereignty in liberal and illiberal discourses and the issue of the relationship between collective identity discourses (primarily those related to law and imposed by law) and the political. The author adopts a specific perspective inspired by post-structuralism and post-Marxism. This perspective denies the claim of modern liberalism to be a meta-category in relation to other political and ideological options. The so-called post-politics inscribed in liberal discourses is, from the point of view of post-Marxism, a political proposition deeply entangled in ideology. The basic thesis of the article is that both the liberal and illiberal discourses in the construction of the subject of sovereignty are essentialist and perceive this subject as an imagined community that must be built with the significant participation of the law and (partially hidden) coercion.