Una soggettività estatica: emozioni, vulnerabilità e desiderio

Abstract

An ecstatic subjectivity: emotions, vulnerability and desire

The essay analyzes the contemporary emotional subject, which replaced the rational subject of modernity. After spending a brief review of some contemporary philosophical conceptions about emotions, affections and passions (from phenomenology to existentialism to María Zambrano and Martha Nussbaum), it supports the thesis that to the affirmation of the present sentimental subject have contributed in a decisive way two factors: feminism and psychoanalysis. It therefore takes into consideration the contribution of feminism and psychoanalysis to the development of contemporary subjectivity: this contribution is particularly significant with regard to the issues of vulnerability and desire. Taken together, emotions, vulnerability and desire talk about an ecstatic subject, dragged him out of the relationships that constitute it, of the unconscious dynamics of desire, and exposed to wounds that come from outside.