Short text.

Its fundamental point is expressed in lines 5-16. He wants to understand when a fact
becomes part of your own identity.
He considers the fact of being a Jew. This was a mere fact, a trivual fact like wearing
glasses or a jacket. Being a Jew was transformed from being a mere fact to be part of
someone’s identity.
Ex: being bisexual. Is being bisexual a mere fact about myself? It could be.
To be straight is just a fact about ourselves, but being bisexual is no longer a mere fact
about ourselves. Why?
Being bisexual, it seems that forms part of your identity, you cannot perceive this as a
mere fact about youserlf.
When a fact of yourself becomes a part of your identity, what happens?
An aspect of one’s identity cannot be a part of a decisión. I cannot decide to be
bisexual. If I could decide to be bisexual, this would not only depend on me.
I can decide to wear glasses, but this do not form part of my identity.
I may decide to wear a David Star on my jacket, and that becomes a part of my
identity. In this case, maybe this trivial fact could end up being a part of my identity.
I cannot decide than an aspect of myself forms part of my identity because forming
part of my identity depends on how the other regard me.
My identity is partly determined by the way other people look at me, how they
interprete.
We have to remember the idea of Charles Taylor:
In the times previous to the enlightment God establish the norms and rules of my life
and everyones left. So authority came from up to down. But at a certain point of the
history we get rid of this supreme figure. So which is the new picture? The alternative,
according to Taylor, is the idea of authenticity, the idea that I can no longer look at a
supreme being for guidance, I have to look inside myself.
And by lloking inside myself what is the role of the others? If everyone look inside
themselves we will have a happy life because we are benevolent and we will act
benevolently to others. Rousseau’s view.
If we did that, it would be a mess.
To have something inside to have a look, to get a mind I need the pressure, the other’s
opinion to look inside myself. I depend on others.
So what turns being bisexual into a part of my identity is becuase the way they look at
me. That is what determines what is inside me.
Being straight is also a part of my identity, but we are oblivious to that becaus we are
blessed.
My identity does not dependo n my exclusively because it is also determined by the
social stereotypes.
Lines 9-16
It cannot be a matter of decision it cannot be a matter of discovery.
The relevant notion here is acknowledgement that it is something between discovery
and decision.
Question 1:
It cannot be a matter of mere factual Discovery nor a matter of mere decisión.
Discovery must play a role. Which role? Lines 18 to the end.

Ex. To understand the idea of acknowledgement:

Acknowledgement-> no mere Discovery ->no mere decision.
 Being forced to
Movie: Stories to tell, by Sarah Polley.
Tells the story of a woman trying to find her biological father. She initiates the search
beacuse starts to think that the man who has taken care of her is not her biological
father.
She was not just curious, she thought it was important to her identity to know who her
father was.
The fact that a man is her biological father has become a mere fact about herself
She discovers who is her biological father, but that fact is a trivial fact for her, is not par
of her identity.
What she comes tgo understand is that her real father is not her biological father.
She is forced to acknowledge that his “fake” father is her real father. It is something
that she acknowledges, something imposed uopn her through the process of research.
Lines 12-16 Jews: There was something that they could do before the 30s, but after
that was imposed.
Elaine Scary. The body in pain. We will study the introduction of the first chapter.
Introduction is about physical pain.
We are going to get in touch with human suffering.
The book is about the way other people become visible to us, or seems to be visible to
us. How easily we stop seeing people, how easily we dont see someone’s pain.
The person who suffer physical pain, for her pain is somethin she cannot doubt,
whereas for someone that is not in her situation , the pain of the person is difficult to
grasp, something invisible.
Ex: a girl had terrible headache, and just an expensive pill could have on her some
relieve, and when she told her mother to give her a pill, the mother asked: Are you
sure?
She was her mother, the one for whom her daughter’s pain should be more important
and it had became invisible, because of simply the Price of the pill.
So that is a symptom of how easily tjhe pain of someone else becomes invisible to us.
Ex: The pain of siria refugees: Visible to angela merkel, who accepted 2 million, while it
is invisible for Spanish people who have accepted just 2 thousand people.
The book study By which means the suffering of people becomes invisible.
She addresses 3 issues that move in concentrical circles that she call:
-Physical pain
-Political consecuences of this invisibility
-Nature of human creration
Pain and suffering decreate and deconstruct.
Physical pain deconstruct language and it turns human voice to a pre-linguistic kind of
language.
How can culture compensate this tendecy of physical pain to deconstruct linguistic
capacity?
She claims that in experiences like torture the products of human creation are used to
destroy the world.