One of recent popular approaches concerning the construction of Kurdish identity, which has also attracted a vast number of Kurdish intelligentsia, is based on a politically oriented theory that brings into consideration the self/other opposition as the major structure in the construction of Kurdish identity. The present seminar seeks to argue for a theoretical approach based on which Kurdish identity is first studied within the area of Kurdish subject-ivity and not as a whole entity opposed to its other. Hence, otherness in this theory is to be examined within the identity of the Kurdish subject and not outside of it. The argument of the present seminar moves from a matter of politics to a question in critical and cultural studies. Whereas Kurdish identity has been always thought of in terms of Kurdish culture, folklore, language, literature, and arts, Kurdish subject embodies the ideological representation of Kurdish identity. Hence, there is here a move from our general understanding of Kurdish identity to a critical investigation into the identity of the Kurdish subject. The identity of the Kurdish subject is not only host to a number of ‘others,’ but also constructed by them because of their representation in Kurdish identity. The present seminar proposes that the Kurdish subject faces three ostensibly distinct but actually similar ‘others,’ which are: 1) Big External Other, which is the dominant ethnic majority, 2) Big Internal Others, which are the different ideological discourses in Kurdish identity, and 3) Small Internal Others, which are the manifestations of Big Internal Others in the subjectivity of the Kurdish subject
