Ethnic-cultural identity as a specific dynamic of the composition of the self. Contributions of Ricoeur's hermeneutic phenomenology to biographical-narrative research

This paper reflects on the formation processes of personal and ethnic-cultural identity within the framework of biographical-narrative research. From Ricoeur's hermeneutic phenomenology and the notion of self, the notion of identity coined in the social scien-ces is problematized from a paradigm based on an ontology of substance that has nur-tured and delimited disciplinary fields and theoretical perspectives. It is proposed that there would be existential structures constituting the self -personal identity- that have been excluded and/or obscured as they are considered to be typical of individual (intra-psychic) functioning. Based on the context of the biographical-narrative inquiry, they would have an epistemological status. Along these lines, it is argued that the existential structures proposed by Ricoeur, based on the narrative identity and on the ontology of the act and potency, allow us to deepen the understanding of the dynamics of internali-zation of meanings and cultural senses in people, whose trajectories are marked by the transit between different cultural worlds. In narrative biographical research and the process of co-construction of biographies, the participant has an active role in the exa-mination of the self, ethnic-cultural identity as a particular dynamic of the composition of the self, and projects methodological approaches in the context of a life as a whole. This is with the final purpose of proposing and strengthening paths for recognizing one-self and others.