It is Mine but it is Not Me: On the Borders of Authorship

This paper explores the potential relevance of authorship for social and human sciences. In particular, it inquires to what extent is it possible for humanities and social sciences to set a rigid border between their scientific works and its author(s) but still make full sense of it. Ultimately, I advocate for a biographic approach to the works of these disciples, borrowing ideas from Ray Monk’s philosophical biography, Berthou Hermansen’s transformative language and Lordelo’s connection between writing and research (this issue). This synthetic perspective looks to stress that the production of human and social research is embedded not only in historical and cultural contexts but also within the lives of the authors doing it, thus making their biography something worth to keep in mind as connecting border. The latter, however, should be done avoiding ad hominem attacks or as shortcut to impose a theory about a specific author. Finally, the case of Martin Heidegger is presented as an example of how this position could contribute to the better understanding of humanities and social sciences.