equal/unequalinvolves a fundamental search for political identity. Which "people"? is his question, not events, contexts, circumstances,understandings, histories, etc. A "people" is made into anessentialized substance, with inherent characteristics that can be measured, identified. All of Bobbio's claims to an"analysis" of the dyad is of a fundamentally identitarian,person-centered politics. This has beenthe traditional understanding of identity in Western liberalism. That the identities are reduced to either equalor unequal, even if this is done relationally, gives evidence of how rationallysatisfying dualisms have been regarded. The unconscious working is that if you explain "both sides",you have explained it all. Moreover,regarding "people" as inherently equal or unequal in relation toothers also has a moral underpinning. One can read this affirmation as saying that there is some fundamentalquality in each of us that will make us more or less tolerant ofdifference. Some fundamental "humannature" that drives us into good and evil morality, reminding andreaffirming Bobbio's dualistic cosmos. The 'dyad' andsocial movements For many movements of social justice, the division ofequal/unequal does not represent their interests. It is clear to them, as in the case ofAfro-Brazilians and African Americans, for example, that they want both to be recognized as equal and unequal. They strive for equal rights andacknowledgements in some areas, while demanding unequal, or different ones indifferent matters. Also, depending on which Afro-Brazilian or African Americangroups and struggles we are talking about, they will differ from community tocommunity, inside the racial/cultural categories I am talking about. Whenever"equality" is used, or "inequality", it is just adiscursive, or moral, category; never objective, never existent in itself. It is a tool of discourse, and as such can beused for different and contradictory purposes. The question then becomes: Why then use them at all? Because they are part of history and can beeffective for political purposes, exactly because of their moral tone. We live in a moralistic culture, and bothright and left have used and abused this. Bobbios notion of"equality" as a "thing" that is ultimately transparent,scientifically provable, presupposes that all difference can be and is representedas either left, right, or center. Thepromise is that of a reconciliation, a full understanding of these asfundamental and eternal differences, which it is the task of knowledge toascertain us of. Bobbio wants to show usthe way to the True, so that left and right can live happily ever after. If some of the more vociferous and radical tendenciesof these groups have tended to the left, it is not because the left has someinherent quality in it, called 'equality', that brings them to its side. It is rather because of the way politics hasbeen systematically produced, as the embattling of opposite forces,complicitous in many ways one to the other, that a space, the left, hasgoverned the lead for revolt, change, pursuit of justice, while the right hasbeen concerned mainly with maintenance of priviledge (and here, of course, I amnaming right even many that self-identify as center). However, there is an assumption amongleftists and in the culture at large that all those that are for emancipatorypractices share fundamental mind- sets or practical realities that areinterchangeable. The