The problems of the contemporary political and cultural debate, especially the issue of the political meanings of the social moviments identities formation process are discussed in this text. ln order to do that, on discuss the tension between the knowledge that reveals an arbitrary sense, therefore regressive, in the partial identity moviments, and the interpretation that reveals the democratic potentialities, therefore emancipatory, of these moviments, on personnal and eoleetive terms. Finally, this tension aludes to the problem, important on the point of view of ~e moviments themselves, of the differences between the eriticallogic and the political action logic in the eontemporary society.