Legal Barbarians has two general objectives that intersect and complement each other. On one hand, the book seeks to describe and analyze how modern comparative law has contributed to the construction of modern subjectivities. On the other hand, it seeks to describe and analyze how this field of law has contributed to creating conceptual geographies and ways of understanding history that have influenced the legal conscience of individuals directly or indirectly, implicitly or explicitly, linked to enlightened modernity.

In the first chapter, I explore the relationship between narrative and identity. More precisely, in this chapter, I argue (i) that narratives construct and give unity to individual and collective identities; (ii) that modern law, understood as part of modern culture and not as its consequence, constructs a narrative that has contributed to the creation of the modern subject – a narrative that is built around the conceptual opposition "subject of law/legal barbarian"; and (iii) that comparative law has played a central role in the formation of this conceptual opposition. Comparative law has been fundamental for forming the legal “self” and "other" of modernity.