In preparation for the conference and summer school Conceptualizing Difference, we will have several online reading groups to get the discussion started.

Reading Group 1: Difference and Normative Political Theory
19/08/2020 4 pm BST

Young, I. M. (1989). Polity and group difference: A critique of the ideal of universal citizenship. Ethics, 99(2), 250-274.
Mills, C. W. (2017). Black Radical Kantianism. Res Philosophica, 95(1), 1-33

Reading Group 2: Difference and Euromodernity
21/10/2020 4 pm BST

Under the title “Difference and Euromodernity”, we will discuss whether modernity is a singular concept, whether different modernities are possible, and whether they complement or compete with one another. We’ll read chapter 1 of Dipesh Chakrabarty’s Provincializing Europe and Chapter 2 of Pankaj Mishra’s Age of Anger. The reading of Chakrabarty’s Introduction to the same book is optional.

Reading Group 3: Genealogies of Human Difference
26/11/20 2 pm GMT

In this third reading group, we will focus on genealogies of “difference”. More specifically, we will focus on the construction of the idea of “Man”, in contrast to those who have historically and are today seen as lesser humans, or non-human. We will read Sylvia Wynter’s influential text “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation—An Argument”.

Reading Group 4: Difference and Identity Politics
24/02/2021 2 pm GMT

The last reading group will focus on the topic of ‘Difference and Identity Politics’. Given the diverse and polemic nature of this topic, we will discuss texts from three different perspectives to explore which conceptions of ‘identity politics’ they presuppose and what this tells us about contemporary discussions on ‘difference’: 

  • The Combahee River Collective Statement (1977) 
  • Zizek – Tolerance as an Ideological Category (2007) 
  • Fukuyama – Against Identity Politics, The New Tribalism and the Crisis of Democracy (2018) 

Dates will be communicated to interested parties via email, and will be posted on this page. For questions, do not hesitate to approach the conference organizers, Fredericke Weiner and Sophie Lauwers.