Literature on difference comes in many shapes and forms, spanning various fields, approaches, and problematics. This list aims to give a first overview of several possible angles to approach the topic. It is non-exhaustive, and merely gives an impression of what has been written about conceptualizing difference, including both recent and older texts. Moreover, all disciplines are mixed.

Feel free to send us literature you would like to add (academic and “non-academic”), via email.
The list can be downloaded as PDF.

Ahmed, S. (2002). This other and other others. Economy and Society, 31(4), 558-572.

Ahmed, S. (2007). The language of diversity. Ethnic and racial studies, 30(2), 235-256.

Aouragh, M. (2019). ‘White privilege’ and shortcuts to anti-racism. Race & Class, 61(2), 3-26.

Balibar, E. (2012). Civic universalism and its internal exclusions: The issue of anthropological difference. Boundary 2, 39(1), 207-229.

Balibar, E., Wallerstein, I. M., & Wallerstein, S. R. I. (1991). Race, nation, class: Ambiguous identities. Verso.

Beck, U. (2007). Beyond class and nation: reframing social inequalities in a globalizing world. The British journal of sociology, 58(4), 679-705.

Benhabib, S. (Ed.). (1996). Democracy and difference: Contesting the boundaries of the political. Princeton University Press.

Braidotti, R. (1994). Nomadic subjects: Embodiment and sexual difference in contemporary feminist theory. Columbia University Press.

Brown, W. (2004). Tolerance and/or equality? The “Jewish Question” and the “Woman Question”. Differences: a journal of feminist cultural studies, 15(2), 1-31.

Brubaker, R. (2015). Grounds for difference. Harvard University Press.

Chakrabarty, D. (2008). Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial thought and historical difference. Princeton University Press.

Collective, C. R. (1983). The Combahee river collective statement. In: B. Smith (ed.), Home girls: A Black feminist anthology. Kitchen Table: Women of Colour Press, pp. 264-74.

Connolly, W. E. (2002). Identity, difference: democratic negotiations of political paradox. U of Minnesota Press.

Cooper, D. (2004). Challenging diversity. Cambridge University Press.

Coulthard, G. S. (2014). Red skin, white masks: Rejecting the colonial politics of recognition. U of Minnesota Press.

Deleuze, G. (1994). Difference and repetition. Columbia University Press.

Derrida, J. (1968). “Différance”, in: Margins of Philosophy, University of Chicago Press (1982), pp. 1-28

Dhawan, N., & do Mar Castro Varela, M. (2016). What difference does difference make?: Diversity, intersectionality and transnational feminist politics. Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women’s and Gender Studies, 16, 9-43.

Du Bois, W. E. B. (2008). The souls of black folk. Oxford University Press.

Fanon, F. (2008). Black skin, white masks. Grove press.

Federici, S. (2004). Caliban and the Witch. Autonomedia.

Felski, R. (1997). The doxa of difference. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 23(1), 1-21.

Fraser, N., & Honneth, A. (2003). Redistribution or recognition?: a political-philosophical exchange. Verso.

Fryer, D. R. (2015). Thinking queerly: Race, sex, gender, and the ethics of identity. Routledge.

Fukuyama, F. (2018). Identity: Contemporary identity politics and the struggle for recognition. Profile books.

Gordon, J. A. (2014). Creolizing Political Theory: Reading Rousseau through Fanon. Fordham Univ Press.

Gordon, L. R., & Gordon, J. A. (2015). Not only the master’s tools: African American studies in theory and practice. Routledge.

Gordon, L. R. (2019). Decolonizing Philosophy. The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 57, 16-36.

Gutmann, A. (ed.) (1994). Multiculturalism and “The Politics of Recognition”, Princeton University Press.

Hark, S., & Villa, P. I. (2017). Unterscheiden und herrschen: Ein Essay zu den ambivalenten Verflechtungen von Rassismus, Sexismus und Feminismus in der Gegenwart. transcript Verlag. English translation forthcoming: The Future of Difference.

Hoffmann, F. (2019). Anti-Rassismus zwischen Identitäts- und Alteritätspolitik. Ein praxislogischer Annähe-rungsversuch. In: H. Friese, M.Nolden, M. Schreiter (Hg.): Alltagsrassismus. Theoretische und empirische Perspektiven nach Chemnitz. Bielefeld: Transcript. 

Hirschauer, S. (2014). Un/doing Difference. Die Kontingenz sozialer Zugehörigkeiten. Zeitschrift für Soziologie, 43(3), 170–191. 

Hong, G. K. (2015). Death beyond disavowal: The impossible politics of difference. U of Minnesota Press.

Honneth, A., & Rancière, J. (2016). Recognition or disagreement: a critical encounter on the politics of freedom, equality, and identity. Columbia University Press.

Livingston, J., & Puar, J. K. (2011). Interspecies. Social Text, 29(1 (106)), 3-14.

Lorde, A. (2018). The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. Penguin UK.

Mahajan, G. (2002). The multicultural path: Issues of diversity and discrimination in democracy. Delhi: SAGE.

Mahmood, S. (2015). Religious difference in a secular age: A minority report. Princeton University Press.

Masolo, D. A. (2010). Self and community in a changing world. Indiana University Press.

Mavelli, L. (2013). Europe’s Encounter with Islam: The Secular and the Postsecular. Routledge.

Maynard, M. (2012). ‘Race’, gender and the concept of ‘difference’ in feminist thought. In: The dynamics of race and gender. Taylor & Francis, pp. 17-33.

Mbembe, A. (2017). Critique of black reason. Duke University Press.

Mignolo, W. D. (1999). I am where I think: Epistemology and the colonial difference. Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 8(2), 235-245.

Mishra, P. (2017). Age of anger: A history of the present. Macmillan.

Moreiras, A. (2001). The exhaustion of difference: the politics of Latin American cultural studies. Duke University Press.

Nicholson, L. J. (2008). Identity before identity politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Plumwood, V. (1993). Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. Routledge.

Rottenburg, R., Schnepel, B., & Shimada, S. (Eds.). (2015). The making and unmaking of differences: anthropological, sociological and philosophical perspectives. transcript Verlag.

Topolski, A. (2018). The race-religion constellation: A European contribution to the critical philosophy of race. Critical Philosophy of Race, 6(1), 58-81.

Vergès, F. (2017). Racial Capitalocene. In: Futures of Black Radicalism, G. T. Johnson, and A. Lubin (eds.). London: Verso, pp. 72-82.

Wright, E. O. (2015). Understanding class. Verso Books.

Wynter, S. (2003). Unsettling the coloniality of being/power/truth/freedom: Towards the human, after man, its overrepresentation—An argument. CR: The new centennial review, 3(3), 257- n 337.

Young, I. M. (1990). Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton University Press.

Yuval-Davis, N. (2010). Theorizing identity: beyond the ‘us’ and ‘them’ dichotomy. Patterns of prejudice, 44(3), 261-280.