Reflecting several of the conference themes, this session will emphasize “diversity as actuality and agenda” by exploring and “identifying the dynamics of diversity”, including the tensions inherent in the binaries of inclusion/exclusion, assimilation/difference, and individualism/group-consciousness. The discussants will also “examine…the past for the sake of the future”, and with the goal of presenting more holistic approaches to achieving justice because of rather than despite diversity.

The proposed papers are framed around the interdependence of politics and power. As such, they critique the role of political, legal, media and academic institutions in equating diversity with “otherness” in a way that has relegated alterity outside of the dominant political and cultural paradigms. Soo Ji Min will discuss how Western media and scientific dominance constrains non-Western cultural conceptions of the body. Min’s discussion is placed within the context of European colonialism and Euro-American cultural hegemony. Kathy Purnell explores the manner in which liberal thinkers addressed and constructed "cultural difference" within Empires past and present. Through an examination of thinkers as varied as Hobhouse, Rawls and Susan Okin, she will develop a more inclusive ethic that embraces--rather than simply tolerates or redefines--diversity. Christina Rivers will argue that W. E. B. Du Bois’ theories of race, ethnicity, capitalism and nationalism have never been fully explored and thus remain relevant to contemporary efforts to mediate global and cultural diversity. She will also apply Du Bois’ theories to the dilemma of American democracy, i.e. that it has both fostered and been fostered by a politics of exclusion at the expense of diversity, justice and, in the end, democracy itself.

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Keywords

• Identity formation
• Colonialism
• Liberalism
• Alterity
• Race
• Nationhood

Person as Subject

• Hobhouse, L.T. Rawls, John Okin, Susan DuBois, W.E.B.

(Virtual Presentation, English)