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Why Cultivate Difference?

Why Cultivate Difference? Toward a Culture of Two Subjects The question of difference between the sexes is often reduced to a biological difference, or a social difference based on stereotypes. Before attempting to show that this difference is not simply one or the other, I would recall that, considering sexual difference in this manner, we consider men and women as two separate entities whose characteristics or specific features are analysed in a comparative way. And generally in order to restore the one, the same. The ideal thus seems to reduce the human species to only one gender, furthermore to an individual that would become neutral with regard to sexual identity. What is removed, what is denied, is difference itself, difference between the two genders. But sexual difference is the most universal one and denial in this case risks becoming a denial of difference elsewhere. If we look at sexual difference as composed of two separate entities that we could compare, then we forget that sexual difference corresponds first of all to a manner that human beings have of entering into relationship, the one(s) with the other(s). The attraction between man and woman, men and women, risks remaining an animal instinct if http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Paragraph Edinburgh University Press

Why Cultivate Difference?

Paragraph , Volume 25 (3): 79 – Nov 1, 2002

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Publisher
Edinburgh University Press
Copyright
© Edinburgh University Press
ISSN
0264-8334
eISSN
1750-0176
DOI
10.3366/para.2002.25.3.79
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Toward a Culture of Two Subjects The question of difference between the sexes is often reduced to a biological difference, or a social difference based on stereotypes. Before attempting to show that this difference is not simply one or the other, I would recall that, considering sexual difference in this manner, we consider men and women as two separate entities whose characteristics or specific features are analysed in a comparative way. And generally in order to restore the one, the same. The ideal thus seems to reduce the human species to only one gender, furthermore to an individual that would become neutral with regard to sexual identity. What is removed, what is denied, is difference itself, difference between the two genders. But sexual difference is the most universal one and denial in this case risks becoming a denial of difference elsewhere. If we look at sexual difference as composed of two separate entities that we could compare, then we forget that sexual difference corresponds first of all to a manner that human beings have of entering into relationship, the one(s) with the other(s). The attraction between man and woman, men and women, risks remaining an animal instinct if

Journal

ParagraphEdinburgh University Press

Published: Nov 1, 2002

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