Culture and Difference: Heterologies of the Other

Abstract

The idea of difference and its postcolonial heterologies-diverse discourses of difference-have provided the conceptual groundwork for postcolonial theorists of nation, race, class, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality who have worked toward the ethical purpose of actualizing equitable contexts responsive to the alterity of individuals and groups within a society or culture regardless of identity politics and its categorical constructions. Yet this altruistic desire for securing equitable environments and opportunities is also the practical juncture at which postcolonial theorists begin to partcompany with respect to the concept of difference. Difference and its heterology therefore becomes an intrinsic point of theoretical validation for asserting the legitimacy of such postcolonial discourses in practice by justifying the ethics of the methods each puts forward for the creation of grounds for equitable social environments that are fair and just.    About the Author Peter Trifonas is a professor of Social and Cultural Studies in Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, the University of Toronto. He is the author of Revolutionary Pedagogies, Pedagogies of Difference, and Ethics, Institutions, and the Right to Philosophy (with Jacques Derrida), and The Ethics of Writing among other books.