Philosophies of Difference

Philosophies of Difference engages with the concept of difference in relation to a number of fundamental philosophical and political problems. Insisting on the inseparability of ontology, ethics and politics, the essays and interview in this volume offer original and timely approaches to thinking nature, sexuate difference, racism, and decoloniality. The collection draws on a range of sources, including Latin American Indigenous ontologies and philosophers such as Henri Bergson, Jacques Derrida, Luce Irigaray, Immanuel Kant, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Charles Mills, and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro.

The contributors think embodiment and life by bringing continental philosophy into generative dialogue with fields including plant studies, animal studies, decoloniality, feminist theory, philosophy of race, and law. Affirming the importance of interdisciplinarity, Philosophies of Difference contributes to a creative and critical intervention into established norms, limits, and categories. Invoking a conception of difference as both constitutive and generative, this collection offers new and important insights into how a rethinking of difference may ground new and more ethical modes of being and being-with. Philosophies of Difference unearths the constructive possibilities of difference for an ethics of relationality, and for elaborating non-anthropocentric sociality.

The chapters in this book were originally published in a special issue in Australian Feminist Law Journal.

Ryan S. Gustafsson is a philosopher teaching at the University of Melbourne, Australia.

Rebecca Hill is a Senior Lecturer in Literary Studies at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia.

Helen Ngo is a Lecturer in Philosophy at Deakin University, Australia.