2nd Leuven Critical Emancipations Conference: The Production of Difference

Within the broad tradition of critical theory, the notion of difference has gained a renewed salience for analyzing social and political phenomena. From Marx onwards, attention has been given to how the capitalist produces sameness by subsuming various groups under its mode of production. Critical theorists have also shown how apparent differences conceal an underlying homogeneity, from the trends of consumer society and the culture industry (Adorno & Horkheimer 1972; Fisher 2009) to the production of value itself (Heinrich 2012). Recently however, scholarship has shed new light on how capitalism also amplifies various differences and exploits them to its advantage. In capitalist globalization, borders have not disappeared but tended to multiply (Mezzadra & Neilson 2013). It also constitutively relies on unwaged care labor to reproduce labor power, drawing lines of division within the working population (Bhattacharya 2017; Vogel 1983). In addition, post-colonial authors have argued that hierarchical racial differences remain a cornerstone of the contemporary socio-economic system (Robinson 2019). This conference is an invitation to address this fundamentally ambiguous notion of difference in critical theory today.

Given this ambiguous nature, the production of difference also presents new political challenges. In light of increasing social differences, the orthodox marxist presupposition of the homogenization of the working class has long become untenable. This opens the question of how to construct a political subject within a heterogeneous social field (Gramsci 1999). Radical democrats conceptualize politics as a unifying discourse that connects plural subject positions through a shared opposition to a political adversary, exemplified by contemporary populist projects or the Occupy movement (Laclau & Mouffe 1985, Laclau 2005). Feminist and recent marxist accounts have also displaced the wage laborer as the central political actor, orienting class politics around a variety of contestations such as sexual violence, police brutality, consumption patterns and pension reforms (Weeks 2011, Mohandesi & Teitelman 2017, Clover 2019). This sensitivity to the power dynamics between different social standpoints and their relevance for counter-hegemonic projects has recently led to an increased and promising engagement between critical theorists and feminist social-epistemological research (Celikates 2017, Renault 2020). Another line of scholarship emerges from Black marxism. We find the first Black marxist critiques of capitalism’s exclusionary logic in Fanon (1952) and Césaire (1955). These critiques have been radicalized in recent years, leading scholars to think simultaneously through a myriad of intersections like, for example, class, anti-racist, and gender struggles (Hill Collins 2000). Because of their shared criticism of capitalism, these approaches propose a reconsideration of the concept of difference and its ramifications for political notions such as solidarity and empathy (Lorde 2017; Hartman 1997). A key task today is to draw attention to the unexplored connections between these positions, steering in between the scylla of erasing difference and the charybdis of powerless differentiation.

Finally, this conference wants to address the notion of difference on an ontological level. Is antagonism, as a modality of difference, an ontological feature of social reality or is it produced by specific historical conditions (Marchart 2018; Adorno 2008)? From a different perspective, feminist accounts of (sexual) difference have defended the value of plurality and non-identity against ‘phallocentric’ modes of thought (Irigaray 1985, Cavarero 2005). In what way, then, is difference a social ontological necessity?

Registration

Please register via this form.
The indicated conference fee (€30 for funded researchers, €10 for unfunded researchers) should be tranferred to the following account:
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IBAN    BE60 7340 0666 0370
BIC/SWIFT    KREDBEBB
Account holder    KU Leuven, Oude Markt 13, 3000 Leuven, Belgium
Bank    KBC, Bedrijvenkantoor Leuven, Brusselsesteenweg 100, 3000 Leuven, Belgium
Reference number   400/0025/79734​​​​​

Scientific committee

• Prof. dr. Matthias Lievens (KU Leuven)
• Prof. dr. Tim Heysse (KU Leuven)
• Prof. dr. Sonja Lavaert (VUB)
• Prof. dr. Martin Deleixhe (ULB)
• Prof. dr. Albena Azmanova (University of Kent)