#7 Anthropological Differences
With Étienne Balibar
Moderation: Manuela Bojadžijev & Ivo Eichhorn
Gender, race, mental and physical health, but also age and intelligence can be described as anthropological differences. This is because they are perceived as human ways of being, yet they contain opposing determinations of the human, such as masculine versus feminine and normal versus pathological. They are socially, historically, and culturally constructed, permeated by relations of domination and shaped by ideologies. Because of this, they remain the subject of dispute, opposition, and transgression. Contemporary critical theories point out that these differences can never be neatly demarcated from each other, trying to link them in the construction of identities and collective agency. Perhaps the most influential model for this is intersectionality. The philosopher Étienne Balibar discusses this model based on an examination of what makes anthropological differences both comparable and untraceable to one other at once.