The Making of Crucial Differences

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The Making of Crucial Differences offers a historical perspective on the ways in which the social categories of gender, race, class, and sexuality have made a difference, from the Enlightenment up to the early twentieth century, with a prelude that deals with early modernity. The course introduces students to seminal approaches within gender studies, postcolonial studies, and queer theory as critical lenses for analysing different historical case studies. The course inquires into the ways in which dominant Western discourses of identity have formed divisions between self and other, black and white, the Orient and the West, male and female, hetero- and homosexual, upper and lower class. In other words, it explores how these differences served to construct and maintain cultural hierarchies and social inequalities. The historical perspective of this introductory course implies a sustained focus on the co-construction of gender, sexuality, race, and class as categories that shaped – and were shaped by – the entangled histories of capitalism, colonialism, slavery, and modern science.

The course combines an intersectional theoretical perspective with Michel Foucault’s discursive approach to the analysis of power and knowledge, and asks how gender, sexuality, race, and class were conceptualized within and against the dominant discourses of Western modernity. The purported aim of the modern age was to liberate human beings from fear and oppression, installing them as masters of nature. The Enlightenment fought for liberty, democracy, and equality, yet at the same time it (re-)installed dynamic patterns of inclusion and exclusion that continue to structure and divide society today. One could argue that the emancipatory project of the Enlightenment never quite managed to live up to its own standards. The course thus highlights the paradoxes of major modern progress narratives, while at the same time affirming the capacity of minoritarian knowledge production to negotiate, resist, and survive systemic racism, sexism, heteronormativity, and classism.