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Session Detail (plenary)

Keynote 3: Andrew Moutu 'The calibration of difference: a perpetual enigma'



Session presentation

The calibration of difference: a perpetual enigma

Concerns about issues of inequality have engaged the analytical interests of Western scholars for a long while. The intransigence and vituperation it has spurred makes its discussion an unfinished business as it endures relentlessly as a perpetual enigma. Often the formulations of inequality emanate from systemic conceptualisations of difference. Therefore it follows that the ways in which difference is defined, measured or calibrated should also come under some form of scrutiny. Gender and sexual difference has been a key way for dealing with inequality at the level of analysis. Following on from the idea of internal difference captured and revealed in The Gender of the Gift, this paper aspires to throw some light on the way in which disproportionate relations are compared, measured or calibrated in ideas about inequality. If inequality continues to hold itself out as a perpetual enigma, what about internal difference that continues to create the conditions for imagining life anew?