ABSTRACT
This volume aspires to contribute to the exploration of this theme in several ways. Most importantly, however, it aims to counteract excessively abstract and sometimes confusing treatments of equality and difference by contextualizing each of these terms and the opposition between them. While it certainly does not aim to conclude the existing debate-quite the contrary-the book is built around an underlying assumption, expressed in the title Beyond Equality and Difference, that our understanding of this pair of concepts can be most fruitfully advanced by contextualizing their many dimensions. By looking at the shifting senses of the terms ‘equality’ and ‘difference’ as they are employed by different people in different situations, we are reminded that they are not static-no more static, indeed, than the experiences and forms of existence to which they refer.
