Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book offers a possible way out of the traps of cultural identity, and discusses this identity, concentrating on mediators and symbolic scapegoats, in terms of discourse theory. It argues that differences should become qualifying, a means of constituting 'differential positions without which there is no communication.' The book examines conflict over difference, and looks at the Irish hunger strike of 1981 in terms of a clash between Irish and English law. It also argues that difference is an antidote to 'the false universalism of many theories of emancipation', but that the importance of difference beyond that contribution is hard to discern. The book sets out the ontological differences among differences, and shows that the local identities of postmodernism can lead to a neofoundationalism.