ABSTRACT
Genealogies and Conceptual Belonging addresses the performative effects of academic stories about genealogy in the recent controversial debates about diversity terminology in Germany, and specifically in the conversation between Gender Studies and the emerging field of Diversity Studies. I have suggested that stories about genealogy are mobilized in order to negotiate conceptual belonging by locating the ‘origin’ of a concept or a movement. In the analyzed stories, genealogy is enacted in a way that assumes a linear image of continuous time and progressive generation from an ‘origin’ in the past toward a foreseeable present and future. In the case of German academic discussions, supporters of the developing Diversity Studies cherish the potential of diversity for a multi-category analysis of an enabling multiplicity alongside differences that matter with regard to inequality. At the same time, Gender and Women’s Studies critics often reject the term diversity for its neoliberal, managerial rationale, allegedly putting profit above social justice. Rather than choose one of the sides offered in the oppositional structure of the debate, my proposed readings pay attention to the stories that erect and support the structure of neatly distinct and opposing positions. These stories negotiate the legitimate disciplinary belonging of a concept of diversity, by narrating the origins of the concepts of gender and diversity in the past, thus suggesting their proper place in the present and future.
