A Grammar of Difference:
Some Ways of Rethinking Difference and Diversity as Educational Topics
(Published in Australian Education Researcher, 1997)
Nicholas C. Burbules
Department of Educational Policy Studies
University of Illinois, Urbana/Champaign
The topic of "difference" has come to the forefront of thinking in education and cultural studies. In part, an emphasis on difference, and particularly on poststructural interpretations of difference, is the expression of a postmodern suspicion of "metanarratives" and unifying discourses generally. At the same time, it is also an expression of a political trend, a framework within which groups can argue their separateness and distinctiveness, over against conceptions of community, solidarity, or liberal consensus that tend to stress common needs and interests. Finally, it is an expression of social and psychological models of identity and subjectivity that highlight the internally fragmented and performative aspects of human personality and action; as the identities and positions of cyborgs, hybrids, and creoles become more a topic of reflection, difference comes to be seen as a profound feature of inner life and not only a matter of encounters among diverse groups. Overall, these trends have sought to shift the focus away from a presumption of sameness to a recognition of difference; to highlight issues of fragmentation and hybridity; and to shift the burden of proof off the shoulders of those who have often had to justify their nonconformity with conventional, dominant norms or identities.1
Educationally, difference in these senses seems to be both an opportunity and a problem. It is an opportunity because encounters among diverse groups and individuals provide occasions for exploring the range of human possibilities that have been expressed in culture and history; because conversations across difference can teach us to understand and develop empathy for alternative forms of life; and because learning to deal with such diversity is a virtue of democratic civic culture. At the same time, difference can be a difficulty, educationally, because it can lead to conflict and misunderstanding; because certain differences are not simply neutral, but embued with power differentials that divide us; and because differences can reveal incommensurabilities that stand beyond the limit of language and our ability to understand. These factors often stand in tension with other educational values and aims, and while we can learn from this tension, too, the disruptions to which difference can lead have increasingly provoked educators (from a range of otherwise quite different political and moral positions) to advocate educational settings organized around relatively more homogeneous groupings.
This essay offers an examination of the idea of "difference" and some of the debates that have sprung up around it. Part of the difficulty in assessing the importance of this perspective has been that "difference" itself has been used in a multitude of different ways. Therefore I will suggest a "grammar of difference," a description of some of the different things that difference has been taken to mean. The point of this discussion is not to legislate a particular use of the term, but to try to explain some of the distinctive ways in which people talk about this topic. I then go on to discuss some of the educational dilemmas and challenges posed by an emphasis on "difference" in some of these senses.
The tension between sameness and diversity has been an ongoing feature of modern educational theory and practice, especially in my own country, which seems fundamentally torn between, on the one hand, a desire to use education to make people more alike (whether this is in regards to a "melting pot" of citizenship values and beliefs; the essential texts of "cultural literacy"; the factual knowledge and skills that can be measured by standardized tests; or the establishment of uniform national standards across the curriculum) - and, on the other hand, a desire to serve the different learning styles and needs, the different cultural orientations, and the different aspirations toward work and living represented by the diverse population of students in public schools.
Yet I think it is fair to say that the dominant discourse of educational policy in the United States has emphasized the common: from Thomas Jefferson and Horace Mann, to John Dewey and contemporary figures such as E.D. Hirsch, the basic theme of American schooling has been the emphasis on what every educated person should learn, should know, should be able to do. In part this emphasis has sprung from a democratic, egalitarian spirit, a desire to provide all students with the opportunity to participate in society's civic and employment arenas. In part, also, it has sprung from assumptions about common educational interests and needs that upon closer scrutiny may not serve all groups equitably. The language of "community," in particular, has held a powerful appeal for educators; but the kind of community that is typically held forth is one either based on explicit homogeneity, or on a tolerant pluralism across a range of differences, under which "we are all basically the same."
In recent years there has been a powerful reaction against these traditional emphases. From feminist, multicultural, postcolonial, and generally postmodern theoretical positions, the postulates of a universal human nature, of canonical texts, of generalizable norms, of a common knowledge base, of shared traditions, of a common standard of citizenship, have all been challenged.2 From these standpoints, the presumption of sameness or normalcy often just means an expectation of conformity with a dominant set of standards; and even where differences are considered, they are defined in reference to established norms and categories (such as "race").3 Such assumptions are shared by a range of otherwise quite different views, running from the conservative to the more progressive. For conservatives, "we are all the same" translates into "You are like (or should be like) us." The more liberal, pluralistic position of tolerance for diversity generally means the accommodation of those features of difference that can be comprehended and classified in terms of dominant standards, and ignoring or neglecting others. Even the apparently more inclusive claim to "celebrate diversity" often just means the exoticization of difference, of the Other, as something quaint, charming, or curious - but still viewed and evaluated from a dominant point of view.4 All of these positions share the potential for harm when differences are defined, and their significance judged, from within the perspective of a given framework of understanding, without due regard to the (perhaps) very different meaning of those differences from within the perspective of those being talked about. And when these judgments are wrapped up with a high-stakes endeavor such as education, the choice presented to those who are different is to abandon or suppress their differences for the sake of conformity and "fitting in"; or to accept the characterization of one's own differences from the dominant perspective, becoming alienated from one's self; or to reject the standards and norms others have set, and so lose out on the opportunity education represents - and then often being blamed for it in the bargain. This critique has served an important service by alerting us to the many unofficial assumptions that we make about sameness in schools; about the subtle forms of difference that are often misread or mistreated when interpreted solely through dominant norms (eye contact, discomfort with aggressive argumentation or questioning, nonstandard forms of grammar, and so forth); and about the real harm done when differences that make an important difference to others are ignored, misunderstood, or trivialized by the schools in which they find themselves.
This critique has had other beneficial influences as well. It has made people question what we count as a significant difference in certain situations. It has made people more aware of significant differences that may have been hidden or unspoken. It has made people reflect on the larger structures of signification that say that this difference matters, and that one does not. It has made people question where such structures of signification come from, and how they gain their force over us. It has made people realize how seemingly small or trivial differences may be related to much larger and more significant differences, so that neglecting the apparently trivial we end up neglecting the large and significant as well. It has made people more aware of the need to listen to the characterization of differences, and their significance or insignificance, from the perspective of those being talked about. Finally, it has made people realize that these differences are related to particular structures of signification, that they are made, or constructed, not inherent; and hence that they could be constructed differently.
In previous work on this subject, I have been most interested in difference as a condition that affects educational conversation, or dialogue.5 That work considers difference almost exclusively as an expression of diversity and, despite some reference to Derrida's notion of différance, limits the range of things that difference might mean to what I will call below "categorical" differences. These essays characterize difference as presenting both opportunities and difficulties for educators; but in the end they come down on the side of the possibilities of dialogue across differences, urging participants to "continue the conversation." Incommensurability, though acknowledged as an occasional barrier, is treated as a relatively rare, atypical event - posing serious challenges to communication and understanding when it arises, but arising less frequently than some radical difference theorists claim. The Habermasian and Freirean roots of much of that work tended to stress the hope and possibility inherent in dialogical processes, and to regard even significant differences as bridgeable, in most cases, by attempts at "translation" in the broad sense of that term and by persistent dedication to the value of conversation for its own sake.
It now seems to me that this work was bounded by certain assumptions about the nature of difference that failed to consider a broader range of things that "difference" can mean.6 In some cases of difference, as I will discuss below, the possibilities and benefits of conversation are more ambiguous, at best. Though I would still argue that pronouncements that "dialogue is impossible" in school contexts are too presumptive and tend to create a self-fulfilling prophecy, there certainly are situations in which asymmetries of power and status make the stakes in conversation much more risky for some parties than for others; and I also think now that there are occasions when the circumstances and the tacit assumptions of a conversation are such that to participate at all is to implicitly approve such conditions, so that the only way to challenge them is to refuse to participate under such terms. Such responses do not, however, deny or refute the value of conversation or dialogue - in fact, quite to the contrary, they entail an implicit critique of the conditions that impede conversation and dialogue (unequal power, "silencing" different voices, and so forth), and so tacitly defend the value of communicative relations, at least in certain settings.
In the end, I believe that we need to move beyond debates about "difference" per se, and to explore different kinds of difference and to consider their varied educational prospects. A more striking impact can be made by arguing at a more general, abstract level about what is or isn't possible educationally. But by trying to move beyond sweeping claims about "difference," I hope in what I write here to begin to move the discussion forward in a more constructive, fruitful manner.
I.
There are two broad ways of thinking about different kinds of difference. The first is to itemize the various dimensions along which we actually do differentiate in the social domain: the chief categories would include race, sex, gender, class, ethnicity, culture, language, nationality, religion, sexuality, age, ability or disability...the list could continue. Multiple dimensions of difference are always acting simultaneously; they interact; and the margins between different categories (sex and gender, for example) are themselves contested. But the categorical approach starts from these classifications and defines differences in terms of them. There are several problems, it seems to me, with this approach.
The first is that, without saying more, the simple invoking of these categories can obscure at least as many issues as it reveals. While there are many situations in which invoking "race" serves a clear and justified social purpose, for example, there are also many in which it does not; moreover, the more one reflects on the concept of race as a general notion, the more blurry and indefinite it becomes.7 What constitute the major racial categories; who belongs to which ones; how borderline cases or instances are adjudicated when they don't fall into those particular categories; how race articulates with nationality, ethnicity, or other categories; and the obscure relation between race and skin color, are all shifting, historically constituted determinations. At any particular time they can be overwhelming in their relevance; but at other times the "same" determinations will be seen as arcane and trivial. We always need to be asking, Whose categories are these, and who is assigning instances to categories? From whom is one being identified as different?8
A second problem is that these categorical identifications often are overlaid with social policies structured in particular ways by the state and other institutions. Because of the way in which categories are embedded in policies and practices, they tend to become static, reified. Particular categories become elevated and highlighted in significance; in many contexts, only one category is regarded as relevant or important. People are identified and identify themselves in terms of these categories, instead of vice versa.9 There are circumstances in which either invoking or challenging these categories can become the substance of strategic group assertions of self-interest; but there are also circumstances in which provisionally accepting these categories or defining group identity either for or against them is to cede greater significance to them than they deserve. What we need is a way to think about when it is progressive to invoke these categories and when it is not; but to do so, we need to go beyond a categorical analysis itself.10
A third problem, and a deeper one, is with categorical thinking itself. The development of taxonomies reflects assumptions about the world: that individuals can best be characterized in terms of types and categories; that social explanation depends upon subsumption under general groupings; that these categories are discrete and stable; that social understanding emerges from overlaying orderly, systematic grids upon the undifferentiated flow of social events; that, to paraphrase Wittgenstein, clear concepts are always better than blurry ones.
A very different way to think about difference is to begin with the continuous, the blurry, the unstable, and to try to develop a language that allows us to make particular distinctions and to offer explanations without reifying our working concepts into categories or typologies. Rather than beginning with the presumption of sameness, then attempting to classify differences as deviations from some standard, a "philosophy of difference" begins with the concept of difference as a general condition, one in terms of which even determinations of "sameness" are made.11 One way to begin this shift in orientation is to become aware of just how different different ways of talking about difference actually are; even about this there is not a unified set of definitions or categories. Here I will offer a "grammar of difference" to begin to elucidate a range of these discourses about difference.12 I hope that this account has some heuristic value, but it is not meant to be developed into a strict taxonomy or exhaustive list of kinds. Some dimensions of difference may not be expressible in these terms, though I think that many are. Moreover, there are, as we will see, serious tensions and points of critique between these different perspectives on difference.
II.
I am going to explain briefly what I think are eight ways of talking and thinking about difference.13 There may be others, and I do not mean anything final or conclusive about these distinctions. But I think that they can be helpful in sparking us to see that when people assert "difference," whatever the content of that difference might be, they are not always talking about the same sort of thing.
Let's call the first view of difference variety. This approach is the most clearly categorical, referring to different kinds within a particular category: say, different kinds of tree, or different kinds of language. One can only talk about kinds within a category when the category is known. We have to have some sense of what a "tree" is, or a "language" is, before we can identify types within it. Moreover, and more subtly, to talk about kinds within a category is also to say that the category matters. Sometimes there is a struggle over how a category should be defined, but this can be a way of emphasizing its significance as well. In the contemporary context, for example, one might talk about different national identities, and what they mean; one might even want to question the importance of "nation" in many circumstances around the world today, which is characterized by an increase in global, transnational entities, on the one hand, and a significant degree of internal, "balkanized," fragmentation within traditional nation-states, on the other.
Let's call the second view of difference, a difference in degree. Here differences are conceived as different points along a continuum of qualities. Different heights would be an obvious example, though the continuum need not be of a numerical standard. Emphasizing differences along such a continuum assumes that people recognize the features that the continuum describes, and have comparable senses, at least, of what some of the demarcations are along it (though, interestingly, challenges to dominant norms may include displacing what are taken to be the "significant" dividing points by emphasizing others, or by emphasizing the continuity of the gradations and hence the arbitrariness of particular dividing points at all - think about skin color, in the contemporary context). Finally, challenges to such continua may also take the form of rejecting the scale entirely, as in the scale of "intelligence" as purportedly measured by IQ tests. Often, this latter sort of critique is also an assertion of difference, such as an assertion of a different kind of intelligence, in which case it is an instance of the variety view of difference, which I discussed first.
Let's call the third view of difference variation. This means a different combination of and emphasis upon certain elements. What I am thinking of here is something like musical variations: different interpretations and juxtapositions of notes which partly retain the character of an original pattern (such as variations on a certain theme or melody), but add something new and unexpected to it. What is kept common here are the elements, or at least the basic elements - otherwise the variation would not be recognizable as such - as well as the common understanding of what the original reference point of the contrast is. In the contemporary context, one might talk about different body types or different states of ability or disability, taken not as deviations from a "normal" body type, but as legitimate alternative states of corporeal identity. However, though they are not judged against some standard body type, such claims do share an understanding of the same basic components, of body elements, senses, and capabilities, expressed in different ways and in different relations to one another.
Let's call the fourth view of difference a version. Like a variation, it refers to a familiar standard that is altered through interpretation, but unlike a variation it leaves the key elements of the standard unchanged, simply giving to them a different sense of meaning and tone. One might think about different versions of a play, which do not change any of the lines, but through shifts in characterization or emphasis give them a significantly different quality. In the contemporary context, differences of sexual identity might be viewed, in many circumstances, as this sort of enacted interpretation and reinterpretation - and hence questioning - of certain sexual roles.
Let's call the fifth view of difference an analogy. Sometimes differences are identified as relative, not to common standards, but to comparable, parallel standards (so that A is to B as C is to D). This is a more abstract sense of difference, so it is no surprise that the clearest examples of illustration come from the symbolic order itself: styles of dress, slang vocabulary, bodily ornamentation, and so on. At a much, much more complex level, one might also talk about a diversity of moral distinctions and categories within this same type of difference. A difference by analogy shows that, even when a particular difference in itself is novel, unexpected, or unique, it can be shown to serve comparable, parallel purposes as do similar markers in other contexts. This analogy provides a potential basis on which to discuss them and compare them. What is shared in common are not the particular practices, or the system of belief and value that supports them, but a larger frame of reference in which they can be seen as related, parallel, phenomena.
Now, in a previous version of this essay I stopped at this point, thinking that these five ways of thinking about difference covered most of the principal instances that concern us.14 I also thought that they showed that all assertions of difference implied assertions of similarity: similarity in terms of category; similarity in terms of the scales of reference along which continua are measured; similarity in terms of the familiar accounts against which variations or versions are contrasted; similarity in terms of the analogous reference points to which parallel phenomena are compared.
I now think that this provides an incomplete picture of difference. For one thing, these five represent difference as diversity; as external points of comparison and contrasts, more than as elements of enacted, lived identity. They also give insufficient attention to the dynamic character of difference: differences that change over time, that derive significance from shifting contexts and circumstances. Their dependence upon the identification of similarities, common reference points, or analogies make them inadequate to understand instances of radical difference - differences that challenge our very assumptions about similarity or analogy. All of these first five could be called dimensions of difference between, and I believe they have some usefulness in helping us understand a range of ways in which people make differentiations within a discourse of diversity.
But, as Homi Bhabha has argued, all of these discourses of diversity still frame difference in a limited way:
If cultural diversity is a category of comparative ethics, aesthetics, or ethnology, cultural difference is a process of signification through which statements of culture or on culture differentiate, discriminate, and authorize the production of fields of force, reference, applicability, and capacity. Cultural diversity is the recognition of pre-given cultural "contents" and customs.15
In explicating Bhabha's view, Fazal Rizvi writes:
Bhabha is critical of the notion of diversity which is used in liberal discourse to give an illusion of pluralistic harmony. He argues that this suppressed harmony is only achieved on the tacit terms of social norms constructed and administered by the dominant group to create an illusion of consensus. It is an ideological notion that obscures the exercise of power. The social norms within the framework of which diversity is valued serve only to contain expressions of cultural difference....The concept of difference, on the other hand, does not assume such a consensual logic. It seeks to make problematic the very norms which are used to identify difference. Differences, then, do not constitute either clearly marked areas of experience and practice or a unity of identity, as is so often assumed by teachers seeking to implement multiculturalism. Rather, differences are understood through a politics of signification - that is, through practices which are both reflective and constitutive of prevailing economic and political relations.16
I cite these quotes at length because they mark a pivotal juncture in this essay. While the first five discourses do characterize a range of possible perspectives on difference, they all represent the perspective of difference as diversity (what I have called here "difference between"); they are all, to varying degrees, species of categorical thinking; and they all run the risk of assuming a dominant set of norms or standards that groups and individuals are characterized as different from. By maintaining differences within categories and norms that are consistent with, and sometimes defined by, the interests of dominant groups, the discourses of diversity are a way of domesticating difference, allowing it "free play," but within a heavily constrained scope - moreover, a scope that is implicit, and not easily open to renegotiation or contestation.
The contrasting view, which Bhabha calls "cultural difference," is a relational discourse; one that begins with difference as primary, as pre-categorical.17 Differences are enacted. They change over time. They take shape differently in varied contexts. They always surpass our attempts to classify or define them. They do not assume sameness; they are the conditions out of which we establish agreements about sameness.18 The word "between" is itself a relational word: difference here is seen as a relation, not a distinction. Difference creates the sense of a "between."19 In this sense, then, difference represents a critique of binary thought and of the reification that categorical thinking falls prey to.20
Therefore, I would like to suggest that the five views of difference expressed within the discourse of diversity be supplemented with three additional ways of thinking about difference, which I will call difference beyond, difference within, and difference against. (I think that there is something is to be learned here from the importance of prepositions within such descriptions, and how difference resonates differently when it is matched with from, between, beyond, within, against, among and so forth.) It is crucial to note, however, that these three views are not simply supplements to the first five; as we will see, they represent direct critiques of the diversity view of difference, and of the politics (multiculturalism, liberal tolerance, categorical welfare policies, and so on) that grow out of that view.
III.
With difference beyond, we encounter a difference that is not only a difference within a particular category or framework (what might be called "foreignness"), but a challenge to that framework itself (which might be called "strangeness"). Cultures have many different ways of constructing a "family," for instance; but what about a culture that has no practices of that sort at all, that has no language for speaking of "family" relations as we understand them, that does not even think of community life in such terms? We often encounter such differences with a sense of bewilderment, with no standards of sameness or even analogy to work with. This idea of difference as excess, as something intrinsically beyond a particular way of thinking or speaking, is in one sense a dimension of all social encounters, as Jean-François Lyotard and Emmanuel Levinas have discussed: the difference of an Other always contains something beyond our capabilities of understanding; we inevitably encounter a point beyond which language and explanation cannot proceed. For Lyotard, this is the differend: "the unstable state and instant of language wherein something which must be able to be put into phrases cannot yet be."21 For Levinas, our encounter with an Other always involves an otherness (Autrui) beyond our comprehension:
The relationship with the other is not an idyllic and harmonious relationship of communion, or a sympathy through which we put ourselves in the other's place; we recognize the other as resembling us, but exterior to us; the relationship with the other is a relationship with a Mystery.22
Moreover, for Levinas, this radical alterity is a condition of our ethical responsiveness to the other: "This difference is my non-indifference to the other."23 And an element of this difference beyond our comprehension is true not only in our encounters with the exotic or strange, but in ordinary social encounters as well; which suggests that difference is not simply an indicator of diversity, but a quality inherent in the social relation itself.
Difference within is close to Jacques Derrida's notion of différance, and Gilles Deleuze's work on difference and repetition, I believe.24 To quote Jim Marshall, discussing Foucault and Deleuze:
Difference is...a part of that which is....The concept of difference is not merely concerned with a conceptual difference....Conceptual difference, or mere conceptual difference, is given by different concepts such as man and woman....Conceptual difference gives us diversity. The concept of difference, however, permits us to think differently within identity, within the concept of woman or man...as both woman "contains" the other and man "contains" the other.25
This idea of difference within suggests that categories are never entirely stable: that the logic of identity (that a thing is what it is) must be situated within a more dialectical relation; that a thing is also partly what it is not, what it is differentiated from, what it is defined over and against. It is revealing, for example, how often heterosexuality is legitimated and enforced explicitly by invoking anxiety about or hostility toward homosexuality. Or, as Trinh Minh-ha puts it, "Difference is not difference to some ears, but awkwardness or incompleteness....'difference' is essentially 'division' in the eyes of many." Here difference is judged against some primary standard of authenticity, normalcy. Instead of this view, she offers "a distinction between difference reduced to identity-authenticity and difference understood also as critical distance from myself."26 Difference within provides latitude for understanding the ways in which difference is enacted; how people express differences, play with them, transgress them, cross borders between them.
Finally, one can talk about difference against. A sense of difference is sometimes created, heightened by groups actively trying to differentiate themselves from, and call into question, dominant or conventional norms and beliefs. Homi Bhabha describes this as:
The aim of cultural difference is to rearticulate the sum of knowledge from the perspective of the signifying position of the minority that resists totalization - the repetition that will not return as the same....Designations of cultural difference interpellate forms of identity which, because of their continual implication in other symbolic systems, are always "incomplete" or open to cultural translation....It is from this foreign perspective that it becomes possible to inscribe the specific locality of cultural systems within incommensurable differences - and through that apprehension of difference to perform the act of cultural translation. In the act of translation, the "given" content become alien and estranged; and that, in its turn, leaves the language of translation Aufgabe, always confronted by its double, the untranslatable - alien and foreign.27
Difference against is a mode of critique, of challenge, as the assumptions and gaps of a dominant discourse are reflected back to it by contrast with a discourse and set of experiences quite alien to it. This represents a direct reaction against "pluralism" in the way it is normally understood; difference constitutes an "opposition" to the norms and values of a dominant society, not just an engagement with them.28 As Chandra Mohanty puts it,
The goal of the analysis of difference and the challenge of race was not pluralism as the proliferation of discourse on ethnicities as discrete and separate cultures. The challenge of race resides in a fundamental reconceptualization of our categories of analysis so that differences can be historically specified and understood as part of larger political processes and systems. The central issue, then, is not one of merely acknowledging difference; rather the more difficult question concerns the kind of difference that is acknowledged and engaged. Difference seen as benign variation (diversity), for instance, rather than as conflict, struggle, or the threat of disruption, bypasses power as well as history to suggest a harmonious, empty, pluralism.29
These three discourses about difference represent both a theoretical critique of any categorical view of difference and a political critique of the liberal version of pluralism that emphasizes understanding and tolerance (yes, and "dialogue") across differences - but differences that are givens, defined within limits that do not give adequate attention to the contested, unstable, and changing dimensions of difference as people live and enact them. These discourses, in different though related ways, address forms of unassimilated differences - differences that resist categorization or comparison in terms of the same.
IV.
What I hope emerges from this examination is that what counts as an important difference is a fluid notion. Differences should be reified no more than similarities should be. In a recent television documentary about an American high school, School Colors, Latino/a students walk out of high school saying that their identity is not given as much credence by the administration, teachers, or other students as are the predominant white and African-American categories (there is an African-American Studies program in the school but not a Latino/a studies program, for example). Under the banner of La Raza, they assert their common identity and interests over and against those of other groups: "we are not like you." Unfortunately, that common banner becomes problematic when scuffles and arguments break out within the group between Mexican-American students and students from other countries in Latin America, from Puerto Rico, and so on: "we are not like you." Among other things, this should make us wonder about the logic of separatism taken to its logical conclusion. What differences make a difference, and to whom, and compared with what, is a deep puzzle, a conceptual puzzle, one with serious social, political, and educational consequences.
What I want to highlight here are some of the dilemmas and dangers that accompany discussions of difference. I regard these as representing a series of conflicting tensions. First, as this example shows, there is the danger that radical difference, a presumption of incommensurability, and the logic of separatism push society toward greater and greater fragmentation. Yet there is the simultaneous danger that difference can become categorical, static; that we do not rethink particular dimensions of difference as contexts and circumstances change. This tendency toward reification is especially marked where categories are institutionalized through social programs of the state - programs which in themselves may be helping to redress inequities. Second, there is the danger of focusing on particular differences, to the neglect of other differences (or commonalties) that are obscured in the process. Yet there is the simultaneous danger of leveling all differences, or of "celebrating" difference, as if there were no history to some of these differences - histories of real harm and deprivation, of discrimination and even genocide. In certain contexts, one aspect, such as race (for example) may clearly come to the fore. Third, there is the danger that difference only becomes defined as diversity, as external; and that differences within are submerged. Yet there is the simultaneous danger of regarding difference as purely voluntaristic or personal, and not as implicated in social and political dynamics (such as difference against). Finally, there is the danger that discussions of difference only take place within a presumption of commonality; that "we are all different, but basically we are all alike." Yet there is the simultaneous danger of "exoticizing" difference; of regarding strangeness as quaint and fascinating, exaggerating the distance of Self and Other.
These pairings suggest a series of dilemmas that surround difference - how we talk about it, how we don't talk about it, how we exaggerate its importance, how we underestimate its importance. There are several ways of trying to respond to these dilemmas, with real human stakes behind them. One way is to dichotomize sameness and difference, and with that to dichotomize, from one's own perspective, those like one from those not like one. This thinking reifies categorical differences and ultimately leads to a balkanized world. Another way sees sameness and difference as related; this is basically the view behind the first five specific ways of thinking about difference - each noting differences, but differences that are defined or measured or compared against a common standard behind them. This thinking, typical as I have said of some of my own earlier work, supports a kind of pluralism that regards differences as a supplement, as alternative perspectives and experiences that one can engage and learn from. Sometimes these differences can be challenges as well: providing competing points of view, criticisms, unfamiliar perspectives. But insofar as they are characterized against a background of commonality, such differences can be regarded as translatable, as contributions to our understanding and not as threats to it.
But there is a third way of thinking about the dilemmas of difference and sameness: recognizing that each implicates and contains and yet also resists the other; that there are differences beyond translation, or in which translation implies not only a subsuming of X into the language of Y, but a fundamental rethinking of both X and Y. This kind of dialectic does not move toward resolution, but toward sustained tension; a tension manifested in the types of irreconcilable dilemmas I have just described. Difference here is not simply a supplement to our understandings, but a direct challenge to them: a challenge to binaries and either/or tradeoffs.
V.
What are some of the educational consequences of this sort analysis? A grammar of difference might be viewed as a kind of map, or guide, or concordance, or translation, or codebook. It should help us to recognize significant differences where we did not see differences before. It should help us to see them as significant, without seeing them as essential or unchanging. It should help us to see that the way in which differences are constructed or interpreted from one standpoint is just that, and that other standpoints are possible. It should help us to ask whose characterizations or categories of difference are being granted preference in particular circumstances. It should help us to see deeper ways in which difference and similarity imply and inform one another.
We could work this up into an entire educational program, I believe, which I can only sketch briefly here. It is not just a matter of what most people understand as "multiculturalism," of teaching about diverse cultures, traditions, or systems of belief.30 It is not just a matter of supplementing a standard curriculum with representative samplings from other points of view. It is not just a matter of introducing or displaying elements from other cultures, often out of context, for their exotic, colorful flavor. This sort of diversification of the curriculum may be beneficial, or not, depending on how it is done. But it is really only a step, a means to something deeper and more important educationally. Tolerance of difference, or for that matter celebrations of difference, are not the ultimate educational outcomes we should be after; it is the critical re-examination of difference, the questioning of our own systems of difference, and what they mean for ourselves and for other people. At some level, nearly all educational goals could be tied into this basic concern. Education should not simply be about transmitting an existing system of belief and value, unchanged, from one generation to the next; there must be some room for questioning, re-interpreting, and modifying that system in light of a broadened understanding of where it fits in the context of a diverse, rapidly changing world.
One of the primary features of this world is the growing awareness of difference itself, and a beginning to appreciate that questions about where those differences come from and how they come to mean what they do to different groups raise fundamental questions in turn about the world, and why we have come to settle on one account of it as opposed to another, depending on who we are and where we live. It is to recognize that much about our own systems of difference can be seen, from other points of view, as strange and exotic in the same way that other systems of difference appear to us. This does not necessarily lead to relativism, in my view; but it does lead to appreciating the arbitrariness of at least part of what we take for granted about ourselves and about others, along with the realization that from within another frame of reference those assumptions will appear quite different. "Multiculturalism," in this sense, is as much about a critical reflection upon our own culture, our art, our science, our ethics, and so on, as it is about the exploration of others'.
Therefore, this questioning and re-examination of systems of difference can be seen, at some basic level, as an essential part of education itself. The use of works of literature, the study of history, the intimate and respectful encounter with other traditions and cultures on their own terms, in part to understand how our categories of sameness and difference have come to be, can be seen as an exploration of the assumptions and values through which we constitute our identities and the ways in which these assumptions and values are intimately wrapped up with larger social and institutional patterns. Done care-fully, and respectfully, such questioning and re-examination can be the occasion for truly profound insights about ourselves as well as others. But even more than this it can illuminate something crucial about the way in which we make our lives, or in which they are made for us, within tacit categories of sameness or difference that could be re-made differently.
By shifting the burden of proof away from the presumption of sameness and toward an awareness of and sensitivity to difference, these critical perspectives have created the possibility for rethinking education in a significantly new way. Yet, as I have tried to suggest here, little is gained if "difference" simply becomes another way of stopping conversation by dividing perspectives from one another, or by arguing the relativity of all beliefs and values. What can be worth talking about, under those conditions? The very purpose of examining the ways in which difference (or sameness) has been talked about is to regard our categories and concepts, not as given, but as open to reflection and reconsideration, and in this to find new ways to think about them, talk about them, together.31
1Susan Leigh Star, "Misplaced concretism and concrete situations: Feminism, method, and information technology," presented to the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory, University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign, Fall 1995.
2 Rethinking "difference" has been particularly important for feminist theory and practice. Helpful overviews of this development can be found in Elizabeth Grosz, "Sexual difference and the problem of essentialism," in Naomi Schor and Elizabeth Weed, The Essential Difference (Bloomington, Ind.: University of Indiana Press, 1994), 82-97; Sneja Gunew, "Feminism and the politics of irreducible differences: Multiculturalism/ethnicity/race," in Sneja Gunew and Anna Yeatman, eds., Feminism and the Politics of Difference (New South Wales: Allen and Unwin, 1993), 1-19; Allison M. Jaggar, "Sexual difference and sexual equality," in Deborah L. Rhode, ed., Theoretical Perspectives on Sexual Difference (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 239-254; Deborah L. Rhode, "Theoretical perspectives on sexual difference," and "Definitions of difference," in Deborah L. Rhode, ed., Theoretical Perspectives on Sexual Difference (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 1-9 and 197-212; Leslie G. Roman, "'On the ground' with antiracist pedagogy and Raymond Williams's unfinished project to articulate a socially transformative critical realism," in Dennis L. Dworkin and Leslie G. Roman, eds, Views Beyond the Border Country (New York: Routledge, 1993), especially pages 161-166; Anna Yeatman, "Voice and representation in the politics of difference," in Sneja Gunew and Anna Yeatman, eds., Feminism and the Politics of Difference (New South Wales: Allen and Unwin, 1993), 228-245; Anna Yeatman, "Minorities and the politics of difference," and "Postmodernity and revisioning the political," in Anna Yeatman, Postmodern Revisionings of the Political (New York: Routledge, 1994), 80-91 and 106-122; and Iris Young's widely influential book Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990). In education, probably the most often-cited article on this subject is Elizabeth Ellsworth's "Why doesn't this feel empowering? Working through the repressive myths of critical pedagogy," Harvard Educational Review, Vol. 59 No. 3 (1989), pp. 291-324. See also, for example, Maria Lugones and Elizabeth Spelman, "Have we got a theory for you!" Women's Studies International Forum, Vol. 6 No. 6 (1983) and essays in Barry Kanpol and Peter McLaren, eds., Critical Multiculturalism: Uncommon Voices in a Common Struggle (Westport, Connecticut: Bergin Garvey, 1995) and in Christine Sleeter and Peter McLaren, eds., Multicultural Education, Critical Pedagogy, and the Politics of Difference (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1995).
3 Leslie Roman, "White is a color! White defensiveness, postmodernism, and anti-racist pedagogy," Race, Identity, and Representation in Education, Cameron McCarthy and Warren Crichlow, eds. (New York: Routledge, 1993), 71.
4 Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Penguin, 1985).
5 Nicholas C. Burbules and Suzanne Rice, "Dialogue across differences: Continuing the conversation," Harvard Educational Review, Vol. 61 (1991), pp. 393-416; Nicholas C. Burbules and Suzanne Rice, "Can we be heard?" Harvard Educational Review, Vol. 62 No. 2 (1992): 264-271. Republished in Teaching for Change: Addressing Issues of Difference in the College Classroom, Kathryn Geismar and Guitele Nicoleau, eds. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Educational Review, 1993): 1-25 and 34-42, respectively. See also, Nicholas C. Burbules, Dialogue in Teaching: Theory and Practice (New York: Teachers College Press, 1993).
6 These rethinkings have been prompted in large part by the patient explanations, and criticisms, of several feminist friends and colleagues, for which I am greatly appreciative.
7 David Theo Goldberg, Racist Culture: Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1993). For a fascinating debate on constructions of "race," see Jorge Klor de Alva, Earl Shorris, and Cornel West, "Colloquy: Our next race question," Harpers (April 1996), 55-63.
8 See Homi Bhabha, "DissemiNation: Time, narrative, and the margins of the modern nation," in The Location of Culture (New York: Routledge, 1994), 139-140.
9 A very interesting essay in the New Yorker explores how census takers in the United States in 1990 forced people to identify themselves in terms of the racial categories defined by their statistical checklists, even when a significant number of informants said that they would not or could not identify themselves in terms of such narrow categories. See Lawrence Wright, "One drop of blood," New Yorker (July 25, 1994), 46-55.
10 This analysis will be developed much further in an expanded version of this essay.
11 On a "philosophy of difference," see Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, translated by Paul Patton (London: Athlone Press, 1968).
12 I am using the term "grammar" in its somewhat archaic sense, as an overall introduction to a set of basic elements and principles; as a primer. I do not mean to be offering a systematic, prescriptive account of difference, nor do I think that such a thing is possible.
13 Other analyses of difference have been presented in the literature, including Rosi Braidotti's difference between, difference among, and difference within (Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 158-167, 177-179); Avtar Brah's difference as experience, difference as social relations, difference as subjectivity, and difference as identity ("Difference, diversity, and differentiation" in "Race," Culture and Difference, James Donald and Ali Rattansi, eds. (Newbury Park, California: Sage, 1992), 140-144); Lawrence Grossberg's three figures of difference - fragmentation, hybridity, and différance ("Cultural studies and/in new worlds," in Race, Identity, and Representation in Education, Cameron McCarthy and Warren Crichlow, eds. (New York: Routledge, 1993), 96-97); and Michèle Barrett's classic discussion of difference as experiential diversity, as positional meaning, and as sexual difference, which has been developed in two slightly different versions ("The concept of difference," Feminist Review, No. 26 (1987), 29-41, and "Some different meanings of the concept of difference: Feminist theory and the concept of ideology," The Difference Within: Feminism and Critical Theory, Elizabeth Meeze and Alice Parker, eds. (Philadelphia: Benjamins, 1989), 37-48). Although my discussion here has been informed by these alternative readings of difference, it does not coincide with any of them.
14 Nicholas C. Burbules, "Deconstructing difference and the difference this makes to education." Philosophy of Education 1996, Frank Margonis, ed. (Urbana, Ill.: Philosophy of Education Society, forthcoming).
15 Homi K. Bhabha, "Cultural diversity and cultural difference," The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, eds. (New York: Routledge, 1995) 206.
16 Fazal Rizvi, "The arts, education, and the politics of multiculturalism," Culture, Difference, and the Arts, Sneja Gunew and Fazal Rizvi, eds. (New South Wales: Allen and Unwin, 1994), 62.
17 For other perspectives on such a relational view of difference, see Rosi Braidotti, Nomadic Subjects, 239; and Martha Minow, Making All the Difference: Inclusion, Exclusion, and American Law (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990).
18 Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, 262, ff.
19 See Martin Heidegger's central text, Identity and Difference, translated by Joan Stambaugh (New York: Harper and Row, 1969), 63. This book represents a key influence upon Derrida's work on difference and différance; Rodolphe Gasche, Inventions of Difference: On Jacques Derrida (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994), 89-91; and Walter A. Brogan, "The original difference," Derrida and Différance, David Wood and Robert Bernasconi, eds. (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1988) 31-39.
20 Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet, Dialogues, translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987).
21 Jean-François Lyotard, The Differend: Phrases in Dispute, translated by Georges Van Den Abbeele (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988), 13.
22 Emmanuel Levinas, Time and the Other, excerpted in The Levinas Reader, Sean Hand, ed., translated by Richard A. Cohen (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1989), 43.
23 Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise Than Being, or Beyond Essence, translated by Alphonso Lingis (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1981).
24 On Derrida and différance, see especially Jacques Derrida, "La différance," in Margins of Philosophy, translated by Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 1-27; and Jacques Derrida, Positions, translated by Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 8-10, 26-29, 39-44, and 71-76. In the longer version of this essay, I provide more detail about the relation between Derrida's différance and what I am calling "difference within."
25 James Marshall, Michel Foucault: Personal Autonomy and Education (Boston: Kluwer, 1996), 37-38; see also Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, 23-24, 30.
26 Trinh Minh-ha, "Writing postcoloniality and feminism," The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, eds. (New York: Routledge, 1995), 264, 266, 268.
27 Homi Bhabha, "DissemiNation: Time, narrative, and the margins of the modern nation," in The Location of Culture (New York: Routledge, 1994), 162-164.
28 Leslie Roman, "White is a color!," 71-74.
29 Chandra Talpade Mohanty, "On race and voice: Challenges for liberal education in the 1990's," Cultural Critique, 14 (1989-90), 181.
30 For a powerful critique of the predominant multicultural discourses in education, see Cameron McCarthy, "Multicultural discourses and curriculum reform: A critical perspective," Educational Theory, Vol. 44 No. 1 (1994) 81-98.
31 This essay has been developed over a long period of time and has been strongly influenced by others. I would not, however, hold them responsible for any particular claims (or errors) I might make here. I would like to thank Carolyn Baker, Pradeep Dhillon, Walter Feinberg, Zelia Gregoriou, Natasha Levinson, Brian Lord, Jim Marshall, Kathryn Morgan, Melissa Orlie, Michael Peters, Fazal Rizvi, Leslie Roman, Leonie Rowan, Leigh Star, and Patricia White for specific comments and suggestions; the essay has been presented at the Philosophy of Education Discussion Group, University of Illinois, Urbana/Champaign, the Philosophy of Education Society, the Philosophy of Education Society, Great Britain, and the Australian Association for Research in Education, where it received thorough discussion and commentary; and it has benefited from conversations with colleagues at the University of California at Los Angeles, Monash University, and the University of Queensland, where it was presented in an earlier form.