The Concept of ‘Difference’

This article investigates the different ways in which the concept of 'difference' has been deployed in recent feminist writing and debate. Historically, feminism has displayed a tension between what are often referred to in shorthand as the 'difference or equality' objectives. Should the aim of feminism be to address that which defines women's condition at the present time, seeking greater material rewards and enhanced cultural validation? Or should feminist politics be directed towards a more fundamental eradication of the differences on which that condition is based? 'Difference' thus figures traditionally in feminist debates as one side of a political tension, of which equality usually seen as androgynous is the other term. This long-term disagreement finds full expression in contemporary feminism, whose politics and theory are deeply divided on this issue. Many strategic and policy-related debates, such as income maintenance on divorce, for example, revolve around this tension between objectives. The entire debate, however, takes place within a framework in which the categoxies of 'women' and 'men' are themselves seen as relatively unproblematic: the focus is on the difference between them. The whole matter looks very different if we attempt to 'deconstruct' these categories, examining critically the forms of difference that exist within them rather than between them. This new politics, recognizing the idea of difference within the category of woman, is radically challenging to conventional feminist arguments. This is because it is attempting to deconstruct the very historical identity on which feminist politics has traditionally been based. So we have here two very different understandings of what the term 'difference' means in the context of feminist politics: one model drawing on the idea of elifference between women and men (whether seen in timeless, essentialist tenns or in a more socially constructed approach) and the other a more deconstructive model that emphasizes the difference(s) within the category of woman itself as well as within the specific social existences of women. These two models are, I suggest, more in competition than they are complementary. The difficulty of