Ontology of difference

What’s the purpose

”Everything is flux and things are always the union of
opposites” (Heraclit) (Turner:203)
Differences
Dialectics
◦ Binary oppositions

Trialectics
◦ Triangular relations
 Body
 Market
 Society – social relations
Ontology of the social
Nature – culture
Nature – nurture
i.e. dichotomies

No universal approach

Relativism is the only safe ground
The philosophy/ontology
How do we overcome nature –
i.e. in what sense are we different from
animals?

Marx aims at explaining this by looking at

the political concept of WORK

Work is ontologically, what defines us as

human – and different from nature - species
Why the division
The division between nature and culture
is the most important division

It is discursive

Give examples

What is it good for?

Sexuality
”only” products of specific cultural
arrangements (Mead 1949)

Marx would say that it belongs to the

division of labour and thus to
reproduction
First there was labour – the dichotomy of
being
Then came division of labour

Then followed the humanization of nature

and the dialectical relation with the
naturalisation of man

Marxism is dialectics – like Norbert

Elias’s relatedness but only in opposite
pairs
Structuralist perspective
That body culture is embedded in social
structure and cannot be understood
outside a political realm

Division of labour accounts for gender

The labour process explains the
transformation of nature
Nature is transformed through the
collective labour process
Important
Labour is a conscious, practical social activity
through which the natural body becomes social

Consequence: no human nature is universal

because the idea of labour as the ”driving
socializing force” is historically specific

The labour as an organizing principle is

universal according to Marx
Agency with humans
Agency and consciousness (everything
which isn’t nature) is enhanced by social
relations through which nature is
overcome
History – Marxist approach
The social relations are historical
variables, whereas nature is constant
But: the political economy rests on the
premise, that man is alienated from the
means of production through the private
ownership of the means of production
Man is deprived the production of use-
value, forced to sell his labour power in
order to survive
Result
Alienation from the process of production,
from the product of his labour – social
relations – from his species life (!) his
fellow men and – nature

The result is a negative, destructive quality

Through revolution man can reposess his

inorganic body – the social body
Essense
Essentially we are social –
and therefore not nature –
because we produce as a collectivity –
in a physical organisation

Basisfor material life

Marx = materialism
Praxis
Bourdieu and the heritage from Marxism

Praxislinks human existence to the body

through production

Butmarxists do not conceptualise the

embodiment of agency (Turner 196)
Overall
The ontology of embodiment is the body
being both a natural phenomenon and a
social product

We have bodies - biologically

We are bodies – socially
We sense the world – mentally
Bodies have us – naturally (nature)
Division of labour - politically
Marx’s overall criticism
We do not possess our own bodies
As the bodies are part of the means of
production and they are in the possession
of others (the capitalists)
Which social institutions
Politicalinstitutions - parliament
Legal institutions – courts/legislators
Economic institutions – banks etc.

Bodies become commodities and can be

bought and sold
In prostitution bodies are exchanged not
for their use-value, but for exchange-
value
Alienation – signals lack
Lack of affection
Lack of subjectification
Lack of personal control
Different bodies of explanation
Desire and repressed desire
◦ Consumption
◦ Advertising
◦ Disease
◦ The use of metaphors

◦ Basis and superstructure

 The body is basis
 Ideology is superstructure
 Ideology shows itself through the use of metaphors
Fields of alienation
Examples
◦ Consumption – and (creation of) desire
 Examples of consumption through or of the body
 Plastic surgery

◦
Identity and expression of self
Cancer
Disability
Metafors tell us what?
The dialectics of difference
What’s the purpose
”Things are always the union of opposites”
(Heraclit)

Ontologial consequence: reality is always

becoming
Marx and Engels – an ontology of being which
is determined by nature – thus materialist and
stable, but historically changing
Body and language
Same ontology, intertwined and body is
socially constructed through discourse

Nietzsche and Foucault – conduct of

conduct
Discourse
The body as an ontological entity is
produced as a rational entity by discourse

This rationality is produced in the context

of political struggles

The outcome is the regulation of bodies

through social institutions
The will to power is the discourse of
Biology
Physiology
Medicine
Demography
embedded in the language of institutions
and the production of self through
disciplinary instruments of knowledge and
will
Sameness and difference
Same-same because based on the same
exclusion of individuality
Executed in institutions through
bureaucratic and localized practices of
power over bodies

But not without resistance…….

Gender then
Is based on the connotation of difference

Embodied in patriarchy

Embedded in patriarchy

Isdiscourse and seeks to destabilize and

deconstruct notions of sex and sex roles
From binary oppositions towards
interdisciplinarity
Binary oppositions were left for an
interdisciplinary focus
Forget categories

Think in relations or think relationally

Figurations…Elias
Actor-network theory….Latour
Feminists confront
Ontology of modernity resting on

◦ Dualisms being the outcome of patriarchy and

male dominance

◦ and of female dominance related to class

Women
Are not only interrelated but also need to
be looked at through intersectionality

Categories are simplistic and oppressing

Intersectionality
Differences
are important with respect to
how women/men
◦ Act, think, feel
◦ Influenced by historical circumstances
◦ And lived experience
◦ According to roles, expectations and
limitations
◦ Imposed upon them in a specific context
Multiplicities of gender
Diversity outside the binary system
◦ Transgender
◦ Sexual fluidity
◦ Ambiguity
◦ Non-gendered presentations
Perspective of intersectionality
Interconnectedness of ideas and social
structure
Intersecting of hierarchies of
◦ Gender,
◦ Race
◦ Economic class
◦ Sexuality
◦ And ethnicity
◦ And age (my emphasis)
The logic of intersectionality
Is that ”gender is a constellation of ideas
aand social practices that are historically
situated within mutually construct
systems of oppression” (Collins 1995)
Literature
 Petersen, A. (2007): Chap. 3: Reshaping and perfecting bodies
p.47-79 (33 p). In: The Body in Question. Routledge.

 Turner, B. (2008) Ontology of Difference. In: The Body and

Society. P.192-212 (20 p)