Un/doing Differences is both the name of the DFG Research Unit Un/doing Differences. Practices of Human Differentiation at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz as well as its approach to the description and analysis of cultural processes of categorization and differentiation. Precursors of the approach can be found in gender studies with Doing Gender (cf. West/ Zimmerman 1987) and in the social sciences with Doing Differences (cf. West/ Fenstermaker 1995).
Differentiation categories of social practice
In both cases, it is assumed that categories of differentiation, such as gender, are not immutably inscribed in human subjects and that they embody their differences as ‚kinds of people‘, but that differentiations are rather the result of a social practice, the bringing forth or ‚doing‘ of differences (cf. Hirschauer/ Boll 2017).
The Un/doing Differences approach assumes that a fundamental contingency of human differentiations lies in their principle negatability: „They can be drawn or withdrawn, upheld or undermined. […] Against this background, the ambivalent expression un/doing differences attempts to conceptually capture an always fleeting state of limbo, a fragile moment of indifference in which processes of doing or undoing begin.“ (Hirschauer/ Boll 2017, 11 f.)
Un/doing Differences and Multiple Belongings.
The approach means, just like alternative concepts to describe human differentiations, that human individuals can never be described with only one category. Thus, it is not possible to be only male, only black, or only a representative of the middle class.
While intersectionality describes (cf. Crenshaw 1991) that people are on the ‚(street) intersection‘ of different lines of difference or theories of hybridity (cf. Bhaba 1994) assume a fusion of different cultures in (immigrant) biographies, Un/doing Differences understands multiple belonging as „a dynamic competition between different processes of differentiation, a complex game of mutual overlapping and overriding of human differentiations. A […] concrete case of doing difference is thus always a meaningful selection from a set of competing differentiations.“ (Hirschauer/ Boll 2017, 12)
Literature
Bhabha, Homi K. (1994): The location of culture. London: Routledge.
Crenshaw, Kimberlé Williams (1994): Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color. Stanford Law Review 43, 1241-1299.
Hirschauer, Stefan/ Boll, Tobias (2017): Un/doing Differences. On the theory and empirics of a research program. In: Hirschauer, Stefan (Ed.). Un/doing differences: practices of human differentiation. Weilerswist: Velbrück Wissenschaft, 7-26.
West, Candace/ Zimmerman, Don H. (1987): Doing gender. Gender & Society. Vol. 1, No. 2. In: West, Candace/ Fenstermaker, Sarah (Eds.) (1995) Doing Difference. Gender & Society. Vol. 9, No. 1.