Afterword

Abstract

One of the striking features of our times is the realization that the pluricultural, plurilingual, secular state is a value worth striving for, especially in periods in which it is under attack. This realization involves the heightened sense of comparison, translation (understood as a cultural praxis) and awareness of our shared histories in a complex world characterized by asymmetric relations of power and domination. The epistemic advantage of thinking in similarities lies in the greater insight it gives us into the world of circulation; circulation of knowledge, ideas, experiences, all of which are available to us until the abundance of the world, its plenitude, is pressed into systems of power and domination. Then lines are drawn, borders created, fields marked off and spheres of influence demarcated so that the business of negotiation can start. We then start privileging differences and see in them the motor of insight. Instead of analogies, comparison, and ever-changing and fuzzy borders, we set up a hard system of clear differences to replace the mild world of fluid transitions.