ESSAY ON DIFFERENCE, RESISTANCE, AND ALTERITY

OBSERVATIONS ON THE EVOLUTION OF FEMINISM AND ANTIRACISM IN CONTEMPORARY TIMES

Abstract

The present essay aims to explore how human differences, which are usually the target of state violence and legal systems, simultaneously provide means of resistance through the development of self-awareness. On the other hand, the article observes that law, as an institution of violence, tends to serve authoritarian, reactionary, and inhibitory political forces that suppress human complexity. However, drawing from the understanding of the realist school of legal thought, it is argued that law is an open field for the political dispute of social forces in constant movement and the perennial reorganization of their strategies of action. The essay then revisits the perspective of historical materialism as a social theory of praxis to describe how difference operates in opening new paths as a form of resistance. Using the critical hypothetical method, based on literature reviews of thinkers such as De Giorgi, Derrida, Benjamin, Agamben, Marx, and Engels, the essay seeks to analyze how the discursive capacity of movements such as feminism and anti-racism continuously shifts and recreates strategies of resistance. The resulting hypothesis of the essay is optimistic, aiming to sustain that social and political praxis is a method of struggle for rights.