Theoretical universalizations can recuperate difference into old Enlightenment universalist frameworks

Evidence

30 This may be a matter of emphasis rather than fundamental disagreement. Laclau, for example, writes as if the proliferation of identities is something which has simply happened to late-modern societies: his focus is on how such a disseminated field could nevertheless be hegemonized through a certain type of “universalization.” When advanced by some proponents, this often becomes a recuperation of difference and a reassertion of the old Enlightenment universalist argument. However, from the multicultural perspective, the heterogenization of the social field—the pluralization of positionalities—is itself a necessary and positive, though not sufficient, moment and must be retained (in its hybridized forms), alongside the efforts (always incomplete) to define from within their particularities of a more universal horizon. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 409

Categorization

• XREF: Hegemonic ‘universalization’ of difference connects directly to Gramsci’s hegemony and to how Orientalism studies treat universalist claims as covert particularism. — connects to: Modern philosophy replaces substance-dualism solipsism with knowledge-based connection to the Other.; The Enlightenment accepts only what conforms to computation and utility; Critical Theory seeks the universal within the particular rather than above it — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 724 (+9 more)