Diversity : A Scarcity

Diversity is usually understood as that thing that provides for better living, in terms of both species and institutional life. Taking a page from animal studies, this part of the book seeks to question diversity's motives. Thinking of diversity as the driver of scarcity, this chapter is perhaps the most capacious. Reading across diversity work (Sarah Ahmed) in university settings, to the kinds of species-focused orientations that move us into the animal's response to us (Jacques Derrida), the chapter attempts to undermine diversity as a goal for life as we know it. It ends with a contemplation of Kurt Wimmer's Equilibrium and the privileged place of “puppies” in our discourses about hum/animal difference. Once again, it demonstrates that the lives of mothers, that thinking with females, is important to unpacking how we came to be diverse beings in the first instance.