“Inasmuch as the humanist logic of difference is in some sense a universal simulation (one which culminates in the absurdity of a 'right to difference'), it leads directly, for all its benevolence, to that other desperate hallucination of difference known as racism. As differences and the cult of differences continue to grow, another, unprecedented kind of violence, anomalous and inaccessible to critical rationality, grows even faster. Segalen's 'unanticipated gaps' are not simply new differences: what springs up in order to combat the total homogenization of the world is the Alien - monstrous metaphor for the corpse-like, viral Other: the compound form of all the varieties of otherness done to death by our system.
This is a racism which, for lack of any biological underpinning, seizes on the very slightest variations in the order of signs; a racism which quickly takes on a viral and automatic character, and perpetuates itself while revelling in a generalized semiotics. And this racism can never be countered by any humanism of difference, for the simple reason that it is itself the virus of difference.”