Rethinking Difference and Identity
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MULTICULTURAL STATES The political debates and arguments which surround questions of ethincity, race and cultural difference have caused a crisis in the idea of the nation as a community. For the critics and advocates of national identity and cultural difference, multiculturalism has often been a specifically national debate. Multicultural States challenges the national frames of reference of these debates by investigating contemporary theories, policies and practices of cultural pluralism across eight countries with historical links in British colonialism: the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, South Africa, Ireland and Britain. Written as history, theory, autobiography and political polemic, Multicultural States combines general theoretical discussions of the principles of cultural pluralism, nationalism, and minority identities with informative studies of specific local histories and political conflicts. Seeking to identify common problems and precepts in representing cultural differences in the postcolonial era, the contributors discuss such issues as political versus cultural constructions of nationhood in the USA and Australia; communalism and colonialism in India; Irish sectarianism and identity politics; ethnic nationalism in post-apartheid South Africa; British multiculturalism as a ‘heritage’ industry; multicultural law and education in Canada and New Zealand; refugees, migrancy and identity in a global cultural economy. Contributors: Ien Ang, David Attwell, David Bennett, Homi K. Bhabha, Gargi Bhattacharyya, Abena P. A. Busia, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Terry Eagleton, John Frow, Henry A. Giroux, Ihab Hassan, Smaro Kamboureli, Maria Koundoura, Beryl Langer, Susan Mathieson, Anne Maxwell, Meaghan Morris, Jon Stratton. Editor: David Bennett teaches English and Cultural Studies at the University of Melbourne. MULTICULTURAL STATES Rethinking difference and identity Edited by David Bennett London and New York First published 1998 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2001. © 1998 David Bennett selection and editorial matter © 1998 Individual contributors each contribution All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data Multicultural states: rethinking difference and identity/edited by David Bennett. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Pluralism (Social sciences)—Case studies. 2. Multiculturalism. 3. Ethnicity—Political aspects. I. Bennett, David HM276.M724 1998 306—dc21 98–17304 ISBN 0-415-12158-2 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-12159-0 (pbk) ISBN 0-203-00754-9 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-17387-2 (Glassbook Format) CONTENTS Acknowledgements ix Notes on contributors xi 1 Introduction 1 DAVID BENNETT PART I The limits of pluralism 27 2 Culture’s in between 29 HOMI K. BHABHA 3 Liberalism and minority culture: Reflections on ‘Culture’s in between’ 37 DAVID BENNETT AND HOMI K. BHABHA 4 Five types of identity and difference 48 TERRY EAGLETON 5 Economies of value 53 JOHN FROW 6 Multiculturalism or multinationalism? 69 MARIA KOUNDOURA PART II Multiculturalism and the nation: histories, policies, practices 89 v CONTENTS 7 Modernity and ethnicity in India 91 DIPESH CHAKRABARTY 8 Between ethnicity and nationhood: Shaka Day and the struggle over Zuluness in post-apartheid South Africa 111 SUSAN MATHIESON AND DAVID ATTWELL 9 Postcolonialism: The case of Ireland 125 TERRY EAGLETON 10 Multicultural imagined communities: Cultural difference and national identity in the USA and Australia 135 JON STRATTON AND IEN ANG 11 Globalisation and the myth of ethnic community: Salvadoran refugees in multicultural states 163 BERYL LANGER 12 The politics of national identity and the pedagogy of multiculturalism in the USA 178 HENRY A. GIROUX 13 Ethnicity and education: Biculturalism in New Zealand 195 ANNE MAXWELL 14 The technology of ethnicity: Canadian multiculturalism and the language of law 208 SMARO KAMBOURELI PART III Positionings 223 5 Lunching for the republic: Feminism, the media and identity politics in the Australian republicanism debate 225 MEAGHAN MORRIS 16 Riding multiculturalism 252 GARGI BHATTACHARYYA 17 Re:locations – Rethinking Britain from Accra, New York, and the Map Room of the British Museum 267 ABENA P. A. BUSIA vi CONTENTS 18 Counterpoints: Nationalism, colonialism, multiculturalism, etc. in personal perspective 282 IHAB HASSAN Index 295 vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Writing under the tide We Are All Multiculturalists Now, the US educationalist Nathan Glazer reflects on his discovery that ‘almost every book in the Harvard University libraries listed as containing the word “multiculturalism” in its tide in the 1970s and 1980s is Canadian or Australian’. Glazer comments that ‘it makes sense that the word should come to us from our neighbour to the north’, but he expresses bemusement at the discovery that Australia ‘has also been a pioneer in the use of the term’. The press-syndication of North American cultural controversies has long accustomed Australians, New Zealanders, Britons, South Africans and other consumers of the anglophone media to receiving filtered news of America’s ‘culture wars’; but in a media economy in which globalisation is often a mollifying euphemism for Americanisation, the exchange has been unequal. News travels fast, but only in certain directions. This book was conceived as a comparative reader in debates about theories and politics of multiculturalism in eight ex-British-colonial countries, and one of its aims is to question the national frames of reference within which these debates are still largely conducted. Most of the chapters were specifically commissioned for this book, and its publication would not have been possible without the generous patience, and impatience, with which the contributors waited on one another’s and the editor’s contributions to be completed. No less generous with their patience and support have been Rebecca Barden and Christopher Cudmore of Routledge, who accepted the proposal of this book for their cultural studies list. Three of the chapters are republications of essays that appeared before the volume was organised, and I gratefully acknowledge the permission of the following to reprint their work: Homi K. Bhabha, for ‘Culture’s In Between’, Artforum, vol. 32, no. 1, pp. 167–8, 211–14; John Frow, for ‘Economies of Value’, adapted from his book Cultural Studies and Cultural Value, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1995; Jon Stratton and Ien Ang, for ‘Multicultural Imagined Communities’, a revised version of their essay of the same title in T. O’Regan (ed.), Critical Multiculturalism, a special issue of Continuum: The Australian Journal of Media and Culture, vol. 8, no. 2, 1994, pp. 124–58; and Ihab Hassan, for ‘Counterpoints’, Third Text, vol. 41 (winter 1997–8). Thanks are due to Eleanor Hogan for copy-editing assistance, and, above ix ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS all, to Gina McColl for her indispensable, unflagging support and invaluable editorial advice over the long haul of this book’s preparation. Initial editorial research was supported by an Australian Research Council grant, and publication of this work was assisted by a publications grant from the University of Melbourne. David Bennett x NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS Ien Ang is Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Western Sydney, Nepean, Australia. Her books include Watching Dallas (1985), Desperately Seeking the Audience (1991) and Living Room Wars: Rethinking Media Audiences for a Postmodern World (1996). David Attwell is Professor of English at the University of Natal in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. He is the author of J.M. Coetzee: South Africa and the Politics of Writing (1993) and the editor of Coetzee’s Doubling the Point: Essays and Interviews (1992). He has also published on anglophone African criticism and theory, and is currently working on the cultural history of early black South African literature. David Bennett teaches English and Cultural Studies at the University of Melbourne. He has written widely on postmodernist and postcolonial issues and is the editor of The Thousand Mile Stare (1988), Rhetorics of History: Modernity and Postmodernity (1990) and Cultural Studies: Pluralism and Theory (1993). Homi K. Bhabha is Chester D. Tripp Professor in the Humanities at the University of Chicago. He is the editor of Nation and Narration (1990) and the author of The Location of Culture (1994). Gargi Bhattacharyya teaches Cultural Studies in the School of Social Sciences, University of Birmingham. Abena P. A. Busia is an Associate Professor of English and Women’s Studies at Rutgers University, and a poet. She has published articles on Black literature and colonial discourse and is co-editor, with Stanlie M. James, of Theorizing Black Feminisms (1993). She is also the author of a volume of poems, Testimonies of Exile (1990). Dipesh Chakrabarty is Professor in History and South Asian Studies at the University of Chicago where he is also a member of the Committee for the History of Culture. He is xi NOTES