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Multiculturalism and the traffic of difference

Ask not what liberalism can do for
multiculturalism, ask what multiculturalism
is doing for the attenuated life of late
liberalism!
Homi Bhabha(Translator translated)

Multiculturalism, an ideological trend that has been present in Western

cultural and political scenarios since the 1960s, has been defined as a social
and ideological position that values diversity (of opinions, experiences, race
and ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, gender, physical capacities, etc.) as a
potential source of strength and growth rather than of conflict or
disruption-- in contemporary society.
The reasons for the emergence of this trend are numerous. Some of the more
important ones: the transnational nomadism of financial capital, the flexible
regimes of labor, the increment of migration, the unlimited expansion of
entrepreneurial business, the constant and untraditional traffic of real and
symbolic commodities, the simultaneity of spaces and temporalities due to
the insertion of virtual universes in our daily experience. All of these factors
have dramatically altered the design and the values of modernity and have
given ample evidence of its inherent perversions and shortcomings. They
have also precipitated the need of global perspectives and the use of macrocategories for the analysis of the new world-order. Concurrently, those
factors have also minimized the currency of national cultures as the primary
platform for cultural, economic and political reflection. Modern categories
such as nation, citizenship, identity and the like have given room to more
fluid and provisional notions such as virtual community, cultural or political
affiliation, collective subjectivity, which better channel the spirit and the
ethos of postmodern societies. These notions, intended to counterbalance the
universalism and essentialism embedded in the Enlightenment tradition,
loosely convey the relatively accurate perception of an impermanent worldsystem where power positions are, more than ever, temporary, fluctuating
and negotiable. Paradoxically, in this world-order social agency becomes the
crucial factor for the interpretation and transformation of the world.
Within this framework, multiculturalism, taking the place of modern
cosmopolitism, emerges as an ideological strategy intended to compensate

for the limitations and failings of modernity and, in more recent scenarios, of
globality and (neo) liberalism. In an increasingly homogeneous, depersonalized and integrated planet, multiculturalism provides a platform for
intercultural tolerance and ideological lenience. In a world traversed by
violence and marginalization, multiculturalism offers the utopian,
conciliatory message of tolerance, harmony and mutual understanding.
Nevertheless, both from right and left-wing perspectives, the abundant
critique of multiculturalism deserve further reflection.
For some social analysts, multiculturalism is nothing more that the new toy
of neoliberal elites, concerned with the need to inhabit a world that has
become increasingly proliferant, diverse and, at least in appearance, dehierarchized. The problems connected to what is perceived, in some cases,
as the promiscuity of integration and transculturalism are, for some, too
many and too complex, and require, at the same time, an attitude of defiance
and defensiveness. Although some of the ideas that the notion of
multiculturalism immediately evokes are those of pluralism and relativism,
multiculturalism touches, among many other things, on the topics of race,
ethnicity and collective identity, all intimately tied, in countries as
heterogeneous and racially self-conscious as the United States, on the
definition of nationhood, citizenry, and democratic governance.
Far from constituting an indication of the advent of post-racial societies,
many of the discussions and social changes that are taking place nowadays
in the political arena at least in the US --which are connected one way or
another to the topics of multiculturalism, identity politics, intercultural
relations, and global integration-- have ignited a widespread debate that is
taking place at all levels of society. Conceptually, the topic reminds us of the
useful concept of coloniality of power coined by Peruvian sociologist Anbal
Quijano, and of his discussion of Americanity, a notion he developed
together with Immanuel Wallerstein in order to define the place that the
Americas have occupied in the modern-world system. As it is well known,
Quijano emphasizes the importance of race and of the systems of social
classification that derives from colonial domination and that, in different
manners and degrees, still traverse the social and ideological fabric of
contemporary societies.
Although nobody uses the word acculturation anymore, in the United States
for instance, the talk about the end of white America after the victory of

Barak Obama, has triggered a variety of reactions that, one way or another,
make reference to the loss of cultural identity by sectors whose
predominance feels suddenly at risk. Some interpret the new social
dynamics as a form of reverse colonialism: traditionally dominated sectors
now conquer the forefront of the political scene, a transformation that, some
fear, will be followed by the economic and cultural empowerment of the
new colonizing elite.
This perception has generated in a big sector of American society a sense of
trepidation about the possibility to lose social control and economic
preponderance, something that the privileged elite has been taking for
granted since the beginning of times. Social sectors that felt until not long
ago, almost literally on top of the world, now complain about the lack of
cultural heritages, cohesive myths, common traditions and historical
memories that could strengthen and enrich both individual subjectivities and
collective (sectorial) imaginaries and incorporate a touch of rebelliousness
and alternativity to mainstream, high-brow, cultural trends and official
discourses (as the history of slavery and emancipation does for blacks, the
myth of Aztlan and the drama of illegal immigration does for Latinos, the
memory of the Holocaust for Jews, the struggle against patriarchalism for
women, and the mobilization for equal rights for gay/lesbian movements). In
different degrees, from conservative elites to middle-class sensitivities, these
feelings of inadequacy and cultural emptiness point to the crises of a
comfortable status quo that has been agonizing since the end of the Cold
War and which suffered and unthinkable and precipitating blow with the
dramatic events of 9/11.
The decline of whiteness (or, at least, of its symbolic market-value) has
become (as that of masculinity) a popular topic in cultural studies for the
social, cultural, political and even commercial ramifications of this issue.
Demographic changes have, in fact, dramatically modified the face and the
heart of Northern America. It has been estimated, according to the US
Census Bureau of 2008 that racial minorities blacks and Hispanics, East
Asians and South Asians will count for a majority of the US population by
the year 2042. (The Atlantic). Some talk about the emergence in the US of
a post-racial society or, with a less optimistic prediction, of the inauguration
of Third-World America. According to an article recently published in The
Atlantic,

The Election of Barack Obama is just the most startling manifestation

of a larger trend: the gradual erosion of whiteness as the touchstone
of what it means to be American. If the end of white America is a
cultural and demographic inevitability, what will the new mainstream
look likeand how will white Americans fit into it? What will it
mean to be white when whiteness is no longer the norm? And will a
post-white America be less racially dividedor more so? (The
Atlantic . January-February 2009)
Since the rise of Obama, even before his election as the 44th President of the
US, there has been a notorious increase of terrorist threats not only by
external enemies but, at a national level, by white supremacy groups (KKK,
neo-Nazis, etc.) as well as a significant radicalization of religious
organizations, cults, and the like. Even the emergence of the academic field
of whiteness studies or, even better, of white-trash studies (a field [the
latter] conceived as a response to the perceived liberal-elite marginalization
of the white working class, a social sector that claims to be real America)
signal to the transformation of traditional society and the emotional turmoil
this transformation elicits in the more conservative sectors of society. 1
In his polemic book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the
World (1996) but even more in the pamphlet titled Who Are We? The
Challenges to America's National Identity (2004) Samuel P. Huntington
voices the concerns of an illustrated, conservative class facing the global
challenges of cultural and social interactions. Huntington predicted that
international conflicts will threaten --through terrorism, warfare, etc.-- the
unstable balance of globality in the 21 st century. For him, the existence of
fixed, solid cultural identities based on religion, tradition, etc., is a reality
that needs to be defended, and perpetuated. "My argument remains
Huntington expresses-- that cultural identities, antagonisms and affiliations
will not only play a role, but play a major role in relations between states." 2
According to Edward Said, Huntington created an imagined geography
that supports the idea of antagonistic civilizations in order to justify his
conservative politics. For Said, and many other critics, Huntingtons
position constitutes an attempt to legitimize US aggression and
interventionism against other nations thus perpetuating the state of war or,
in other words, the continuity of the Cold War under new premises. All this
in the name of the preservation of US national identity and of the social
harmony this identity is supposed to grant. Who Are We? The Challenges to
America's National Identity goes even deeper into the intricacies of

domestic affairs, immigration, and identity politics. In a country where more

than 40 million people speak Spanish, and where Hispanics and other socalled minorities represent a very substantial part of the economy (both in
the production and in consumption ends of the spectrum) Huntingtons
inflammatory argument is that bilingualism and multiculturalism favor the
formation of ethnic ghettoes, oppose the Americanization of immigrants,
obstruct the implementation of democratic governance and ultimately lead to
national disintegration. For him, the English language, together with the
values of Protestantism, the ethics of productivity and the emphasis on
individualism constitute the base of US national identity. The problem is, of
course, who defines the national culture, a historical and an ideological
construct that is supposed to represent the economic, political, and cultural
interests of all and not just of the illustrated elite who recognizes itself as the
repository of legitimate values and historical legacies.
But at the level of popular culture, the social thermostat shows a different
temperature. The icons of diversity are mainly those that give priority to the
representation of otherness, a commodity of great symbolic value which in
the US undoubtedly indicates the flight from whiteness: an exclusionary
preference for cultural difference and social alterity which has managed to
capture, more than anything else currently in the market, the consumers
instinctive and voracious imagination.
In audiovisual media and in the internet the representation of diversity
emphasizes difference of social and cultural backgrounds, alternative values,
and unorthodox aesthetic preferences. Rap and hip-hop feature practices that
include profuse body art, rough gesticulation often of strong sexual
undertones, excess of adornments, eccentric behavior, use of street
language, etc., elements that often evoke urban subcultures (such as those of
gangs, imprisoned populations, marginal sectors, drug addicts, etc.). These
popular expressions do not leave aside references to social resentment,
violence, distrust of institutions and lack of adherence to national values.
These sentiments are presented as natural components of at least some
forms of collective subjectivity in search for alternative forms of artistic
expression and (self) representation.
For much more younger audiences, Dora the Explorer, a 7 year-old
adventurer and bilingual Latina produced since 2000 by Nickelodeon has
managed to outsell famous Barbie, the fashion doll created by Mattel in
1959 as the icon of white-American femininity. While Barbie remains, after

numerous make-over, an outdated symbol of shallowness and consumerism,

Dora is massively embraced as a representation of rising minorities with an
inclination for family values, social cooperation, and ecological
consciousness.
Nevertheless, affirmations of difference, as well-intended as they might be,
have also their downside. According to some critics, multicultural
representations are not only based on heavy stereotypical codification, but
also perpetuate the marginalization of social sectors by giving the illusion of
harmonious intercultural coexistence with mainstream America. By avoiding
the reference to real conflicts these representations might be precluding or at
least delaying the full social and political integration of ethnic minorities or
economically marginalized sectors.
For Slavoj Zizek, one of the most incisive critics of multiculturalism, this
trend has come to replace or reformulate in a much more diplomatic or
hypocritical way racial struggles of the past, proposing instead of
antagonistic positioning, a conciliatory platform of empty universalism
that allows for the abortion of alterity and the relativistic evaluation of
cultural diversity. For the Slovenian philosopher, multiculturalism is a form
of racism that keeps its distance: a condescending attitude toward the
Other that embraces his/her differences as fascinating features that enrich the
world without threatening the status quo.
What Homi Bhabha qualified as the anodyne liberal notion of
multiculturalism constitutes for Zygmund Bauman the vital experience of
the new global elite. While it shows the worldliness and social sensitivity
of educated sectors of society, it also constitutes, at the most, a declaration
of indifference about the values, interests and lifestyles of others to whom
we grant, at the most, our respect and tolerance. Following on the same
direction, Zizek argues that the claim that multiculturalism is the prominent
trait of a post-ideological universe is highly misleading. Multiculturalism is,
according to this author, precisely the ideology of global capitalism. It
imposes a repressive tolerance of difference from a supposedly neutral,
but surely condescending and de-politized subject-position. It founds, like
in good colonialism, a universal platform that will make possible the
articulation, orchestration, and absorption of particularism, which is valued
by its rareness and exceptionality, by the exotic ways in which it
interpellates the openness of our cultural identity, thus confirming and
consolidating our ideological and spiritual superiority.

In other words, for Zizek multiculturalism might constitute, then, a renewed,

stronger form of fundamentalism which allows us to consider local cultures
as autochthonous manifestations of otherness, harmless and even exotic
representations of difference that we must acknowledge and tolerate in order
to avoid the kind of conflict that could eventually challenge the unstable
balance of society. The Other, within this context, is not real: is a subject
that we treat as an object of desire, alternatively glamourized, romantized,
essentialized. As Zizek puts it, we concede at the same time too much and
too little to his/her cultural specificity. (S)he is at the same time strange and
fascinating, intriguing and irritating, a promise and a threat. The Other is a
cultural and ideological construct whose particularism and intrinsic nature
remain foreign to us, and whose final truth and needs get, somehow, lost
in translation.
But probably one of the sharpest critiques of multiculturalism has to do with
the ideological ramifications of this practice and particularly with the
complex connections between economic, political, and cultural realms.
According to some cultural analysts, our almost obsessive emphasis on
cultural differences has come to re-place economic and political struggles.
Fredric Jameson warned many years ago about the fact that difference was
becoming the new identity in postmodern times. And Homi Bhabha talks
about the anxiety of difference which accompanies the splitting of the
subject that attempts to deal with contradictory processes and conditions of
existence in a globalized world. (Bhabha, Translator translated) In an
essentially homogeneous and unfair world-order, the celebration of
difference leaves intact the bases of the capitalist system. The recognition
and acceptance of both cultural differences and marginal disadvantaged,
subaltern, alternative, or peripheral identities render unnecessary a more
radical approach to the foundations on which the status quo has been resting
at least since the colonization of American territories and the subsequent
formation of nation-States. This facilitates the perpetuation of injustice and
the perception of Empire as an all-encompassing and inevitable reality, that
cannot be and probably, from this perspective, does not need to be-- neither
avoided nor overcome. If a conflict remains, or if it can be resolved in the
cultural arena, it does not require of further action or elaboration. If social
tensions can be reduced to sectorial demands they do not need to reach a
political level or require a more radical transformation of society. To put in
Huntingtons words, after the end of the Cold War, the iron curtain of
ideology has been replaced by the velvet curtain of culture (cit. by Zizek,

Violence), something that guarantees the continuity of the current state of

affairs, at least in domestic domains.
The transformation of antagonism into difference which is inherent to liberal
politics is a seductive but deceptive proposal, with important ethical and
political implications. The politics of cultural difference and the ideology of
multiculturalism propose to address and may be to modify some things, so
the total system remains basically unchanged. This has to do with the depolitization of economy and the debilitation of politics Marxist critics has
been referring to for decades. The return of the political that Ernesto
Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, Zizek and others have been advocating is in a way
stuck at the cultural level. Culture is supposed to empower different sectors
of society by fostering the formation of social consciousness and the
development of political agency, this means, by creating the conditions not
for the effacement or denial of social and political conflict, but for its
acknowledgment and productive elaboration.
Nevertheless, lets not throw the baby with the bath water. It is obvious that
in spite of the severe critiques that the ideology of multiculturalism has been
receiving from different standpoints, many of the issues addressed by this
position constitute ethic, political, and ideological challenges that we need to
face in a globalized world. So the problem remains of how to politize
cultural debates and how to culturalize politics without renouncing to
economic approaches that provide the necessary foundation for social and
ideological analysis. And, to put it more broadly, how to reinvent politics at
both national and transnational levels in times of globalization: how to
articulate, then, locality and globality, particularism and universalism,
contingency and transcendence.
It seems obvious that without a politically engaged and economically-based
critique of modernity, a system that established the economic, political, and
cultural basis from which the current global system has emerged, it would be
impossible to address some of the concerns that traverse today societies.
This is particularly true if we consider the social, political and cultural cost
of modernization, and the system of exclusions and marginalizations it
brought about in Western civilizations. This was, for instance, the
interrogation that guided The Locations of Culture by Homi Bhabha which
articulates modernization, colonialism and multiculturalism, and whose
thesis is defined by the author in the following terms:

What was modernity for those who were part of its

instrumentality or governmentality but for reasons of race or
gender or economic status, were excluded from its norms of
rationality, or its prescriptions of progress? What contending
and competing discourses of emancipation or equality, what
forms of identity and agency, emerge from the discontents of
modernity?
At the same time, it is important to remember that the marketing of
difference (something that I addressed before in The boom of the
subaltern) has to do also with the elaboration this topic is receiving at
different levels of intellectual and ideological debate. It is tinted, for
instance, by the reformulation of the role of intellectuals after the end of the
Cold War in the framework of Marxist and post-Marxist domains and, more
broadly affected by the debilitation of US hegemony and, particularly in the
last few years, by the collapse of financial capitalism and the breaking of
entrepreneurial business around the world.
All of these global factors have propelled a profound transformation of
subjectivity and have also impacted the rhetoric utilized by discourses of
power around the world. However, since global integration is a reality and,
with it, the generation of new forms of hegemony and marginalization, that
means, of innovative forms of domination
as well as of novel
manifestations of social conflict and political resistance, multicultural issues
are not likely to disappear from political and social radars. For this reason, it
could be useful to demarcate some boundaries around the concept of
difference that guides our reflections today.
First of all, from a conceptual point of view, it is important to elaborate the
distinction between difference and diversity. According to Bhabha,
multiculturalism represented an attempt both to respond to and to control
the dynamic process of the articulation of cultural difference, administering
a consensus based on a norm that propagates cultural diversity. For Bhabha,
the notion of diversity is basically descriptive and does not convey
philosophical meaning. The concept of cultural diversity merely refers to the
existence of a range of separate systems of values, behaviors, etc. of a pregiven culture, and only allows to confirm the existence of cultural signifiers
and to record them as in traditional ethnographic accounts. Cultural
difference, on the other hand, facilitates a questioning attitude about
culture, particularly about the mechanisms that attribute a certain meaning as

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well as variable degrees of cultural and ideological authority to material and

symbolic commodities.
Secondly, from a political perspective, it is key to distinguish between
difference and inequality. (diferencia y desigualdad) The first concept points
to the idea of disparity and evokes the notions of variety and pluralism: is
something to be perceived, noticed, and tolerated. On the other hand,
inequality points to the idea of injustice and the need for structural change.
Third, from an ideological standpoint, the reformulation of antagonism as
difference also requires further analysis. As Ernesto Laclau pointed out in
several works, while antagonism is a notion that supposes the recognition of
opposed and even irreconcilable positions, its conceptualization as
difference effaces the political potential of social dynamics, suggesting the
idea of a consensual coexistence, and canceling the possibility of a more
productive and truly transformational struggle.
Addenda: Multiculturalism in Latin America?
In Latin America the problems of multiculturalism are of a very different
social, ideological, and cultural nature, probably because the question
of economic inequality has never been outside the political horizon.
The recognition of coloniality as defined by Anbal Quijano, as a power
structure that perpetuates itself into modernity, makes it impossible to
leave aside of the debates around the national question the factors of
race, ethnicity, class struggle and discrimination of gender, which
constitute the basic levels in which social injustice has materialized
over the centuries. In addition, the multicultural debate has
necessarily included, since the formation of nation-States, the problems
that multilingualism, diversity of religion and in general multiplicity of
civilizational ancestors that were repressed and subalternized by the
homogenizing project of modernization implemented by Creole elites.
The debate around mestizaje [miscegenation] provided, particularly after the
Mexican Revolution and during the development of populist regimes in
the first decades of the 20th century, an ideological and political
framework for the discussion of multiethnic societies. At the center of
this debate was the desire of the elite to unify disperse and
heterogeneous populations around Eurocentric categories of knowledge
and well-defined models of social and political organization. More than

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questions of multiculturalism, political and cultural debates dealt

mostly with problems of intercultural relations, particularly those
related to the exercise of power over dominated cultures which were
never productively integrated to the national project. Nowadays, and in
spite of the advances registered at social and political levels, the
problem is not so much how to articulate difference around the power
of State institutions, but how to vindicate alternative epistemologies
which have the right to exist and develop in their own terms, aside from
the aura of universalism that has characterized European models of
knowledge and power since the discovery to the present. Mestizaje
proved to be a fraudulent, hypocritical ideology that advocated for what
Cornejo Polar called an impossible harmony among populations torn
apart by centuries of antagonistic struggles which had their origin in the
times of colonial domination. Mestizaje was based on an inclusive
proposition that overlooked centuries of genocide, marginalization and
social injustice, and disregarded the disjointed nature of Latin
American societies, particularly in the nations with abundant
indigenous populations, such as the Andean region or Central America.
The notions of
coloniality,
non-dialectic heterogeneity,
transculturation and later on of hybridity and peripheral modernity
emerged as critical tools for the critique of the modern, liberal category
of national culture, which proved to be too narrow and too
exclusionary to contain the conflicted, multifaceted, and nomadic
nature of Latin American societies. Traversed from the beginning by
the economic, political and social conflicts imposed by imperial
domination and perpetuated under liberal rule, Latin America faces
today challenges that are too profound to be translated just into cultural
terms. One of the most important ones is the elaboration of regional
agendas that could counterbalance globality or at least establish a fair
dialogue at transnational levels, and could allow for the defense of
Latin Americas historical and cultural specificity without falling into
the traps of provincial thinking and peripheral fundamentalism.

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Bibliography
Anantharaman, Muralikumar, Clash of Civilizations author Samuel
Huntington dies. Reuters, Dec. 27, 2008.
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE4BQ1RC20081227?
feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews
Bauman, Zygmund.
Bhabha, Homi.
---------. Translator translated (Interview with cultural theorist Homi
Bhabha) by W.J.T. Mitchell. Artforum 33, 7 (March 1995) 80-84.
---------. The Commitment to Theory. The Location of Culture (1988) 1828.
Huntington, Samuel. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the
World (1996) -------------. Who Are We? The Challenges to America's
National Identity
Hsu, Hua. The End of White America? The Atlantic (January-February
2009)
Jameson, Fredric.
Said, Edward. The Clash of Ignorance. The Nation, October 4, 2001.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20011022/said
Zizek, Slavoj. En defensa de la intolerancia.
-----------. Violence.

According to Wikipedia, this term, used as a slur, refers to financially, economically or culturally
disadvantaged Caucasians that supposedly lack cultural capital.
2
See, in this respect, Edward Saids response to Huntington: The Clash of Ignorance, where the
author of Orientalism emphasizes intercultural fluxes in lieu of civilizational antagonisms la
Huntington.
1