Multiculturalism and Beyond: The New Politics of Identity

Ž a r k o P a i ć

Ph.D.

University of Zagreb

Faculty of Textile Technology

Department of Fashion Design

Multiculturalism and Beyond: The New Politics of Identity

At the begining of his very important book for contemporary cultural theory, The Location of Culture, Homi K. Bhabha says: „ It is the trope of our times to locate the question of culture in the realm of the beyond. At the century's edge, we are less exercised by annihilation – the death of the author – or epiphany – the birth of the 'subject'. Our existence today is marked by a tenebrous sense of survival, living on the borderlines of the 'present', for which there seems to be no proper name other than the current and controversial shiftiness of the prefix 'post'.“ (Bhabha, 1994: 1).

Postcolonial and postmodern cultural identities become today the key marks of being in the „beyond“. Plural, diverse and multicultural are terms commonly used to describe societies that comprise of different religions, races, languages and cultures. The concept of multiculturalism contributes to the democratization and non-discrimination of different cultures in the nation-state policies of global world. The theory and practice of multiculturalism was a response to the pressure of modern nationalism through the whole period of modern development of western societies.

Theorist of multiculturalism today reflect the change based on liberal construction of postmodern societies after the break of communism at the end of 80's. The attention are not only to provide special and collective rights to native minorities, as in the USA, Canada and Australia, but how to articulate new liberal multiculturalism for immigrant populations. We are witnessing an increasing proliferation of literature trying to understand the new economic, political and cultural arrangements that are inaugurated by global capital. The globalisation reveals the limits of Western modernity: various ethnic and racial minorities, their traditions, memories, myths and symbols are now incorporated in the dominant societies abroad. For instance, when we are talking about inteculturalism today, we cannot escape from the facts that the situation in western societies are not really far from somehow „multicultural walls“ between the different nations in the same area. Is it possible to speak about multiculturalism as the concept without any contradictions today particularlly in the field of respect of Other and cultural differences?

As we know, current critical discourse which characterizing the debate on globalisation is the opposition between homogenisation and heterogenisation or between universalisation and particularisation. I would suggest that this is a misleading opposition as it identifies globalisation with universal tendencies. Global world is nothing than reshaping the same: global nivelation of capitalism as the system of production lifestyles and consumer societies. The resistance against this tendency comes from all over the world in the areas of struggles to identity. So, multiculturalism today must change the focus from protection of differences in the field of culture to another place of struggle. That's the way we have to overcoming the previous steps forwards in the essence of the matter. We have to go one step forward and articulate the new politics of identity. Multiculturalism is not old concept for new global age, but the concept which couldn't be satisfied without any references to the political struggle for the Same in differences.

As the french contemporary philosopher Alain Badiou said in his critique of pure tolerance of cultural differences, multiculturalism is rooted in the idea of peaceful coexistence of cultural, religious and national „communities“, the refusal of „exclusion“. But what we must recognize is that differences hold no interest for thought, that they amount to nothing more than the infinite and self-evident multiplicity of human-kind, as obvious in the difference between me and my culture in Croatia as it is between the Shi'ite community of Iraq and indians native culture in USA (Badiou, 2002). The problem is that the respect for differences and the ethics of human rights do seem to define an identity. As a matter of fact, this celebrated Other, postcolonial and postmodern identity is acceptible only if he is just like Me or integrated in the dominant culture of West. Even immigrants today in whole Europe, as seen by the partisans of ethics, are acceptibly different only when they are integrated.

Multiculturalism in that situation of global liberalism which is nothing more than culturalism without any main force for political struggle against walls between cultures have to be overcoming. The only acceptible solution to this problem is rearticulation the new politics of identities. Hybridity is a key term in cultural theory today which have to power to protect the Other and differences between cultures and move beyond the global homogenisation of the world. Hybridity is tied to the idea of cultural syncretism, rather than the cultural difference solidies by multiculturalism, in terms of the interpretations of elements. The argument about multiple belongings in the modern state rest largely on the dismantling of the notion of a unitary identity, partly through a critique of unitary notions of the self and partly through a critique of unitary notions of cultural identity (Hannerz, 1992; Appadurai, 1996; Bhabha, 1994).

Over recent years the study of identity and difference has become a crucial hallmark of postmodern theory in the age of globalisation. Identity refers to who people think they are, either individually or collectively, and the ways that this is culturally constructed. Ideas about difference try to capture the diversity of forms of human identity and experience. We can identifies, concerning Calhoun, two ways in which we investigate the politics of identities and difference: differences of values and the value of difference (Smith, 2001). Nowadays when the concept of multiculturalism has become the key idea in the culturally pluralistic societies something goes wrong: between the different cultures in the global world there are no more productive dialogues, but rather invisible conflicts particularly in the western societies.

In the age of global network societies only the concept of hybridity of cultures can survive as vital structures at all. But hybridity works to transgress existing discourse and reveal the incomplete and contigent nature of nationalist ideologies. The notion of hybridity is clearly connected to the ideology of postnationalism. Homi Bhabha, for instance, claim that hybridity counters the dominant logic of authoritarian discourse and opens up the third flow-space, the interstices where meaning is always in-between, never stable, rigid and fixed (Bhabha, 1994). Hybridity can produce a conceptual fixity in its disavowal of any kind of politics of subjectivity. Hybridity, of course, as the cultural shift away to post/transnational identities has the potential to create some kind of new politicis of „cultural translation“ which is necessary in the process of mutual understanding the different cultures.

Many social and cultural theorists today move they intentions to the hybridity concept of culture because they saw the influence of globalisation transformation age in the field of creation of new identities. As a matter of fact, approaches that hybridity social and cultural forms to be results of interculturality and diasporic relations, also claim that these signify new forms of identity. The terms hybridity and diaspora open up spaces hitherto foreclosed by traditional approaches to ethnicity and migration. With this new term we are witnessing basically new anti-essentialist projects and critiques of static modern nation-state notions od stabile ethnicity and traditional culture.

The idea od trans-national or trans-locational hybridity culture(s) move beyond the paradigm of modern identity politics. The sense of belonging today in the age of the end of globalisation as ideological concept („new world order“ and the hegemony of USA and the West as the rulers of globalisation policies) must turn around in the reconsideration of culture at all. We do not belong anyway to the nation-state's identity in the sense of modern nationalism without nation, but rather to the transnational hybrid identities. The true politics of identity has to be the project of individual lyfestyle, whatever it means in the culturally pluralistic societies.

There are at least three main ways in which the term culture has been used in contemporary sociology: 1) it denotes a set of cultural attributes and artefacts, symbols and practice; 2) culture as world-view or the way which is very familiar with the ideology; 3) hegemonistic processes of structures or the way how societies articulate their primarilly ways od life-worlds. Contemporary investigations in current cultural theories try to examine the core of identity problems. It is now acknowledged that hybridity ovecommes the reduction of culture in globalized world to ethnicity and diaspora. The whole filed od symbolical and anthropological meanings are the complex of new understanding of cross-over culture overwiew. There are no any succesfully politics of identity in western and non-western societies which try to be isolated from this paradigm-shift. Hybridity, finally, isn't yet new form for old vine in the brand new bottles. However, it must be very clear that hybridity open up the whole new horizon of transnational/translational values, in the apllying of famous Bhabha's frase about the identities in global network world.

Liberal and multicultural post-politics od new identities today in Europe and all over the world can only be acceptible if the Other and cultural differences are more than folklorist Other. It is true that there cant'be a multicultural society whithout recourse to universal priciples that enables the communication between socially and culturally different groups. But there cant'be a real multiculturalist society when the organizing principle is but another means to assert the hegemony of the dominant groups (Touraine, 1994).

True politics of identities for contemporary global condition has to be more than respect the Other, otherness and differences between cultures. The culture has become a new ideology in the age of globalisation. Although contemporary definitions of ideology are diverse, we can articulate two main tendencies can be broadly identified. One associated ideology with the sense of illusion or distortion. From this point of view only science investigates the source of false conscience (Althusser, 1975). The second approach threats ideology more neutrally in the sense of values or beliefs which are shared by the groups of people. This conception is broadly acceptible in whole areas of post-marxist theories of culture and identity (Eagleton, 1991; Haslett, 2000.) One of the most comprehensive theory today is Slavoj Žižek's critique of ideological foundations of neoliberal realites in the network societies in the age of globalisation. Žižek' consideration of ideology has to be done after the process of historical-metaphysical analysis of Hegel's system as totality of conscience in the circle of reality.

The ideology has three crucial aspects: doctrine, ritual and belief. Contemporary ideology of neoliberalism as doctrine, ritual and belief perfectly goes beyond the worldwiews as the system of values and cultural identities. In this kind of theoretical observation, we are living in the simbolical, imaginary and Real of globalisation as the ideological subjects/actors of the „new world order“ (Žižek, 1994; 2004). The problem is how to destroy or rather deconstruct the holly circle of cultural differences as the signs of identities (nation-state, region, religion, culture). Postmodern identitites in the age of globalisation are hybrid and changing entities. The project of infividual choice leads to some kind of new cultural identity which, indeed, is nothing than acceptible lyfestyle.

What' s wrong with that? Surely one thing. Without symbolical, imaginary and real political power all mainstream identities are very fragile and with extremely low capacity to overcomme the pressure of globalisation. The ideology, finally, become culturally field of agencies today. That's the reason why we have to find the way out from present politics of multiculturalism as „carneval of cultures“(Kureishi, 2005).

Within the culture we are living with all obstacles which destroy the real communication in the complex network society. This ideological notion isn't only the result of neoliberal politics and cultural imperialism of the USA/West. As we know, there are many dangerous voices today in theory and pratice of cultural dialogue and interculturalism. Against the ideologies of unitary and homogenous identity we can articulate the new politics of identities. After the break up with the concept of postmodernism, which is realised in a globalisation today as „spiritual“ superstructure and ideological system, we are witnessing some kind of paradoxically „cultural turn“: the keywords of postmodern theory – cultural difference and multiculturalism – has become the new ideology of global capitalism (Jameson, 2002; Agamben, 2003).

The main task of radical approach to contemporary problems in whole areas of cultural globalisation should be recognised as political deconstruction of multiculturalism and the cult of cultural differences. Instead of depolitization of culture in the global age, the main direction of radical-critical potention of social sciences and politics needs very urgent change of present condition (Paić, 2005; Žižek, 2004).

In the context of globalisation, changes in the political distribution of power necessarily lead to changes in cultural representations of the cartography of discourse, and not the way around. Thus the „dialogues between cultures“ is merely a charming, but illusory fiction of understanding the Other in terms of respect for their person. What is going wrong with this merely reasonable and almost everywhere acceptible paradigm in the culturally pluralistic societies? Let me take some briefly reconsiderations about the Dieter Senghaas's theory of intercultural communication as the only alternative to the Huntington's „clash of civilisations“. He emphasies the mobilising function of intercultural mutual understanding of different cultures as the key concept acceptible in the extremelly polarised world today. Out of question has to be the model of any kind the struggle-politics in the economy, politics and culture. Senghaas do not denied the realities of cultural struggles. But, as he pointed in the context of discussion of Huntington's esentialist's paradigm for future geopolitics global disorders and battles for hegemony in the Third World, if culture is understood as the totality of typical life forms of a population, including its underlying mental constitution and values, then, the political circumstances describes and constitute a cultural conflict (Senghaas, 2002: 79).

It is true, of course. But if we took the „cultural revivalism“ as the main source of our present identity politics, which is not the problem for Senghaas, where are the key arguments for excluding the ideological force of culture today? In other words, if we agree with the thesis that the culture in the sense of transnational, hybrid and rhizomatic attitudes is the concept to overcomme the political gaps between the geopolitical regions and nation-states in global conflicts, why permanently insists to articulate a new identity politics? If the identity is nothing than endless self-reflection about our cultural demises in the situation of global instability and crisis, why we should talk about dialogues between the cultures? Isn't the better solution without to be a Huntington's adepts to break up with old dichotomies (the clash of civilisation vs. intercultural dialogue or conflicts vs. peace solutions) and goes beyond the present status quo?

We do not operate as isolated cosmopolitan co-citizens of global world, but as culturally and nationally determined conglomerates of social constructs that only through a sacrifice to the universal are able to offer resistance to dangerous ideologies of identity as „blood and soil“. From this perspective, hybridity as the new form of identity open a new horizon in whole context of globalisation theories and culturally practice. But that's not enough for true and radical approch to the multiculturalism and identity in the globalised world.

The struggle for new identity is the struggle for recognition of the Other in oneself, conditional on exposing all the ideological illusions representing the West as a universal way of progress for the Other, or the East as an individual and particular way of preserving the spiritual primordial. Global network societies are yet transnational and transcultural ares of flow and being-beyond. Thus, political strategy for threat of globalisation has to be alternative not only to errors of previous politics of multiculturalism in western societies, but rather to ideological illusion that the culturall differences and respect of Other can realise the better and fairness world of many different values and attitudes.

Multiculturalism, yes, but as the way to protect the Other from violence of dominant culture in the context of political struggle for the Same – equal and justice power of true identity. Hybridity resolve the problem only when the new politics of identities are more than pure culturalism. In the age of ideological illusions that the ideologies are dead and our past, we have to recognise that cultural identity in the global age is the post-national and trans-cultural weapon for alternative politics of identity.

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