Multiculturalism and pluralism have occupied central stage in contemporary talk. Comtemporarines of this talk relates to the increasing tension between national and transnational dimensions and sources of identity construction and formation. Quite in contrast with pluralism as political category, multiculturalism seems to be the most debated and contested theoretical and practical project world-wide.
It conveys cultural, social,economic and political dimensions that all defines personal and collective identity. Academic importance of multiculturalism has a lot to do with the fundamental shift in the nature of current nation-state building characterised by conflucence between growing demand for nationality and the need for accomodate transnationality in the conceptualization of multicultural citizenship (Engin F Isin, 2002: 1-9).
Within the rubric of multicultural citizenship, there has been variety of perspective. We can briefly classify them into liberal, collective, communitarian and radical democratic perspective. The first three perspectives have characterised current disccusion on multiculturalism. Christian Joppke (2002: 245-256) discusses strenghts and limitations of the three perspectives. These perspectives focus on internal restructuring of multicultural relations within a nation-state.
All these revolve around the issues of ethnic minority and their rights-claims for self determination and autonomy, migrants and their righs-claim for having equal recognition in public sphere, and also others like gay-lesbian righs-claim for recognition and equal treatment. In short, call for recognition and equal treatment stem from their position as ‘the oppressed’ and ‘societal culture’.
Referring to Charler Taylor (1994: 37- 44), twofold nature of multiculturalism reflects the urge for dignity and authenticity. Dignity that bases upon universal rights emphasises non-discrimination treatment while authencity, building on dignity, requires special treatment of cultural difference.
However, proponents of Radical Democracy draw our attention to different epistemology of multiculturalism. Contemporary deadlock between human rights and citizenship that characterises multiculturalism talk mirrors our tendency to essentialise identity and culture.
Paulina Tambakaki (2010: 78-99), for instance, argues that human rights and citizenship belongs to separate genealogy. Too much focus on human rights as basis for identity-cultural articulation ends up in legalism while democratic citizenship requires political articulation of the rights. The first reflects rights-assuming politics while the latter aspires for rights-producing politics. This view implicates on the urgency for political articulation of identity, particularly collective-cultural groups, within nation-state boundaries.
Chantal Mouffe (1993: 1-8), prominent scholar of this perspective, argues that logics of difference that characterises the three perspectives above should be upgraded with logics of equivalence in which national politics assigned to develop hegemonic project of bringing those multicultural identities together by creating new antagonistic front beyond those identities. She further argues that to make recognition meaningful and effective, multitude of identities should take part in national project of building ‘we’, as demos, instead of perpetuating difference by asking the state or constitution to protect their rights to be completely different from others.
Drawn upon current debate above, we argue that multicultural citizenship should politicize both dignity and authenticity within nation-state building project. At this point, we share common ground with radical democratic perspective.
Identity conflict and collective violence today are not entirely the results of authoritarian state or dominant-majoritarian culture subjugating other ‘minority’ cultures which then incites the latter’s resistance. The minority groups must also take active participation in nation-state project to create or recreate new national identity over time.
It is risky bussiness to ask in the first place for recognition and equal treatment while not develop together with other cultural identities a demos, though not fixed or always contested. This also requires us to rethink the often-emlpoyed binary term such as majority/minority which seems to block in the first place our politics of building alliance with other cultural-religious groups.
Our argument above regains its relevance with notion of hybrid and shifting identity. We, as individual and group, have multiple identity that makes us capable of idenfiying and working out commonality with others. Relation between identity is mutually constitutive. New politics of living together must come from this new ethics of identity construction.
Multiple identification is made possible by certain discourse within which we are living and made realizable as meaningful person or group. This is the significance of hybrid identity as developed by Homi Bhabha (1994: 171-197). Contingency of the subject, that is, its multiple formation and discursive identification, is no longer treated as threat to authenticity but as modality to rework out new subjectivity capable of building ‘demos’, or unity in difference.
Reference
Bhabha, Homi. Location of Culture. See, Chapter 9, “The Postcolonial and the Postmodern: The Question of Agency”, pp 171-197. London: Routledge, 1994
Christian Joppke. “Multicultural Citizenship”, pp 245-256, in Engin F Isin & Bryan Turner, Handbook of Citizenship Studies. London: Sage Publications, 2002
Isin, Engin F & Turner, Bryan. Handbook of Citizenship Studies. See, “Citizenship Studies: An Introduction”, pp 1-9. London: Sage Publications, 2002
Mouffe, Chantal. The Return of the Political. See, “Introduction: For an Agonistic Pluralism”, pp 1-8. London: Verso, 1993
Tambakaki, Paulina. Human Rights or Citizenship?. See, Chapter 4 “Politics and Legalism”, pp 78-99. New York: Bircbeck Law Press, 2010
Taylor, Charles. “The Politics of Recognition”, pp 37-44 in Amy Gutman, Multiculturalism: Examining The Politics of Recognition. Princenton: Princenton University Press, 1994