Postcolonialism and Multiculturalism: Between Race and Ethnicity

Gunew, Sneja. (1997). The Yearbook of English Studies (The Politics of Postcolonial Criticism), 27, 22-39.

Gunew alludes that discussion of multiculturalism has become inevitable because increasing migration across borders rendered traditional national models anachronistic, but states that multiculturalism means different things in different context. For example, multiculturalism is produced out of necessity by nations and aspirants to geo-political cohesiveness despite heterogeneity within. Cultural studies focus on politics of representation in the discussion of multiculturalism. Multiculturalism is also invoked within post-colonial discourses that criticize the predominance of Western culture.

Gunew calls attention to the distinction between state multiculturalism (dealing with the management of diversity) and critical multiculturalism (minorities' participation in the public sphere based on their difference). She characterizes state multiculturalism as such:

"State multiculturalism followed 'assimilation' (a term deriving from digestion and indicating 'becoming the same as') and 'integration' (separatism plus common values) and represents a kind of liberal pluralism which implies both a hidden norm from which minority groups diverge while failing to recognize prevailing power differentials." (p. 24)

Gunew notes that as seen in curriculum where ahistorical ethnic culture is celebrated, state multiculturalism holds a stance of liberal pluralism. This tendency extends to immigration deeply rooted in prejudice against minority. Gunew writes, "[i]n contrast to supposed Western tolerance the minority is often represented as primitive or uncivilized, importing its social pathologies" (p. 24)

Some implications in the discourse of state multiculturalism
Gunew points out that the emphasis on community in supporting cultural difference often leads to oppress women because, amid struggles for the maintenance of culture or tradition, women tend to be left out without agency of their interpretation or participating as a community leader.

Gunew also points out that multiculturalism's focus on culture tends to occlude or minimize political activisms and their histories: for example, literary cultural focus on black women's texts aids to depoliticize social struggles.

As observed in the public debate on political correctness and a conservative tone of multiculturalism, there has been a concern that multiculturalism carries the connotation of 'special interests' in opposition to 'general interest', or highlights oppositional minority positions.

Critical Multiculturalism
Observing pitfalls of state multiculturalism, Gunew states:

"[T]he future for critical multiculturalism lies in an alertness to the inherent 'hybridity' and diverse affiliations of all subjects which may be mobilized in varying combinations by particular
projects or events. Coalitions may be built around 'mutual and reciprocal relativization'" (p. 26-27)

Gunew refers to race, ethnicity and diaspora as three hidden reference points in the discourse of nation-building within a context of multiculturalism, in particular, in Australia). Observing that the term race is replaced by ethnicity, Gunew summarizes that while ethnicity, largely conceived as a cultural term, is structured to a concomitant desire for citizenship, race, once prevailed as irreducible differences, is structured by the desire to be human. Gunew's quote from Goldberg succinctly describes the oppositions between the two term.

"As Goldberg states, 'Race is irrelevant, but all is race' (p. 6), that is, irrelevant because while there are no non-arbitrary or absolute markers of race, debates about and struggles around race in a variety of societies are really about the meaning and nature of political consittution and community: 'Who counts as in and who out, who is central to the body politic and who peripheral, who is autonomous and who dependent?' (p. 83). Another way of putting it is to see it in this period of history as a struggle over who controls the codes and practices of nation-building." (p. 30) [Goldberg, Racist Culture]

Gunew asserts that diaspora hinges the oppositions of race and ethnicity and is seen as threats to a cohesive nation. As to the impact of diaspora, she states:

"Diasporic allegiances along the race ethnicity vector breach the homogeneity of the nation state with other affiliations, of increasing importance in the new structures of globalization. To some extent this movement of global connections is also happening amongst the indigenous peoples who are forming alliances across those nation-states imposed on them as a way of confirming solidarity for claims often grounded in land rights." (p. 30)

In spite of the emphasis of recent multiculturalism on a recognition of differences, Gunew criticizes that state multiculturalism, prevailing in the US, Canada and Australia, fails to see power differentials among competing minority groups, thus hold a profoundly conservative pluralist model.

Observing the floating meanings of whiteness, Gunew questions practices of cultural critiques and states:

"Appeals to the facts of a nation's history are not really at issue here, since we are dealing rather with metaphors and signifying systems mobilized as part of a rhetoric of the national culture concerned with identifying insiders and outsiders." (p. 36)

To her and other post-colonial scholar, alterity, being otherness, is an important concept. Gunew refers to Said's Orientalism as the founding study for the construction of alterity, while placing Homi Bhabha's work in relation to borders and hybridity (Culture's In Between, Artforum, September 1993).

Finally Gunew's emphasis of critical multiculturalism lies on the intertwined relationship between the local and the global because it introduces minority perspectives while suggesting diasporic networks. In this vein, she maintains that multiculturalism is a floating signifier that gains meaning and strategies only in a specific context. Local contextualization is essential in critical multiculturalism.