Multiculturalism

As we move on from the opening session and into the rebuttal of this thought-provoking debate, the majority of the votes seem to be in favour of the proposition i.e. 56% For and 44% Against. On the first day of the debate however, the voting statistics seemed to be in favour of the opposition, albeit slightly. Therefore, from the voting pattern and comments so far, it is quite difficult to predict which side will have more votes at the end of the debate. This uncertainty and slim difference between the votes, amongst other things, I believe is in itself a testament to the significance and quality of this stimulating debate.

It is very interesting to see how much agreement and disagreement there is between the two sides. I think it is safe to say that both sides agree that in today’s world, multiculturalism is reality. There’s no such thing as a completely homogenous society because culturally diverse societies exist not just in the West, but also around the world. Both sides also seem to agree, among other things, that cultural diversity and differences is something to be celebrated. And that there is a need to engage the sociocultural diversity in order for multiculturalism to thrive.

The main point of disagreement between the proposition and opposition appears of course when it comes to the question whether multiculturalism, being a reality that it is, has reached its limits in the West. The concept of ‘identity’ and what role does it play when it comes to multiculturalism, is another point where both debaters seem to take different approaches. Professor Adib-Moghaddam believes that the identity constructed by nation-states is particularly problematic as nation-states are “merely administrative units” that are in itself an “invention”. Therefore he asks the rhetorical question: “Why does the nation-state have to be a source of a coherent and unitary ‘identity’?” The other interesting point raised by Professor Adib-Moghaddam was that of how multicultural societies interact with each other. He stands in favour of ‘dialectical engagement’ which, he argues, minimises the risk of creating parallel communities within a multicultural society. While arguing against the motion, Professor Wright says that multiculturalism is “far from having reached its limits,” and that it is “displaying the exponential potential to increase in exponentially in pace, type and numbers.” Moreover, he argues that, “the suggestion that multiculturalism may have reached its limit suggests that it was successful at one point.” In that aspect, there’s an agreement between Professor Wright and our first featured guest Professor Guiraudon who rhetorically asks how multiculturalism could have reached its limits, “when it was at best embryonic as a policy and in any case severely contested?”

In order to read the full opening statements of both debaters please go the opening session page from the navigation bar or click here. To read Professor Guiraudon’s featured guest remarks please click here.

Our wonderful audience also weighed in through some very interesting comments on the idea of multiculturalism, its significance, application in different countries, impacts due to immigration, whether it has reached its limits or not, and how this whole debate fits into the current political environment. As the debate enters into the rebuttal phase, I am looking forward to another session of lively and insightful discussion that will hopefully answer more of the burning questions we all have.

I am pleased to see that there is largely agreement between my colleagues and me. Multiculturalism is a reality - that much is clear. The question then arises if it has reached its limits as the motion asks. I have argued that multiculturalism is a reality within societies. Yet, my understanding of multiculturalism differs from the conventional idea that communities should live side by side without dialectical engagement. That approach is problematic and it has clearly failed, not least because it threatens to create parallel societies which threaten to entrench difference, rather than mutuality.

My idea of “dialectical multiculturalism” starts from the notion that humanity has been artificially divided into communities for ideological and political reasons. These multi-cultures are a reality and should be accepted as such. But there needs to be a constant reminder that “identity” is an invention, in particular if it is expressed in aggressive psycho-nationalist terms or as a religious prescription for war and destruction. We are made to think in terms of us-versus-them for political and ideological reasons. Believing in grand identities with ideological conviction is like taking ecstasy: it puts us into a state of intense exaltation, which never keeps its promise. Once it is viewed from a rational perspective, grand identities wear off like a bad trip.

Dialectical multiculturalism demands a real emphasis on mutuality, not in the name of the nation, but with reference to a common humanistic tradition and interdependent global realities. Histories of “us” and “them” appear conjoined, if we read the past beyond tribal affiliations and historical myths. In the intellectual world, new beginnings to that end have manifested themselves in disciplines such as Global Thought, Global History or Comparative Philosophies which appreciate difference within a wider, global context, from the beginnings of human communities until now. There exists then a gigantic challenge to rewrite the archives of history and to recode antagonistic approaches towards “identity”. Appreciating that cultures and communities have more to share with each other than what keeps them apart is a crucial factor in my understanding of dialectical multiculturalism.

My colleague at UBC mentioned Islam: Contemporary Muslim politics are a good indicator for the poverty of identity politics and the inadequacy of ideological interpretations of faith-based world views. There is no political consensus about the meaning of Islam and everything that is said about this topic within a political context is entirely concocted. Even the five pillars of the religion rendered sacred by the Prophet himself are challenged, for instance in the famous edicts of Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989 when he decreed that the Islamic state can abrogate those central tenets of Islam if it is in the interest of the umma. Nothing is holy in politics, then. Hence, there needs to be a clear distinction between religion as ideology and religion as spiritual praxis. Muslims are humans first, in their biological constitution they are male and female (or transsexual) with all the hormonal and biological commonalities with Buddhists and atheists that this brings about. As the Iranian intellectual Ali Shariati said in the 1970s: We are all human first, but we should always strive to become humane in our conduct as well. For him leading an ethical, humane existence (insaniyat) is the highest form of consciousness enabling the individual to connect with humanity as a whole. And Shariati thought and extracted this humanism out of a total reinvention of the Islamic corpus. This is Islam too.

The point I am trying to make, and I am connecting here to my notion of dialectical multiculturalism, is the following: In every culture there exists a humanistic tradition that increases connectivity rather than difference between communities. It is just that politics, and politicised scholarship simulate that there are insurmountable and everlasting dichotomies between cultures. This is the mindset behind the clash of civilisations between “Islam” and the “West”. The reality is of course that the “west” is in “Islam” and “Islam” is in the “west.” This is the multicultural reality I have been talking about and it is simply irrational to assume that cultures and civilisations are tectonic plates that can clash against each other. Indeed as cultural carriers, “Islam” and the “west” do not exist in isolation of thousands of other cultural influences; micro-identities that defy the idea that these grand concepts are easily distinguishable and separate. From such an inclusive approach, it is only one step towards appreciating cultural differences within a greater commonality - Let’s call it a disjunctive synthesis.

Reading Professor Arshin Adib-Moghaddam’s opening remarks proves to be something of a roller coaster ride. I am repeatedly rushed upward by many of the arguments he makes as I find there is so much we agree upon and then plunged into disagreement at the conclusions he reaches. Very importantly, Adib-Moghaddam and I agree that present day societies the world over, including and perhaps especially in the West are socioculturally diverse and that this condition, whether we choose to refer to it as multiculturalism, the multicultural condition or multiculturality, is entrenched. He and I share the view that there is a place and role for culture and cultural difference in society (though for him this should be decidedly limited while I see it as the very lifeblood of society). I fully agree with him that individual members of each of the numerous cultures and indeed each of these cultures as a collective ought to exist and operate in such a way that they do not infringe on the rights of others. The West is organized principally in nation states and he asserts that the nation state is an (imposed) invention, a construction whose leaders utilize culture to constrain individual freedom, manufacture a national culture into which we are individually and collectively persuaded to subscribe to and produce forms of discrimination against those who fall outside the mainstream.  He does not take up the nation-state as a situation where everyone plays on a level playing field: clearly there are those who have power and those who do not and those who do not chafe at their condition and resist. I too share the premise that the nation-state is an invention rather than a “natural” organization of human lives, a construction that is characterized by a hierarchy of cultures which produces both hegemony and counter hegemony, one that politicians and others work constantly on (re)producing via that doubled edged sword that is nationalism.  He concludes by saying “I vote for tolerance and inclusion, multiple identities, mosaic existences...” and I would vote for those same things myself (though I would substitute robust acceptance for tolerance).

With these highs of agreement come the lows of disagreement on what we are to do with identity, culture and the nation-state. Adib-Moghaddam believes that if we can only slip out of what he sees as the prison house of the nation-state, we can “emerge as individuals who can live freer lives.” He and I part ways on the substitution of the individual for subjectivity and collectivity and his individualism both explains some of his conclusions and why they diverge so radically from mine. If social and cultural identity categories are problematic, I hold that “the individual” is an arcane construction that is of little value in understanding how, to paraphrase Zygmunt Bauman, we are to live together in a full world. Identity in my view is virtually inescapable: people claim and live out identities and identify with or against identity categories on the one hand and have identities ascribed to them on the other, whether for the purpose of identifying with or against them. The way we encounter one another in society is almost never as individuals but almost always as subjects of institutions and members of given identity categories. Young black men are stopped more often than other motorists and pedestrians by police in American cities precisely because they are young, black and male; white middle class white people in multicultural Australian cities can usually shop without fear of being followed because of white privilege; passengers on a plane in Germany are uncomfortable with a fellow passenger because she is a Muslim woman wearing a niqab and some Indigenous people in Canada live on reserves and have Indian status precisely because they are Indigenous. Substitute individual for any of these identities and there is little chance of naming what is at work in the scenarios I have outlined let alone addressing them. We need identity categories because they are the very stuff of which sociocultural difference is made and which need to be engaged in contemporary Western societies.

Slipping free of the nation state might initially appear appealing but in the end does not free us from collectivity. The fact is that humans have always come together in cultural political collectivities of various sorts from communes to fiefdoms to city states to kingdoms to empires and all of these, much like nation states, have been riven by power differentials and guilty of attempting to build cohesion at the expense of difference and discriminating against minorities and the marginal. And even if such collectivities are elided, the result is not automatically the free individual and individual freedom (including freedom from identity) that Adib-Moghaddam envisions. In fact globalization has weakened the nation state considerably and provided an alternative organization of life that elides much of the control of the state. The result has not been freedom but rather entrapment in global capitalism, organized around transnational corporations and the new, rather facile and dubious identity; namely the globalized consumer.

Perhaps what is most important to note is that multiculturalism sets itself up as exactly the opposite of and antidote to the homogenizing national culture that Adib-Moghaddam rightfully decries. In its ideal Canadian form, for example, multiculturalism does not presume a unitary national culture but rather holds that it is the juxtaposition of various cultures which creates the mosaic of cultures that then constitutes the national culture (hence the Canadian metaphor of the mosaic as opposed to the American melting pot).

In the end we need to turn our attention to the problem at hand, namely, sociocultural diversity which is advancing rapidly in pace, quantity and variety and leading to emergent super diversity.  Attempting to escape identity and the nation-state is not a practical response. Rather we need to systematically work with identity categories and cultures as the very stuff of diversity, to engage identity politics and the politics of difference and work towards more just and representative local communities and national societies. Multiculturalism is not a panacea but it remains, in my view, the most viable philosophy and policy we can take up as a starting point (channeling Bauman once more) to lessen mixophobia, promote mixophilia and achieve that goal of living together in a full world.

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