{"id":1600,"date":"2009-07-21T16:51:10","date_gmt":"2009-07-21T21:51:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/?p=1600"},"modified":"2009-07-21T16:51:10","modified_gmt":"2009-07-21T21:51:10","slug":"the-multicultural-critique-from-the-left","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/2009\/07\/21\/the-multicultural-critique-from-the-left\/","title":{"rendered":"The Multicultural Critique from the Left"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I’ve been doing some reading on the Left critique of multiculturalism.\u00a0 Scholars like Stanley Fish <\/a>and Slavoj Zizek<\/a> have taken multiculturalism to task for its denial of universality.\u00a0\u00a0 In this essay, Fish sees multiculturalism as a logical impossibility.\u00a0 One cannot both embrace universal principles and be geniunely tolerant, he argues, because once an external cultural system violates one of your core tenets, your tolerance becomes a defacto acceptance of that external cultural system.\u00a0 Put simply, if you tolerate female genital mutilation, you accept that culture’s view of the practice and have thus become a universalist.<\/p>\n

Zizek makes a different argument, suggesting that the claim to universality has an intrinsic political power. \u00a0 Universality is a precondition of politics proper which he defines as:<\/p>\n

a phenomenon that appeared for the first time in ancient Greece when the members of the demos (those with no firmly determined place in the hierarchical social edifice) presented themselves as the representatives, the stand-ins, for the whole of society, for the true universality (“we \u2014 the ‘nothing,’ not counted in the order \u2014 are the people, we are all, against others who stand only for their particular privilieged interest”).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The ability of those not included in the polity to appeal to “politics proper” is the the halmark of liberal progress.\u00a0 We see this in the civil rights movement’s appeal to universal principles of equal rights and justice.\u00a0 Multiculturalism mutes the ability to use the universal in politics proper.\u00a0 When nobody is able to claim the universal, we enter into a post-political moment.<\/p>\n

Timothy Powell<\/a> does an interesting job of challenging thse critiques from the left by highlighting\u00a0 multiculturalism’s two great strengths.\u00a0 First, the late 1960’s activist phase was central in the forwarding of recognition claims to a variety of groups including American Indians and gays and lesbians.\u00a0 Second, the\u00a0 era of “multicultural critique” of American exceptionalism and Eurocentric hegemony in academia has produced a more acccurate and blended view of American and Eurpoean cultural history.\u00a0 Wht Takaki calls a “shared retelling of history.”<\/p>\n

He criticizes Fish and Zizek for engaging in what Kosofsky Sedgewick calls a (I love this phrase BTW) “hermeneutics of suspicion” in which any project must be deconstructed regardless of their utility.\u00a0 Powell contends that this “hermeneutics of suspicion” describes the current phase of academic multiculturalism.\u00a0 His article in Critical Inquiry asks how we pull ourselves out of this spiral of endless critique.<\/p>\n

In my work, I’m using Aristotle’s concept of phronesis<\/a> as a potential way forward.\u00a0 Phronesis, put simply is the mode of knowledge concerned with wisdom.\u00a0 This form of knowledge is opposed to epistemological or technical knowledge which is equated with universal knowledge.\u00a0 Phronesis, instead emphasizes particularity.\u00a0 Take this passage from Nicomachean Ethics:<\/p>\n

Whereas young people become accomplished in geometry and mathematics, and wise within these limits, prudent young people do not seem to be found. The reason is that prudence is concerned with particulars as well as universals, and particulars become known from experience, but a young person lacks experience, since some length of time is needed to produce it (Nichomachean Ethics<\/em> 1142 a).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

rather that viewing multiculturalism in terms of the universal vs. the particular, I argue is should be seen as a complement to it…as the development of wisdom through a diversity of experience, separate from a pursuit of universal truths.\u00a0 Put another way, one can hold whatever ethical system one chooses (universal), but one needs to understand how to simultaneously stand for what one believes but at the same time be able to exist with difference.\u00a0\u00a0 A synchronous toggling between one’s sense of the universal and one’s ability to engage with particularity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been doing some reading on the Left critique of multiculturalism.\u00a0 Scholars like Stanley Fish and Slavoj Zizek have taken multiculturalism to task for its denial of universality.\u00a0\u00a0 In this essay, Fish sees multiculturalism as a logical impossibility.\u00a0 One cannot both embrace universal principles and be geniunely tolerant, he argues, because once an external cultural […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":129,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/129"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1600"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1600\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1601,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1600\/revisions\/1601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}