Sunday, August 27, 2006

Ahead of the curve

It seems that at least some parts of the left are beginning to reconsider at least a few of the more wacky bits about their faith (and that seems a good term for it) in multiculturalism.

All I can say is: it's about bloody time.

Not that I'm claiming any particular powers of prescience...however, the following is an extract from an essay of mine written during that dimly remembered summer of 2001:

"Multiculturalism" is now a familiar narrative in all western post-industrial nations facing increased migration and globalisation. The term has many uses, but a popular and superficial version of multiculturalism argues both that it is "respectful" of other cultures and that it is "inclusive". In fact it diminishes other cultures by choosing what is emblematic of them -- alternatively celebrating or condemning isolated elements -- while at the same time failing to provide real assistance for people in actually living together. The events in Bradford, among other examples, raise serious questions about the worth of a vague and conflicted notion of multiculturalism that has been applied like a Band-Aid across the real social wounds which have been opened up by the frictions of cultural confrontation.
The rest of it, for those who are interested, is available here.

3 comments:

badmatthew said...

Which 'left' are you talking about? Ruth Kelly seems like a centre-right Blairite with a strong religious spin to me. Rod Liddle is an engaging journalist, but is in an anti-immgration camp that doesn't seem at all left to me.

JCWood said...

Thanks for the comment, or rather, good question. Or both. Which is a difficult one. Or at least one which I can feel might lead to some enormously long debate. But to try to explain...

I wasn't so much aware of Liddle's history on this, so I did a little checking, and, indeed, it seems he's fairly intensely against immigration. (Thanks for pushing me to do this, I don't actually manage to check out all the authors I quote.) I wasn't endorsing his views, just to be clear. Nor, necessarily, all of Kelly's or the Blair government's for that matter.

I took Liddle's article, though, more as a signal toward pointing out what may be a meaningful shift in thinking on multiculturalism on the part of people who - I think - are generally regarded as part of the rather large and diverse progressive/liberal/left menagerie with which I too identify.

Some amount of rethinking on this topic has also been suggested by a variety of people whom I would suggest might be seen as part of 'the left' (or maybe the less succinct but more accurate 'liberal-left') in the sense I explain above. People such as Trevor Phillips (also mentioned in Liddle's article), Keenan Malik (who nonetheless favours relatively liberal immigration laws), Polly Toynbee, Nick Cohen or Norman Geras.

NOW, I know that some of these names may similarly not qualify for you (or many others) for membership in the left. (And some raise some rather, um, red flags...but, while I disagree with some of these people's politics on, say, Iraq, I don't think that necessarily that makes them 'right-wing' on all issues.)

I realise there are those that would very much disagree with me here, but I would still see New Labour as still a part of the left, taking the current political spectrum into account as it is rather than as I wish it were (in the latter case, letting my imagination wander freely, New Labour today would demarcate the extreme right...)

They are the right-wing of the left-wing, but still...

I hope this has been more explanatory than antagonising... Good evening!

Anonymous said...

For a Left critique of multiculturalism, you could have a look at "The Cunning of Recognition; Indigenous Alterities and the Making of Australian Multiculturalism' by Elizabeth Povinelli, who argues that 'multiculturalism becomes the grounds for a new transcendental monoculturalism ...'.