File spoon-archives/postcolonial.archive/postcolonial_2001/postcolonial.0112, message 38


From: "Mohammed BEN JELLOUN" <mohammed.benjelloun-AT-mail.bip.net>
Subject: An elephant in a porcelain shop
Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2001 18:58:14 +0100


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Saeed wrote:

"Multiculturalism is a managerial concept. It is usually the white Western subject that becomes multicultural but still remains the managerial subject of multiculturalism, the subject governing the discourses of multiculturalism -- the one who has transcended his racism and therefore wants to be congratulated for it without losing control of the multicultural archive."

Saeed, Zizek, and I all agree on that liberal multiculturalism is Eurocentric patronizing. There is not much to add to that. However, Saeed and I don't agree with Zizek when, going much further, he conflates multiculturalism with racism. Lastly, we diverge, me on the one hand, and Saeed (I'm not so sure about it) and Zizek (definitely) on the other hand, as to the nature of multiculturalist "discourses;" while I strongly oppose Nietzschean to liberal multiculturalism, they don't care about their difference.

Indeed, besides his crudest propaganda and flawed deduction (racism> difference> mc), Zizek has an earlier (see text bellow) somewhat different and slightly more elaborated argument. His reasoning may be summed up as follows: Multiculturalism is "indirect racism" because the distance taken by the universal multiculturalist subject is a patronizing attitude. Moreover, this multiculturalism involves the paradox of a patronizing Eurocentrism without roots, not even in its own culture, in the way of a colonizing without the colonizer coming from some particular nation state. Hence, the questions I ask: (I) Is any and every such a (Eurocentric) patronizing (indirect) racism; (II) is any and every kind of multiculturalism a (Eurocentric) patronizing?

(I)

As to the question of whether every such a (Eurocentric) patronizing is (indirect) racism, Zizek insists that it doesn't matter if the center of an imperial structure is "full" or "empty;" it doesn't matter if the center is "inside" or "outside" the structure; it doesn't matter as long as we have a "privileged universal position." Thus, as long as we have a center, it doesn't matter if we "fill" it with our particular race, ethnic group, territory, nation state, ideology, policy, etc. or with merely general abstract principles.

Zizek couldn't care less about gradations; his bizarre and absurd conclusions show how bad he is at scales practising. For example, it doesn't matter for him if the center is one of a coercive empire or a voluntary association, if it's about the "internal" center of a federation or the "external" center of a confederation, if it's about a general moral principle (the idea of respecting the Other or the equality of chance for all cultures) or an international legal one (the idea of equal sovereignty and a law of peoples).

I must say that, if the man means seriously that the so much popular idea of national self-determination (and I can speak here for the African peoples) is a racist (or indirect racist) idea, he must be simply and shamelessly insulting all and every postcolonial--not to mention the still colonized--human being.

(II)

As to the question of whether any and every kind of multiculturalism is a (Eurocentric) patronizing, it is clear enough that Zizek's criticism is directed basically at liberal pluralism and liberal toleration. Zizek says: "... the multiculturalist is not a direct racist, he doesn't oppose to the Other the _particular_ values of his own culture..." He says also that the universal multiculturalist subject... "is already thoroughly 'rootless', that his true position is the void of universality." Let me ask these questions: Is multiculturalism and internationalism impossible without patronizing? Do we have to be rootless to be multiculturalists?

What if the "patronizing" center is not "outside" and if our multiculturalist is rooted "inside"? Indeed, our multiculturalist need not be some ghostlike neutral observer. So, besides being multiculturalist, he's committed to, and he improves, one of the worldviews involved in the structure, namely the point of view of his own culture. And, besides being a perspectivist, he believes only one perspective at a time--his--can be true. And yet, he's no absolutist or fundamentalist; he believes instead worldviews must be proven in fair contests. He's actually heroic and risks taking, giving challengers a real chance, requiring no internal restrictions on their cultures, insisting only and always on being challenged by them.

Finally, does the discourse of national self-determination necessarily involve a (Eurocentric) patronizing, as suggested in Zizek? I don't think so, not if we can think of a center that _is not_ yet; if the center is still an empty place where everything is to be defined; if it's an arena where nothing is settled once and for all. Not if the center is a contest, and if the "patronizing" is democratic and consented. Not if the (liberal) self-determination; the prerequisites of freedom of (international) access and equality of (international) chance, is there for enabling an (agonistic) self-overcoming.

And I definitely don't think so, as we cannot afford to decline an "offer" that is being open only a short time to come; that is, as world "liberals" already threaten to withdraw it for the sake, as they say, of the individual "human rights."


Best wishes,

Mohammed

----------
Here's the text! Note that, while the recent poor attack on multicultural _difference_ draws on purely Zizekian resources, this earlier attack on multicultural universalism was rather post-structuralist in its approach:

"And, of course, the ideal form of ideology of this global capitalism is multiculturalism, the attitude which, from a kind of empty global position, treats _each_ local culture the way the colonizer treats colonized people--as 'natives' whose mores are to be carefully studied and 'respected'. That is to say, the relationship between traditional imperialist colonialism and global capitalist self-colonization is exactly the same as the relationship between Western cultural imperialism and multiculturalism: in the same way that global capitalism involves the paradox of colonization without the colonizing Nation-State metropole, multiculturalism involves patronizing Eurocentrist distance and/or respect for local cultures without roots in one's own particular culture. In other words, multiculturalism is a disavowed, inverted, self-referential form of racism, a 'racism with a distance'--it 'respects' the Other's identity, conceiving the Other as a self-enclosed 'authentic' community towards which he, the multiculturalist, maintains a distance rendered possible by his privileged universal position. Multiculturalism is a racism which empties its own position of all positive content (the multiculturalist is not a direct racist, he doesn't oppose to the Other the _particular_ values of his own culture), but nonetheless retains this position as the privileged _empty point of universality_ from which one is able to appreciate (and depreciate) properly other particular cultures--the multiculturalist respect for the Other's specificity is the very form of asserting one's own superiority.

What about the rather obvious counter-argument that the multiculturalist's neutrality is false, since his position silently privileges Eurocentrist content? This line of reasoning is right, but for the wrong reason. The particular cultural background or roots which always support the universal multiculturalist position are not its 'truth', hidden beneath the mask of universality--'multiculturalist universalism is really Eurocentrist'--but rather the opposite: the strain of particular roots is the phantasmatic screen which conceals the fact that the subject is already thoroughly 'rootless', that his true position is the void of universality."

Slavoj Zizek ("Multiculturalism, Or, the Cultural Logic of Multinational Capitalism," _New Left Review_ 225, Sept.-Oct. 1997: p. 44)



HTML VERSION:

Saeed wrote:

 

"Multiculturalism is a managerial concept. It is usually the white Western subject that becomes multicultural but still remains the managerial subject of multiculturalism, the subject governing the discourses of multiculturalism -- the one who has transcended his racism and therefore wants to be congratulated for it without losing control of the multicultural archive."

 

Saeed, Zizek, and I all agree on that liberal multiculturalism is Eurocentric patronizing. There is not much to add to that. However, Saeed and I don't agree with Zizek when, going much further, he conflates multiculturalism with racism. Lastly, we diverge, me on the one hand, and Saeed (I'm not so sure about it) and Zizek (definitely) on the other hand, as to the nature of multiculturalist "discourses;" while I strongly oppose Nietzschean to liberal multiculturalism, they don't care about their difference.

 

Indeed, besides his crudest propaganda and flawed deduction (racism> difference> mc), Zizek has an earlier (see text bellow) somewhat different and slightly more elaborated argument. His reasoning may be summed up as follows: Multiculturalism is "indirect racism" because the distance taken by the universal multiculturalist subject is a patronizing attitude. Moreover, this multiculturalism involves the paradox of a patronizing Eurocentrism without roots, not even in its own culture, in the way of a colonizing without the colonizer coming from some particular nation state. Hence, the questions I ask: (I) Is any and every such a (Eurocentric) patronizing (indirect) racism; (II) is any and every kind of multiculturalism a (Eurocentric) patronizing?

 

(I)

 

As to the question of whether every such a (Eurocentric) patronizing is (indirect) racism, Zizek insists that it doesn't matter if the center of an imperial structure is "full" or "empty;" it doesn't matter if the center is "inside" or "outside" the structure; it doesn't matter as long as we have a "privileged universal position." Thus, as long as we have a center, it doesn't matter if we "fill" it with our particular race, ethnic group, territory, nation state, ideology, policy, etc. or with merely general abstract principles.

 

Zizek couldn't care less about gradations; his bizarre and absurd conclusions show how bad he is at scales practising. For example, it doesn't matter for him if the center is one of a coercive empire or a voluntary association, if it's about the "internal" center of a federation or the "external" center of a confederation, if it's about a general moral principle (the idea of respecting the Other or the equality of chance for all cultures) or an international legal one (the idea of equal sovereignty and a law of peoples).

 

I must say that, if the man means seriously that the so much popular idea of national self-determination (and I can speak here for the African peoples) is a racist (or indirect racist) idea, he must be simply and shamelessly insulting all and every postcolonial--not to mention the still colonized--human being.

 

(II) 

 

As to the question of whether any and every kind of multiculturalism is a (Eurocentric) patronizing, it is clear enough that Zizek's criticism is directed basically at liberal pluralism and liberal toleration. Zizek says: "... the multiculturalist is not a direct racist, he doesn't oppose to the Other the _particular_ values of his own culture..." He says also that the universal multiculturalist subject... "is already thoroughly 'rootless', that his true position is the void of universality." Let me ask these questions: Is multiculturalism and internationalism impossible without patronizing? Do we have to be rootless to be multiculturalists? 

 

What if the "patronizing" center is not =93outside=94 and if our multiculturalist is rooted =93inside=94? Indeed, our multiculturalist need not be some ghostlike neutral observer. So, besides being multiculturalist, he=92s committed to, and he improves, one of the worldviews involved in the structure, namely the point of view of his own culture. And, besides being a perspectivist, he believes only one perspective at a time--his--can be true. And yet, he's no absolutist or fundamentalist; he believes instead worldviews must be proven in fair contests. He's actually heroic and risks taking, giving challengers a real chance, requiring no internal restrictions on their cultures, insisting only and always on being challenged by them.

 

Finally, does the discourse of national self-determination necessarily involve a (Eurocentric) patronizing, as suggested in Zizek? I don=92t think so, not if we can think of a center that _is not_ yet; if the center is still an empty place where everything is to be defined; if it's an arena where nothing is settled once and for all. Not if the center is a contest, and if the "patronizing" is democratic and consented. Not if the (liberal) self-determination; the prerequisites of freedom of (international) access and equality of (international) chance, is there for enabling an (agonistic) self-overcoming.

 

And I definitely don=92t think so, as we cannot afford to decline an "offer" that is being open only a short time to come; that is, as world "liberals" already threaten to withdraw it for the sake, as they say, of the individual "human rights."

 

 

Best wishes,

 

Mohammed

 

----------

Here=92s the text! Note that, while the recent poor attack on multicultural _difference_ draws on purely Zizekian resources, this earlier attack on multicultural universalism was rather post-structuralist in its approach:

 

"And, of course, the ideal form of ideology of this global capitalism is multiculturalism, the attitude which, from a kind of empty global position, treats _each_ local culture the way the colonizer treats colonized people--as 'natives' whose mores are to be carefully studied and 'respected'. That is to say, the relationship between traditional imperialist colonialism and global capitalist self-colonization is exactly the same as the relationship between Western cultural imperialism and multiculturalism: in the same way that global capitalism involves the paradox of colonization without the colonizing Nation-State metropole, multiculturalism involves patronizing Eurocentrist distance and/or respect for local cultures without roots in one's own particular culture. In other words, multiculturalism is a disavowed, inverted, self-referential form of racism, a 'racism with a distance'--it 'respects' the Other's identity, conceiving the Other as a self-enclosed 'authentic' community towards which he, the multiculturalist, maintains a distance rendered possible by his privileged universal position. Multiculturalism is a racism which empties its own position of all positive content (the multiculturalist is not a direct racist, he doesn't oppose to the Other the _particular_ values of his own culture), but nonetheless retains this position as the privileged _empty point of universality_ from which one is able to appreciate (and depreciate) properly other particular cultures--the multiculturalist respect for the Other's specificity is the very form of asserting one's own superiority.

 

What about the rather obvious counter-argument that the multiculturalist's neutrality is false, since his position silently privileges Eurocentrist content? This line of reasoning is right, but for the wrong reason. The particular cultural background or roots which always support the universal multiculturalist position are not its 'truth', hidden beneath the mask of universality--'multiculturalist universalism is really Eurocentrist'--but rather the opposite: the strain of particular roots is the phantasmatic screen which conceals the fact that the subject is already thoroughly 'rootless', that his true position is the void of universality."

 

Slavoj Zizek ("Multiculturalism, Or, the Cultural Logic of Multinational Capitalism," _New Left Review_ 225, Sept.-Oct. 1997: p. 44)

 

 

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