Page 112 - Cultural Studies Volume 11

106 CULTURAL STUDIES

social fabric are treated as if they were rooted in ‘cultural’ differences—in other
words, attributed to meaning systems rather than the politics of inequality—the
social vocabulary of culture is a hindrance rather than an aid to examining the
relationship between the political and material conditions as they operate at
local, national and global levels.
Permit me to suggest, as a hypothesis for reflection, that within the academy,
if the drive for transforming curricula to reflect cultural diversity has been
pushed by advocates of critical pedagogy, its actual formulation and
implementation has been undertaken by proponents of liberalism. The liberal
view of society is rooted in the premise that consensus and sameness are integral
to political and social equilibrium. The apparent harmony of this perspective,
however, is marred by its dependency on assimilation and common
denominators which seek to obscure particularism and parochialism. This
attitude has provoked critics of liberalism who point to its fundamental
conservatism which they denounce as hypocrisy. For example, I think
philosopher Yedullah Kazmi, who has written on the limitations of
multiculturalism as a liberal palliative, is correct in censoring its accentuation of
cohesion and tolerance (1994). Kazmi highlights the tendency to blame the Other
for non-conformity. In his estimation, liberalism adopts an accusatory stance
towards the Other’s refusal to accept the pre-established ground rules, thus
impeding consensus and disrupting cohesion. The transferral of blame to the
Other—let’s say the subordinate group—for non-compliance relieves liberals
from acknowledging their own implication in foreclosing real dialogue.
Political philosopher Seyla Benhabib draws on the insights of Hannah Arendt,
the Jewish political theorist and refugee from Nazi Germany. Against a tradition
of universalism which masks ethnocentrism, Benhabib proposes a model of
moral conversation whose goal is the process of dialogue, conversation and
mutual understanding, not consensus. A moral conversation instantiates a
reversal of perspectives; ‘that is, the willingness to reason from the other’s point
of view’ (Benhabib, 1992). This formulation—thinking from the standpoint of
others—accentuates the egalitarian and potentially radical possibilities for public
culture. As Benhabib reminds us, the modern public sphere no longer allows a
distinction between ‘the social’ and ‘the political’ precisely because the struggle
to make something public is intrinsically a struggle for recognition, inclusion and
justice. The public sphere, then, is the intersection of interaction,
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intercommunication and intercultural encounters. Against this background, as
Benhabib persuasively claims, ‘the self-centered perspective of the individual is
constantly challenged by the multiplicity and diversity of perspectives that
constitute public life’ (Benhabib, 1992:141). In other words, the particularity and
otherness of an individual can be known only through her self-definition which,
in turn, requires that she have a voice.
I have raised the critique of liberalism to redirect attention to the sharp
contrast between inclusion and multivocality—in the first, inclusion, the Other is
always the outsider, the one who is always already defined as different and