Theorizing Multiculturalism: A Guide to the Current Debate (review)

Theorizing Multiculturalism: A Guide to the Current Debate. Edited by Cynthia Willet. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, 1998.

In MultiAmerica: Essays on Cultural Wars and Cultural Peace, Ishmael Reed argues "Monoculturalism [in contrast to Multiculturalism]. . . is essentially an anti-intellectual coalition. It says that we shouldn't learn this, we shouldn't study that, we should only speak English, we shouldn't study the African continent. . . . Monoculturalism says that we should revere and study Plato . . . and that the Enlightenment should be our model for pristine intellectual standards" (1997, xvii). Reed further talks of the need to provide a forum for multiculturalists to talk back to monoculturalists, as the media has done very little to diversify the discussion of multiculturalism. Cynthia Willet's Theorizing Multiculturalism: A Guide to the Current Debate (1998)is a recent publication that seeks to provide the type of forum Reed requests. When I was first asked to review the 466-page anthology, I was wary of another book on theory as opposed to practice. However, reading Willet's collection has inspired me to pay closer attention to the substantive body of scholarship that continues to impact dialogue on the cultural wars. As a book that aims to educate, Theorizing Multiculturalism is a valuable resource for educators, students, activists, and researchers pursuing diversity work and social change.

The first collection of its kind—a compilation of major theories of multiculturalism from diverse philosophical perspectives—Willet's anthology is informative and insightful, fully grasping the explicit tensions surrounding multiculturalism and its resistance to creating a unifying theory. In her introduction, Willet immediately addresses these complexities, "the theorizing of multiculturalism demands a coalition of authors. . . . Multiculturalism as a political, social, and cultural movement has aimed to respect a multiplicity of diverging perspectives outside of dominant traditions" (1). In terms of structure and content, the book is organized in relation to eight schools of thought: Post-Hegelian Dialectics of Recognition and Communication, Post-Marxism and Issues of Class, Continental and Analytical Feminism, Corporeal Logic and Sexuate Being, Critical Race Theory, Postcolonial and Ethnicity, Liberalism, and Pragmatism.

Chapters one through five set up an engaging dialogue in response to the works of Nancy Fraser and Charles Taylor. In the first chapter, Nancy Fraser argues that "justice today requires both redistribution and recognition . . . this means figuring out how to conceptualize cultural recognition and social equality in forms that support rather than undermine each other" (20). Iris Young's response critiques Fraser's "exaggeration" that feminists or antiracist activists show little concern for economic struggles. Lawrence Blum provides strong insights into Charles Taylor and Nancy Fraser's theories of recognition and equality while Martin J. Beck Matustik's article focuses on the ways in which multiculturalism is hijacked by "impostors" (such as the Benetton and Disney corporations) who "deal in tokens of diversity" while maintaining the existing World Order (101).

Chapters six and seven raise concern over "consumerist" multiculturalism, which Bill Martin equates with "giving free reign to theoretical 'eclecticism' . . . [which is in itself] petty-bourgeois" (123). From a Marxist perspective, this type of multiculturalism is a "very middle-class institution" (131), and therefore, offers no challenge to reform the existing system. Donald C. Hodges concurs with Martin that if multiculturalism is co-opted and hijacked, it results in a repressive ideology, not liberation. As an alternative, Martin calls for a "transformative multiculturalism and a real movement for the liberation" (137) of oppressed groups.

The book then theorizes multiculturalism from a feminist perspective. In chapter eight, Kelly Oliver advocates use of Julia Kristeva's theory of abjection, if it is reformulated to focus on "a cooperative social relationship that does not require that the other be rejected or excluded" (187) as a means to go beyond Hegel's master-slave dialectic. I found the inclusion of Penny Florence's interview with Drucilla Cornell in chapter ten especially useful in illustrating a feminist and leftist perspective of multiculturalism. Cornell's concept of "the imaginary domain" attempts to...