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Title: Against Multiculturalism
Author: Peter Lamborn Wilson
Language: en
Topics: culture, North America
Source: Retrieved on 17th May 2021 from https://hermetic.com/bey/pw-multicul

Peter Lamborn Wilson

Against Multiculturalism

The USA was always supposed to be a “melting pot.” Canada, by contrast,

calls itself a “mosaic”, which may explain why Canadians seem to suffer

a kind of long-drawn-out and perpetual identity crisis. What does it

mean to be “Canadian” as opposed to (or as well as) Quebecois, Celt, or

Native?

In the 1950s the USA was supposed to be immune to such headaches. All

cultures would “melt” and fuse into the American character, the main

stream. In truth, however, this “consensus” culture was simply English

colonial culture with amnesia, and a faded patina of frontier bluster.

Immigrant cultures which resisted meltdown were considered simply

abnormal; the Irish, for example, were viewed as savage recalcitrants

until quite recently. Of course it was hard to tell if certain cultures

remained “outside” because they wanted to or because they were excluded.

In the 1960s blacks were identified as an unfairly excluded culture, and

steps were taken to absorb them into the mainstream (through school

integration for example). Native Americans were still excluded by law,

which defines them by blood rather than by culture, and maintains

“segregation” by the reservation system. Jews, Hispanics, Asians, each

followed their own trajectory toward assimilation or resistance.

By the late 1970s or early 1980s it became obvious that the Melting Pot

had somehow failed. Black culture, the test case, now appeared

impossible to absorb. The “consensus” was in danger. The Right, with its

schizophrenic attitudes toward race and culture, had faltered. A new

“liberal” consensus was proposed. It was called multiculturalism.

Let there be no mistake: multiculturalism is a strategy designed to save

“America” as an idea, and as a system of social control. Each of the

many cultures that make up the nation are now to be allowed a little

measure of self-identity and a few simulacra of autonomy. School

textbooks now reflect this strategy, with 1950s illustrations of happy

historical whites retouched to include a few blacks, Asians and even

Natives. A dozen or so departments of multiculturalism spring up at

university level. Each minority must now be treated with “dignity” in

the curriculum. Conservatives raise a stink: the Canonical Shibboleths

of Western Civilization are in danger! Our children will be forced to

study … black history! This babble on the Right lends multiculturalism

an aura of “radical” righteousness and political correctitude, and the

Left leaps forward to defend the new paradigm. In the middle according

to theory — balance will be restored, and the consensus will function

again. The trouble is that the theory itself emanates neither from the

Right nor Left nor Center. It emanates from the top. It’s a theory of

control.

The old textbooks depicted all ethnic/cultural particularity as a taint

which could only be overcome in the great pot of conformity to the Norm.

Yet the Norm was itself so clearly and simply a form of hegemonic

particularism that the textbooks wore thin and eventually grew

transparent. They had to go — I agree. Now we have a few texts which

admit, for example, that Columbus was a mixed blessing and that Africans

were not morally responsible for being slaves. This is a step forward —

I agree. However, I remain interested in knowing precisely who has given

us permission to hold such opinions — and why?

In the first place, it seems obvious that each of the “many” particular

cultures is being measured against or assimilated to a mainstream

“universal” culture. The only difference is that the mainstream now,

apparently, values a bit of “diversity,” and feels a bit of permissible

nostalgia for colorful ethnic customs. At the heart of the discourse

however, the very discourse which now defines itself as “multicultural”,

there remains a “solid core curriculum” made up of the same old

Euro-rationalist axiomata, scientistic triumphalism, and ruling-class

teleology.

This mainstream constitutes Civilization, and only on the periphery of

this centrality can the cultures find a place. Whatever the cultures may

possess which might be of use to Civilization will of course be accepted

with gratitude. Each quaint little local culture has something to offer,

something to be “proud” of. A museological passion inspirits the Center;

everyone collects little ethnic particularities; everyone’s a tourist;

everyone appropriates.

The multicultural conversation as totalist monologue might go something

like this: Yes, your little handicrafts will look good in my living

room, where they’ll help disguise the fact that my house was designed by

— and perhaps for — a machine. Yes, your sweat-lodge ceremony will

provide us with a pleasant week-end “experience”. Gosh, aren’t we the

Masters of the Universe? Why should we put up with this bland old

Anglo-American furniture when we can take yours instead? Aren’t you

grateful? And no more Imperial Colonialism either: we pay for what we

take — and even what we break! Pay, pay, pay. After all, it’s only

money.

Thus multiculturalism is seen in the first place to propose both

universalism and particularism at once — in effect, a totality. Every

totality implies a totalitarianism, but in this case, the Whole appears

in friendly face, a great theme park where every “special case” can be

endlessly reproduced. Multiculturalism is the “Spectacle” of

communicativeness — conviviality which it renders into commodity form

and sells back to those who have dreamed it. In this sense

multiculturalism appears as the necessary ideological reflection of the

Global Market or “New World Order,” the “one” world of too-Late

Capitalism and the “end of History.”

The “end of History” is of course code for the “end of the Social”.

Multiculturalism is the decor of the end of the Social, the metaphorical

imagery of the complete atomization of the “consumer”. And what will the

consumer consume? Images of culture.

In the second place, multiculturalism is not just a false totality or

unification, but also a false separation. The “minorities” are told in

effect that no common goals or values could unite them, except of course

the goals and values of the consensus. Blacks have Black Culture, for

example, and are no longer required to assimilate. So long as Black

Culture tacitly recognizes the centrality of the consensus — and its own

peripherality — it will be allowed and even encouraged to thrive.

Genuine autonomy, however, is out of the question, and so is any “class

consciousness” which might cut across ethnic or “lifestyle” lines to

suggest revolutionary coalitions. Each minority contributes to the

Center, but nothing is allowed to circulate on the periphery, and

certainly not the power of collectivity.

Unlike a flower, which opens its borders to bees and breezes and flows

out into life, the “consensus” draws all energy inward and absorbs it

into a closed system of rigid control a death-like process which must

eventually end in sterility and hysteresis.

Living as we do in the era of total Global order and the physical and

cultural environment it secretes, it should be obvious that

particularise can represent a form of resistance. The Totality has

therefore undertaken to appropriate the energy of the resistance by

offering a false form of particularism, empty of all creative power, as

a commodified simulacrum of insurrectionary desire. In this sense

multiculturalism is simply the recto of that page whose verso is “ethnic

cleansing”. Both sides spell disappearance for any authentic particular

culture of resistance.

At the same time the Consensus secretly encourages race and even class

hatred. In the mysterious absence of that “Evil Empire” which once

provided an excuse for every act of violent repression and corruption

carried out in “defense of Western Civilization”, the Consensus must now

seek out or even create its “enemies” within itself. Intelligence orgs

fall in love with violent nationalists, separatists, and chauvinists of

all kinds. In such circles, multiculturalism means: “let them tear out

each others’ throats, and save us the trouble”. Thus every act of

rebellion and violent hatred simply increases the power of the “Security

State”. Already we see that the Discourse of Power is running out of

patience with these “darned minorities and all their P.C. blather. We

offered them multiculturalism and look! Still they rebel. Criminals!”

The Left has believed so long in the “International” that it has — so

far — failed to adjust to the post-1989 situation with a clear response

to the “New Globalism.” When the Berlin Wall fell, in the moment of

freedom which opened there, a new form of internationalism rushed to

fill the breach. As United States politicians crowed about how “the Cold

War is over and we won” international Capital declared the end of all

ideology. This means not only that Communism is “dead” but also that

“democratic republicanism” has served its purpose and transformed itself

into an empty idol. Henceforth only one force will “rule” — the

rationality of money. Abstracted from all real valuation, representing

nothing but itself, money is etherealized, and finally divinized. Money

has “gone to Heaven” and left mere life behind.

In this situation both Right and Left will rebel — and in some cases it

will be hard to tell the difference. A myriad forms of particularism

will arise, consciously or unconsciously, to oppose the false totality

and pitiful booby-prizes of multiculturalism’s “New World Order”. The

Social has not ended, of course, no more than everyday life itself. But

the Social will now involve itself with the insurrectionary potential of

difference. In its most unconscious and deeply deluded form, this

passion for difference will simply repeat the old and empty rhetoric of

classical nationalism or racism. Hence, “ethnic cleansing“ from Bosnia

to California.

Against this hegemonic particularism, we might propose a more conscious

and socially just form of anti-hegemonic particularism. It’s difficult

to envision the precise shape such a force might assume, but it grows

easier to identify as it actually emerges. A miraculous revival of

Native-American culture steals the fire of the Columbus celebrations in

1992, and sharpens the debate over cultural appropriation. In Mexico the

Zapatista uprising, according to the New York Times, the first

“post-modern rebellion”, constitutes the first armed actionagainst the

New Globalism — in the particularise but antihegemonic cause of the

Mayans and peasants of Chiapas. I regard this as a struggle for

“empirical freedoms” rather than “ideology.” In a positive sense one

might say that all cultural and/or social forms of particularism deserve

support as long as

they remain anti-hegemonic, and precisely to the extent that they remain

so.

In this context we might even discover uses for “multiculturalism”,

since it may serve as a medium for the propagation of subversive memes,

and the insurrectionary desire for radical difference. Such a subversive

“entry into the media,” however, can serve only one ultimate purpose:

the utter destruction of multiculturalist neo-imperialism and its

transformation into something else. If the secret agenda of

multiculturalism demands universal separation under the aegis of a false

totality, then the radical response to multiculturalism must attack not

only its ersatz universality but also its invidious alienation, its

false separatism. If we support true anti-hegemonic particularism, we

must also support the other half of the dialectic by developing a force

to penetrate all false boundaries, to restore communicativeness and

conviviality across a horizontal and random web of connectivities and

solidarities. This would constitute the true force of which

multiculturalism is merely the empty simulacrum. It would complement

anti-hegemonic particularism with a genuine reciprocity among peoples

and cultures. The “economy of the Gift” would replace the economy of

exchange and commodification. The Social would resume circulation on the

level of experienced life” through the exercise of imagination and

generosity.

In this sense the answer to the problem of “appropriation” would arise

from the concept of a “universal potlach” of giving and sharing. As a

test case, examine the issue of cultural appropriation of

Native-American values. The original identity of tribal peoples in the

“New” World was tribal, not racial. Anyone could be adopted into a

tribe, as were many drop-out whites and run-away blacks. The

twentieth-century renaissance of Native Culture has discovered certain

spiritual universals which it wants to give and share with everyone, and

it has discovered an anti-hegemonic particularism which it desires for

itself. The Elders charge that too many Americans want to appropriate or

commodity the latter (sweat-lodges, sun-dances, etc.) but ignore or

despise the former (reverence for Nature, love of place as topocosm,

etc.) . The Native tradition is not closed, despite the just anger and

bitterness of the tribes, but demands reciprocity rather than

appropriation. Let us Euro’s first evolve a serious revolutionary

attitude toward the restoration of wild (er) ness; then it will be

appropriate for us to make the fine Alexandrian gesture of “worshipping

local spirits”.

The Situationists already envisioned this strategy when they coined that

much-abused slogan: “think globally, act locally”. Our true interests

include global realities, such as “environment”, but effective power can

never be global without being oppressive. Top-down solutions reproduce

hierarchy and alienation. Only local action for “empirical freedoms” can

effect change on the level of “experienced life” without imposing

categories of control. A New-age Nietzsche might have called it “the

will to self-empowerment”.

The poet Nathaniel Mackay calls it cross-culturalism. The image

expresses a non-hierarchic, de-centered web of cultures, each one

singular, but not alienated from other cultures. Exchange takes place as

reciprocity across the permeable boundaries of this complex of

autonomous, but loosely defined, differences. I would add a further

refinement. This reciprocity will produce more than the mere sum of

exchanges within the system, and this more will constitute a universal

value in circulation among free collectivities and individuals. Hence

the term cross-cultural synergetics might describe the precise term (or

slogan) proposed as a replacement for “multiculturalism”.

Conclusion

The multicultural paradigm presupposes a false totality within which are

subsumed a set of false particularities. These differences are

represented and packaged as “lifestyle choices” and “ethnicities”,

commodities to appease the genuine passion for genuine difference with

mere “traces” and images of “dignity” and even of “rebellion”. Against

this, cross-cultural synergism proposes actual autonomy, whether for

individuals or cohesions of individuals, based on radical consciousness

and organic identity. In this sense, cross-culturalism can only oppose

itself to “multiculturalism”, either through a strategy of subversion,

or through open assault. Either way, “multiculturalism” must be

destroyed.