Identities in Dialogue

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Beyond the Culture Wars: Identities in DialogueAuthor(s): Henry Louis Gates, Jr.Reviewed work(s):Source: Profession, (1993), pp. 6-11Published by: Modern Language AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25595500 .

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PRESIDENTIAL FORUM

Beyond the Culture Wars:Identities inDialogueHenry Louis Gates,Jr.Multiculturalism at theLimitWhat is thiscrazy thing alledmulticulturalism?As anoverviewof thecurrentdebate suggests, salientdifficultyraisedby thevariety fuses towhich thetermhasbeen put is thatmulticulturalism itselfhas certainimperialtendencies. Itsboundaries have not been easyto establish.We are told that it isconcernedwith therepresentationof difference?but whose differences?which differences?Almost all differences inwhich we takean interest

express themselves in culturalways; many, perhapsmost, are exhausted by their cultural manifestations.To assert this claim is, inmost cases, to assert a tautology. Narrowing the terms of argument, we might saythat multiculturalism is concerned with the representation,not of difference s such, but of cultural identities.Butwhich ones are those? Indeed, if e askwhatsort f identities rehelpfullymodeled bymulticulturalism, the answer is less than obvious. Gender identity,sexual identity,racial identity: if ll these thingsaresocially inflected nd produced, rather hanunmediatedly natural,why won't theyfit into the culturalistmodel? (I use the slipperytermculturalist ere, some

what anomalously, as a back-formation from multicultural.) r will they?We can probably agree, for example, thatgenderidentity nd sexual identity rehard to reduce to themodel of culturaldifference, ven thoughthemeaningof these categories is culturally specific. First, we candiscuss the categories in a transcultural, transhistoricalmanner, ifonly to elaborate on their transcultural andtranshistoricaldisparities. (Try thatwith "Basque" or"Catalan.") Second, the culturalist model normallyimagines itsconstituent elements as cultural bubblesthatmay collide but thatusually could, inprinciple,

exist in splendid isolation fromone another: hence the rubric of"culturaldiversity." his sortofcultural externalism?requiredby amodel of cultural distanceor disparity?does notwork sowell with gender identity r sexual identity.hat we call "sexualdifference" sa difference ithin,something culturally intrinsic.

Why won't the culturalist reductionwork? As JonathanDollimore and others point out aboutsexual difference,homophobiain our culture ispart of the structureof sexuality itself: it'snotout there; it's in here. Sexism, perhaps even more obvi

ously, isalsopartofour conventionalgender identities.Othering starts n thehome.I do notmean todeny theexistence of subculturaldifferentiae in particular social contexts, wherein sexual difference seems to become "ethnicized" and asexual ethnicity isforged.At the same time, the relationbetween the sexual and thecultural isnecessarilycontingent. Obviously, we can't assume that RonaldFirbank and Sophocles?or, for thatmatter,MarcelProust and Michelangelo?would recognize theirputative fraternity.And yet ithas sometimes seemed tome thatwhatreally explains the fervor of some of the Afrocentristpreoccupationwith Egypt isan unexpressedbelief thatdeep continuities supervene on skin color. Beyond theheartfelt laim thatCleopatra was "black" is the lurkingconviction that ifyou traveled back in time anddropped the needle on a JamesBrown album, Cleowould instantlybreak out into the camelwalk. Thebelief thatwe cherish isnot somuch a propositionaboutmelanin and physiognomy; it's thepropositionthat, hroughthemists ofhistory,leopatra was a sister.For obvious reasons, sexual dimorphism isa basicaspect of human experience. Racial difference iscertainly lessso; understanding itssignificance lwaysrequires a particular engagementwith a specifichistorical trajectory. here isno master key. But what

The author isW. E. B. Du Bois Professor of theHumanities andChair of theDepartment ofAfro-American Studies atHarvardUniversity. A version of thispaper was presented at the 1992 MLAconvention inNew York.

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Henry Louis Gates, Jr. 7

emerges, again, is that despite the complex interrelations between race and culture?a matter that takes asinister turn in the racialization of culture in the nineteenth century?no ready conversion factor connectsthe two, only the vagaries of history.As thecriticJohnBrenkmannotes, blacks have beeninscribed in theAmerican matrix ina particularway;they are not just missing or absent or elsewhere:"[B] lackswere historicallynotmerely excluded fromtheAmerican polity; theywere inscribedwithin itasnonparticipants" He continues:

The formsof thatnegating inscriptionhave varied through acomplex history of legal and political designations. These setthe conditions of theAfrican-American discourse on identityand citizenship, and themeaning of that discourse would inturnhave to be interpreted in lightof those conditions and ofthe strategiesembedded in itsresponse to them. (98)

What good are roots,Gertrude Stein once asked, ifyou can't take them with you? But a number of criticsnow suggestthatthecontemporarymodel of ethnicitysometimes failsus by itshistoricallyforeshortenedperspective, its inability to grasp the roots as well asthe branches of cultural identity.n a recentbook, thetheorist . San Juan, Jr., arshlydecrieswhat he callsthe "cult of ethnicity nd thefetish f pluralism" andlaunchesprobably themost thoroughgoing ritiqueofmulticulturalism froma radical perspective thatwehave. San Juan writes:

With thegradual academicization of Ethnic Studies, "the cultof ethnicity" based on theparadigm of European immigrantsuccess became theorthodox doctrine. The theoretical aggrandizement of ethnicity systematicallyerased from the historicalframe of referenceany perception of race and racism as causalfactors in themaking of thepolitical and economic structuresof theUnited States. (132)

In a similarvein,Hazel Carby has proposed a perspective that "[b]y insisting that 'culture' denotes antagonistic relations of domination and subordination . . .undermines the pluralistic notion of compatibilityinherent in ww/^'culturalism.. . ." She continues:The paradigm ofmulticulturalism actually excludes the concept of dominant and subordinate cultures?either indigenousormigrant?and fails to recognize that the existence of racismrelates to the possession and exercise of politico-economiccontrol and authority and also to forms of resistance to thepower of dominant social groups. (64-65)The issues thatradical critics such as San Juanand

Carby raiseare important, ut theyhave received littlehearingbecause liberalmulticulturalism has generallyfailedto engagewith leftistcritiquesof thissort. hose

familiarwith multiculturalism only through itsrightwing opponents are sometimes surprised todiscoverthat these broad-gauge radical critiques even exist. Consequently,theextended face-off ith conservatismhashad a deforming ffect,ncouragingmulticulturalismtoknowwhat it isagainstbut notwhat it isfor. o even ifwe finallydemur to aspects of the radical critique,wewill be better offforhaving sortedthroughsomeof itsarguments. Inwhat follows, Iwant to examine the paradoxes of pluralism and consider some of the limitations fmulticulturalism?that is, fmukiculturalism?as amodel for the rangeofphenomena ithas oftenbeen required to subsume. I also raise questions aboutthehistoricallyrecenttriumphof "ethnicity" s a paradigm or master code forhuman difference. concludewith an appeal forpluralism, but it is apluralism, let me servefair notice, of a singularly banal and uninspiring ariety,onducingto a vision of society, andof the university, as aplace ofwhat one philosopher calls "constraineddisagreement" (Maclntyre 31). Here, then, re

The extendedface-offwithconservatism hasencouragedmulticulturalismtoknow what itis against but notwhat it isfor.

two cheers formulticulturalism.How does thevocabularyofmulticulturalismoccluderace? ou may have noticed thatmulticulturalismsfrequently used in thepopularmedia as a substitutefortheearlierdesignationmultiracial.Typically, a columnon advertising will describe a Benetton-style ad with,say,black and white andAsian children togetheras"multicultural." Do these children?presumably supplied by theFordModel Agency and inall likelihoodhailing from xoticWestchesterCounty?in factrepresentdifferentultures? hat, of course, is theone thingyou cannot tellfrom photographof thissort.But youwill find that inalmost everyinstancewhere theolderformmultiracialwould have been used, thenewer lexeme multicultural'is employed instead, even where cultural traits, as opposed to physiognomic traits, areobviously undiscoverable or irrelevant.Iwant to be clear. In many cases, the shift from raceto ethnicity is a salutary one, a necessary move awayfrom theessentialistbiologizing of a previous era.Theemphasis on the social construction of race may be afamiliarone, but itremainsan imperativeone for allthat. nd yetwe ought toconsider thecorrelative anger of essentializing culture when we blithely allow


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8 Beyond theCulture Wars: Identities inDialogueculture o substituteforracewithout affecting hebasiccirculation of the term. The conventional multiculturalvision suggests that for every insult there is a culture:that is, if can be denigratedas anX, I can be affirmedas an X. This mechanism of remediation is perhaps notthemost sophisticated, but the intentions are good.So far, e've seen theethnicity aradigm faultedfora tendency to leave out history, power relations, and, ofcourse, the history of power relations. But its perplexitiesdo not end here.We might bear inmind that theascentof thevocabulary of ethnicity s, sWerner Sollorshas emphasized, largely postwar phenomenon,thevery termhaving been coined byW LloydWarner

Canmulticulturalismsupport the sortofcivil societyone might want?

in 1941.The most conservative aspect of somepopulist versions of multiculturalismmay be anunderstanding of groupidentitynd group rightsthatborrowswhole hog areifiedconception of culturalmembershipderivedfrom the social sciences

of mid-century. What's new is that cultural survival?thepreservationof culturaldifferentiae?is assignedanalmostmedical sense ofurgency.And if the delimitation of cultural identityborrows from the social sciences, the interpretation of its products sometimesseems to court thegaze of anthropology; inplace ofhermeneutics, itwould seem, some might prefer ethnography.That is,under the signofmulticulturalism,literary eadings reoftenguided by thedesire toelicit,first and foremost, indices of ethnic particularity,especially those that can be construed as oppositional,transgressive, subversive.Then there's another paradox. In a critique of liberalindividualism,we debunk the supposed "stability" fthe individual as a category, and yet we sometimesreconstitute and recuperate the same essential stabilityin theformof an ethnos thatallegedlyexhibits all theregularitiesnd uniformities e could not locate in theindividualsubject.Conversely, as JohnGuillorywrites,"The critiqueof thecanon responds to thedisunityofthe culture as a whole, as afragmented whole, by constitutingnew cultural unities at the level of gender,race, or more recently, ethnic subcultures, or gay or lesbian subcultures" (34). Skepticism about the statusofthe individual is surelychastening, but theremay bea danger in a too easy invocation of the correlativegroup, the status ofwhich may be problematic inanother way.

Finally, to complete our overview of the limitsofculturalism,we should takeaccount of thecritique ofmulticulturalismput forwardby the influential renchanthropologistJean-LoupAmselle,who contends thatthe very notion of discrete ethnicities is an artifact ofhis discipline.Warning againstwhat he dubs ethnicorcultural fundamentalism, Amselle maintains that thenotion of amulticultural society,"far frombeing aninstrument f tolerance nd of liberation fminorities,as its partisans affirm, manifests, to the contrary, all thehallmarksof ethnological reason,and thatiswhy ithasbeen takenup in France by theNew Right" (35). ButAmselle's concerns are not merely political; they areontological aswell. "Culturesaren'tsituatedone by theother like Leibniz's windowless monads," he argues.Rather, "theverydefinitionof a given culture is infactthe result f intercultural elationsof forces" (55). Onthe face of it,Amselle's considerations are yet anotherblow againstwhat I've referred o as thebubble modelof cultures. Insofar as this idea is a necessary feature ofthe culturalism promoted by multiculturalism, it

might have tobe discarded.

Identityversus PoliticsWhile thediscoursesof identity olitics and of liberation are often conflated, they may be inmortal combat on amore fundamental level. Identitypolitics, initspurest form, must be concerned with the survival ofan identity. By contrast, the Utopian agenda of liberation pursues what it takes to be the objective interestsof itssubjects,but itmay be little oncernedwith itscultural continuity or integrity More than that, thediscourse of liberation ften looksforwardto thebirth

of a transformed subject, the creation of a new identity,which is,by definition, the surcease of theold. Andthat, at least in theory, is the rub.Consider an example Ihave touched on in "CriticalFanonism." If colonialism inscribes tselfn thepsycheof thecolonized, if t ispart of theprocess of colonialsubjectformation, hendoesn't thisinscription stablishlimitsto thevery intelligibilityf liberation? his critique, more or less, is the one that the Tunisian philosopherAlbertMemmi makes about Frantz Fanon'santicolonial rhetoric. How are we to prize apart thediscourse of thecolonized and thediscourse of thecolonizer?Memmi suggests hatFanon, for ll his ambivalences, somehow believed that "the day oppressionceases, the new man is supposed to appear before oureyes immediately." But, says Memmi, "this is not the

way it happens." The Utopian moment that Memmi


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decries in Fanon is thedepiction ofdecolonization asengendering"akind of tabula rasa," s "quite simplythereplacing of a certain 'species' of men by another 'species' of men" so that the fear thatwe will continue to be"overdetermined from without" is never reconciledwith Fanon's political vision of emancipation (qtd. inGates 469). Certainly itwould be hard to reconcilewith any recognizableversionof identitarianpolitics.We can easily retrieve a lesson from the hot sands of

Algeria. Any discourse of emancipation, insofar s itretains a specifically cultural cast, must contend withsimilar issues. hat is theparadox entailedby a politicsconducted on behalfof cultural identities hen thoseidentities re inpart definedby the structural r positional features that the politics aims to dismantle.

Return, for amoment, to Carby's insistence that the"paradigm ofmulticulturalism actually excludes theconcept of dominant and subordinate cultures." Inwhat sense is thisstatementtrue? thinkthatGuillory,whose work on thecanon debate isplainly the best ofitskind, provides a helpful glosswhen he writes that

a culturalist politics, though itglances worriedly at thephenomenon of class, has inpractice never devised a politics thatwould arise froma class "identity."Forwhile it iseasy enoughto conceive of a self-affirmative racial or sexual identity, itmakes very little sense to posit an affirmative lower-classidentity,as such an identitywould have to be grounded inthe experience of deprivation per se, [the ffirmationofwhichis] hardly incompatible with a program for the abolitionofwant. (13)

And yet classmay provide a particularly tarkinstanceof amore general limitation.Obviously, ifbeing subordinate is a constitutive aspect of an identity, then a liberationpoliticswould foreclose n identity olitics andvice versa.This situation is stipulatively rueforGuillory's example of a "lower-class identity." But might itnot, at least contingently, prove true for a host of otherputativelycultural identities swell?The point is that identity olitics cannot be understood as a politics in theharnessof a pregiven identity.The "identity" alfof thecatchallphrase "identity olitics"must be conceived as being just as labile anddynamic as the "politics"half is.The two termsmustbe indialogue, as itwere, orwe shouldbe prepared forthe phrase to be revealed as an oxymoron.

Multiculturalism and DemocracyWe might then ask how identitynd politics arebestreconciled. Can multiculturalism?often depicted as a

slipperyslope to anarchyand tribalwar?support thesort f civil society nemightwant?In a recentessay, thedistinguished historian JohnHigham complained thatmulticulturalism has remained for two decades a stubbornlypractical enterprise, justified by immediate demands ratherthan long rangegoals: amovement without an overall theory.. . .Still, it is troubling that twentyyears after those convulsivebeginnings,multiculturalism has suddenly become a policy issue inAmerica's colleges, universities, and secondaryschools without yet proposing a vision of thekind of societyitwants. (204)

Multiculturalism may or may not have political consequences, inHigham's ratherpersuasivediagnosis,but itdoes not have a political vision.In a provocative and unusual attempt to connect themulticultural agenda to the program of democracy,Brenkman takes up Higham's challenge. He argues:

Citizens canfreely enter the field of political persuasion anddecision only insofaras theydraw on the contingent vocabularies of theirown identities.Democracy needs participantswho are conversant with the images, symbols, stories, andvocabularies that have evolved across thewhole of thehistory.... By the same token, democracy also requires citizenswhoare fluent enough inone another's vocabularies and historiesto share the forums of political deliberation and decision onan equal footing. (89)

I find this formulation attractive and heartening,though in its instrumental conception of culturalknowledge itmay have unsuspected affinitieswithE. D. Hirsch. But Iwant tomake two other points here.First, a caveat: to say that "[cjitizens can freely enter thefield ofpolitical persuasion and decision"?that is, thefield ofpolitics, toutcourt?"only insofar s they rawon the contingent vocabularies of their own identities"is to suppose that one exists, in some sense, as a culturalatom, that one's identity exists anterior to one's engagement in thefieldof thepolitical. It is to suppose thatone arrives at this field already constituted, already culturally whole, rather than to acknowledge that thepolitical might create or contour one's cultural or ethnicidentity.econd, thisformulation oes not entailwhatwe might call "group"multiculturalism,which devotesitself o theempowermentof crisply elimited culturalunits and conceives society as a sort of federation ofofficially ecognized ulturalsovereignties.e've alreadyregisteredthe sortsof criticismsthathave been raisedagainst that model, but they needn't arise just yet.

Brenkman is no Pangloss: he remarks a tensionbetween multiculturalism and democracy but proposes a


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10 Beyond he ultureWars: dentitiesnDialoguetradition f civic republicanismor civichumanism bywhich the tensionmight be resolved. he emphasis ofthistradition, hich was ofparticular influence n theearlyhistory f the nited States,is n civicparticipationover liberalism'sprivatism; ndividualdevelopment (herehe cites theBritish historianJ.G. A. Pocock) is seen asintrinsicallyinkedto the individual'sparticipationas acitizen of an "autonomous decision-making community, a polis or republic." Even so, Brenkman concedes:

[Cjivic humanism also always assumed thehomogeneity ofthose who enjoyed citizenship. As Michael Warner hasshown, for example, the republican representation of citizenship in revolutionary America tacitly depended upon theexclusion ofwomen, African slaves, and Native Americansfrom the forms of literacy thatwere the emblem and themeans of thepatriots' equality.To evoke the republican tradition in the context of multicultural societies quickly exposesthose elements of civic humanism that rundirectly counter todiversityand plurality. (95)

The charge thatthiscivichumanism depended on thehomogeneity of itscitizenryiseasily supported,but isculturalhomogeneitypreciselythe issue? s I noted earlier, the exclusion ofwomen isnot, at least customarily,depicted as amatterofcultural istance.And while bothNative Americans andAfrican slaveswould doubtlessbemarked by culturaldifferentiae,hat Brenkman criticizeshere istheperpetuationof such differencesby thepatriots'withholding the tools of assimilation,namely,English literacy.hat isat stake isnot theeradicationof difference?by, forexample, the unwanted imposition of English literacy, hich isa grievance thathasarisen in some non-Western settings. We cannot, then,conclude that cultural distance motivated the exclusionof Native Americans and African slaves; on the contrary, their exclusion was achieved by the patriots'enforcing the cultural distance. And so what we comeup against, once again, are the limits of the culturalist

model, its tendency to occlude the categories of race.However symptomatic these slippages?and I citethem as cautionary?I believe that Brenkman's elaboratedvision of the"modernpolity [as]a dynamic spaceinwhich citizenship isalways being contested ratherthan thefixedspace of thepremodern idealof a republic" isa signal contribution to the debate surroundingmulticulturalism (99).

Multiculturalism versusRelativismOne last obstacle remains to the articulation of a

multicultural polity: the specterof relativism,which

haunts many ofmulticulturalism s friends and outragesits enemies. For the cultural conservatives, fromWilliam Kristol toRoger Kimball, ithas totemic significance, a one-word encapsulation of all that iswrongwith theirprogressive counterparts. If all differencedeserves respect, how can morality survive and governance bemaintained? Progressives find thedoctrineequally unsettling: the rightingofwrongs, afterall,demands a recognition of them aswrongs. And theclassic 1965 handbook byHerbertMarcuse, BarringtonMoore, and Robert PaulWolff, A Critique of ureTolerance, hould remindus thatcritiquesfromthe leftare far from exceptional. Indeed, it seems scarcely plausible that relativism as anythinglike thecurrencythatsome critics have imputed to it. "'Relativism,'" RichardRorty has stated, "is the view that every belief on a certain topic, or perhaps about any topic is as good aseveryother.No one holds thisview," he saysflatly,except "the occasional cooperative freshman" (166).

Alas, this is surely an overstatement, though in thepresent climate probably a salutary one.

Certainly, relativismcomes inmany differentflavors?moral and aesthetic as well as epistemological?and what actually follows from relativism of anyparticular variety is seldom clear. But one kind ofrelativism?the epistemological or cognitive?hasachieved a certain limited currency among someanthropologists,whose business isculture,andmightbe supposed tomake an occasional appearance in themulticultural context.TheWittgensteinian PeterWinch, forexample, inhis classic book The Idea ofa Social Science and ItsRelation toPhilosophy, has argued that "our idea ofwhat belongs to therealmof reality sgiven tous in thelanguage thatwe use" (15). JohnBeattie has decried asimilarcognitive relativism in, forexample, F.AllanHanson's Meaning inCulture and RoyWagner's TheInvention ofCulture. ForWinch, there isno realityindependent of our conceptual schemes,which maydiffer n incommensurableways.This is a curious view, one that has been rebuttedmost vigorouslyby intellectualsfrom just thosenonWestern cultures that relativismwould consign tohermetic isolation. As thedistinguished GhanaianphilosopherKwasiWiredu writes:

[RJelativism . . .falselydenied the existence of inter-personalcriteria of rationality.That iswhat the denial of objectivityamounts to.Unless at least thebasic canons of rational thinkingwere common tomen, theycould not even communicateamong themselves.Thus, in seeking to foreclose rational discussion, the relativistview is in effect seeking to underminethe foundations of human community. (220-21)


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The generalproblemwith relativism f thissort s thatitmakes theproject of cross-culturalunderstandingunintelligible. (MartinHollis observes that "withoutassumptions about reality and rationality we cannottranslate anything and no translation could show theassumptions tobewrong" [240].)So letme put theargument at itsstrongest:ifrelativism is right,thenmulticulturalism is impossible.Relativism, farfromconducing tomulticulturalism,would rescind its eryconditions ofpossibility.

Pluralism ReduxByway of a return opolitics and a roundingout of

my critical verview,wish toenlist saiahBerlin,whomwe might describe as thepaterfamilias f liberalpluralismandwhose banishment from thecurrent ebate isamatter ofpuzzlement,unless the fearisthatadducingBerlin's lifelong argumentwould compromise ourclaims to novelty. Berlin stresses that "relativism is nottheonly alternative owhat Lovejoy called uniformitarianism" "Relativism"85). Inwhat Berlin distinguishesas pluralism, "[w]e are free to criticize the values of othercultures, to condemn them, but we cannot pretend notto understand them at all, or to regard

themsimply

assubjective,theproductof creatures ndifferentircumstanceswith differenttastesfromour own,which donot speak to us at all" ("Pursuit" 11).He writes:

What isclear is thatvalues can clash?that iswhy civilizationsare incompatible. They can be incompatible between cultures,or groups in the same culture, or between you and me. . . .Values may easily clashwithin the breast of a single individual;and itdoes not follow that, iftheydo somemust be trueandothers false. [Indeed], these collisions of values are of theessence ofwhat theyare andwhat we are. ("Pursuit" 12-13)Berlin'spluralism isradically nti-utopian.Perhaps it isnot the sortof thing likelyto inspire ne to riskone'slife r the lives fothers.But Idon't think t isa flaccidor undemanding faith for all that.And, in the essayfromwhich I've been reading,entitled "The Pursuitofthe Ideal,"Berlin anticipates thecomplaint:

Of course social or political collisionswill takeplace; themereconflict of positive values alone makes thisunavoidable. Yettheycan, I believe, be minimized by promoting and preservingan uneasy equilibrium, which isconstantly threatened andinneed of repair?that alone, I repeat, is theprecondition fordecent societies and morally acceptable behavior; otherwisewe are bound to lose our way. A littledull as a solution, youwill say?Not the stuffof which calls to heroic action byinspired leaders aremade? Yet ifthere is some truth in thisview, perhaps that is sufficient. (19)

The vision here, if it isa vision, isone of the centralthemes ofBerlin's corpus, butwe can find itpromulgated elsewhere with a range of inflections. Itwarns usofffinal solutions of all sorts, dmonishes us that thesearch for purity?whether we speak of "ethnic cleansing"or ofprimordial "culturalauthenticity"?poses agreaterthreatto civilorder,and human decency, thandoes themessy affair f culturalvariegation. It letsusremember that identitiesare always indialogue, thattheyexist (asAmselle expatiates) only in relation toone another, and that they are, like everything else,sitesof contest and negotiation, self-fashioningandrefashioning. (AsHigham observes, "[A]n adequatetheoryofAmerican culture will have to address thereality f assimilation aswell as thepersistenceof differences" [209]). And itsuggests, inally, hatamulticulturalism that can accept its limitationsmight beoneworthworking for.

Works Cited_Amselle, Jean-Loup. Logiques metisses.Paris: Payot, 1990.Beattie, JohnM. "Objectivity and Social Anthropology." Objectiv

ity nd Cultural Divergence. Ed. S. C. Brown. Cambridge: CambridgeUP, 1984.1-20.Berlin, Isaiah. "AllegedRelativism inEighteenth-Century EuropeanThought." Crooked Timber 70-90.-. The Crooked Timber of umanity: Chapters in theHistoryof deas. New York: Knopf, 1991.-. "The Pursuit of the Ideal." Crooked Timber 1-19.

Brenkman, John. "Multiculturalism and Criticism." English Insideand Out. Ed. Susan Gubar and Jonathan Kamholtz. New York:Routledge, 1993. 87-101.

Carby, Hazel. "Multi-culture." Screen 34 (1980): 62-70.Dollimore, Jonathan. "Homophobia and Sexual Difference." OxfordLiteraryReview 8.1-2 (1986): 5-12.Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. "Critical Fanonism." Critical Inquiry 17(1991): 457-70.

Guillory, John. Cultural Capital: The Problem ofLiterary CanonFormation. Chicago: U ofChicago P, 1993.Higham, John. "Multiculturalism and Universalism: A History and

Critique." American Quarterly 45 (1993): 195-219.Hollis, Martin. "Reason and Ritual." Philosophy43 (1968): 231-47.Maclntyre, Alasdair. Three Rival Versions of oral Enquiry. NotreDame: U of Notre Dame P, 1990.Marcuse, Herbert, Barrington Moore, and Robert Paul Wolff. A

Critique of ure Tolerance. Boston: Beacon, 1965.Rorty,Richard. "Pragmatism,Relativism, Irrationalism."Consequences

ofPragmatism.Minneapolis: U ofMinnesota ?, 1982. 160-75.San Juan,E., Jr.Racial Formations/Critical Transformations:Articulations of ower inEthnic and Racial Studies in theUnited States.Atlantic Highlands: Humanities, 1992.Sollors,Werner. "E Pluribus Unus." Unpublished essay.Winch, Peter. The Idea of Social Science and ItsRelation to hilosophy. London: Routledge, 1958.Wiredu, Kwasi. Philosophy and an African Culture. Cambridge:Cambridge UP, 1980.

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Identities in Dialogue