Anti‐Essentialism, Multiculturalism and the ‘Recognition’ of Religious Groups

It is only in the last few years that the discourse of multiculturalism has become respectable. Yet, initially seen as a progressive discourse, it is today already seen by many academic commentators as conservative, even reactionary. Arguments for political multiculturalism are directed against essentialist or monistic definitions of nationality, for example, definitions of Britishness which assume a cultural homogeneity, that there is a single way of being British. Multiculturalists have emphasised internal differentiation (relatively easy in the case of Britain which encompasses up to four national or semi-national components, England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) and fluidity, with definitions of national belonging being historical constructs and changing over time. In this way it has been possible to argue for the incorporation of immigrant groups into an ongoing Britishness and against those who prophesied ‘rivers of blood’ as the natives lashed out against the aliens perceived as threatening national integrity. In this political contest the ideas of essential unity, integrity, discreteness and fixity have been seen as reactionary, and internal differentiation, interaction and fluidity as progressive. Yet in the recent years that multiculturalism has come to be respectable, at least in terms of discourse, academic critics have attacked multiculturalism in very similar terms to how multiculturalism attacked nationalism or monoculturalism. The positing of minority or immigrant cultures, which need to be respected, defended, publicly supported and so on, is said to appeal to the view that cultures are discrete, frozen in time, impervious to external influences, homogeneous and without internal dissent; that people of certain family, ethnic or geographical origins are always to be defined by them