Multiculturalism and the Politics of Identity
Author(s): Joan W. Scott
Source: October, Vol. 61, The Identity in Question (Summer, 1992), pp. 12-19
Published by: The MIT Press
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Multiculturalism
and the Politicsof Identity*
JOAN W. SCOTT
If there were any doubt that the productionof knowledge is a political
enterprisethatinvolvesa contestamong conflicting interests,the ragingdebates
of the last few years should have dispelled them. What counts as knowledge?
Who gets to define what counts as knowledge?These are difficultproblems,
never easy to resolve,but it is the functionof teachersand scholarsto grapple
withthem.
Those who deny the existenceof these problemsand who would suppress
discussion of them are not withouttheir politics; they simplypromote their
orthodoxyin the name of an unquestioned and unquestionabletradition,uni-
versality,or [Link] attack challenges to their ideas as dangerous and
subversive,antitheticalto the academic [Link] offer themselvesas
apostles of timelesstruths,when in fact theyare enemies of change. The cry
that politicshas recentlyinvaded the university, importedby sixtiesradicals,is
an example of the defense of orthodoxy;it is itselfa politicalattemptto distract
attentionfromthe factthatthereare serious issues at stake and more than one
valid side to the storyin the currentdebates about knowledge.
What we are witnessingthese days is not simplya set of internaldebates
about what schools and universitiesshould teach and what students should
learn. Journalistsand politicianshave joined the frayand added a new dimen-
sion to it. There is much more at stake in their campaign against "political
correctness"than a concern with excessive moralism,affirmativeaction, and
freedomof speech in [Link],theentireenterpriseof theuniversity
has come under attack,and withit the aspect thatintellectualsmost value and
thatthe humanitiesmosttypicallyrepresent:a critical,skepticalapproach to all
that a societytakes most for granted.
* Other longer and somewhatdifferentversionsof this essay have appeared in Change,No-
vember/December1991, and in the BostonReview,March 1992.
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Multiculturalism
and thePoliticsofIdentity 13
The far-ranginginvestigationsof universitypractices-curricular change,
admissionsstandards,financialaid, fellowshipawards, disciplinarycodes, hiring
and tenure procedures, teaching loads, time spent on research, accreditation
standards, even, I would argue, the investigationof the misuse of overhead
funds-are all attemptsto delegitimizethe philosophicaland institutionalbases
fromwhich social and culturalcriticismhave traditionallycome. We are exper-
iencing another phase of the ongoing Reagan-Bush revolutionwhich, having
packed the courtsand privatizedthe economy,now seeks to neutralizethe space
of ideological and culturalnonconformity by discreditingit. This is the context
withinwhichdebates about politicalcorrectnessand multiculturalism have taken
shape.
"Political correctness"is the label that has been attached to any program
or position that attacksor calls into question the statusquo. Coined by the left
as an internalcriticismof moralizingdogmatisms,the term has been seized by
the rightand used to disqualifyall [Link] seems to be workingso
well as a formof intimidationthatithas become a themein the Bush presidential
campaign for 1992. Demands for change in the name of tolerance, fairness,
and justice are, under the "p.c." label, described as dangerous orthodoxies,
attempts to impose thought control on otherwisebenign individuals. In the
name of defending the individual's right to think and act as he pleases, the
conservativeideologistsprotectexistingstructuresand practicesfromall critical
scrutinyand even moderate attemptsat reform.
If "political correctness"is the label attached to criticalattitudesand be-
havior, "multiculturalism"is the program it is said to be attemptingto enact.
This projectof somehow recognizingthe demographicdiversitythathas become
characteristicof many colleges,universities,and urban schools has been reviled
by conservativesas a dangerous [Link] writerrefers to the "cult of
multiculturalism,"distinguishinga few reasonable proponents among a pre-
ponderance of [Link] suggeststhat multiculturalism's "Europhobia"
will undermine the unity and the common culture of the American nation.
Proponents insist,on the other hand, that multiculturalism will increase both
fairness(by representingthe range and richnessof America's differentethnic-
ities) and tolerance (by exposing studentsto multipleperspectiveson the mean-
ing of history). In this view, multiculturalismpluralizes the notion of an
American identityby insistingon attentionto African-Americans, Native Amer-
icans, and the like, but it leaves in place a unifiedconcept of identity.
It is this unified concept of identitythat informsthe debate on multicul-
[Link] it is the extreme polarizationof sides-for and against multicul-
turalism,liberal pluralism,or conservativeindividualism-that makes critical
reflectionon the termsof the debate so [Link] its difficulty, and fully
cognizantof the politicalrisksinvolved,it is such a criticalreflectionthat I want
to undertake.
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14 OCTOBER
Within the pluralistframeworkthat seeks to contain and resolve the de-
bate, identityis taken as the referentialsign of a fixedset of customs,practices,
and meanings,an enduringheritage,a readilyidentifiablesociologicalcategory,
a set of shared traitsand/or experiences. "Diversity"refersto a pluralityof
identities,and it is seen as a conditionof human existenceratherthan as the
effectof an enunciation of differencethat constituteshierarchiesand asym-
metries of power.' When diversityis seen as a condition of existence, the
questions become whetherand how much of it is useful to recognize; but the
stakes people have in the answers to those questions are obscured, as are the
historyand politicsof differenceand [Link] way to theorize
the historyand politicsof identityoutside the pluralistframework,it is difficult
to respond to the conservativeonslaught.
Somethingof thiscan be seen in the reportof the New York State Social
Studies Review and Development Committee,issued lastJune and called "One
Nation, Many Peoples: A Declarationof CulturalInterdependence."The report
is an impressivedocument frommany perspectives,and it makes a persuasive
case for a multiculturalcurriculum,arguing,among other things,that demo-
cratic participationis enhanced when studentsunderstandthat change occurs
because groups pursue theirintereststhroughcollectiveaction. Pride in one's
heritage is, the report suggests,an importantingredientin citizenship,partic-
ularlyfor those whose identitiesand viewpointshave been excluded or margin-
alized in accounts of [Link] the reportdoes not do is conceive
of differenceas in any way constitutive, and so it leaves itselfopen to a charge
delivered by Nathan Glazer (one of the dissentingmembersof the committee)
that ethnicitiesshould not be treated as monolithicand unchanging because
that ignores the very real historyof theirassimilationto "American culture."
Glazer's argument, that the report's "hypostatization"of identitiescreates a
dangerouslydivided reality,is eminentlypolitical;byassertingtheessentialunity
of the identityof "American,"it underplaysthe extent to which processes of
difference and discriminationhave structured(and continue to structure)
American life.
By looking only at the effectsof the enunciationof differenceand not at
the contestedprocess itself,both Glazer and the authorsof the reportnaturalize
identity,makingit a matterof biologyor historyor culture,an inescapable trait
thatcan mattermore or less, but is inherentlya part of one's being. The report
assumes thatpeople are discriminatedagainstbecausetheyare alreadydifferent
when, in fact, I would argue, it is the other way around: differenceand the
salience of differentidentitiesare produced by discrimination,a process that
1. On differenceas a process of enunciation,see Homi Bhabha, "The Commitmentto Theory,"
in ThirdCinemaReader,ed. J. Pines and P. Willemen(London: BritishFilm Institute,1989), pp. 111-
132, especiallyp. 125.
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and thePoliticsofIdentity
Multiculturalism 15
establishesthe superiorityor the typicality or the universalityof some in terms
or atypicalityor particularityof others.
of the inferiority
Two citationsseem to me to illustratethis point. One is fromStuart Hall,
whose theoreticalexplorationsprepare us for his insight:
The fact is "black" has never been just there either. It has always
been an unstable identity,psychically,culturally,and [Link],
too, is a narrative,a story,a [Link] constructed,told,
spoken, not simplyfound. People now speak of the society I come
from in totallyunrecognizable ways. Of course Jamaica is a black
society,they say. In realityit is a societyof black and brown people
who lived for three or four hundred years withoutever being able
to speak of themselvesas "black." Black is an identitywhich had to
be learned and could onlybe learned in a [Link] Jamaica
that moment is the 1970s.2
The second quote is fromsomeone whose insightwe mightattributeto "expe-
rience" (as long as we understood experience to be discursivelymediated). A
white middle-classstudentlivingin a Latino dormitoryat Stanfordtold a New
YorkTimesreporterwhat she had come to understand about her identity:
"SometimesI'd get confused,"she said because she never knewwhen
a simple comment she made would offendsomeone else. She finally
appreciated the differencebetweenherselfand the Hispanic students
when one of them asked her what it felt like to be an Anglo. "I'd
never head anyone use the word Anglo for me before.... Where I
came from no one was Anglo; everyonewas just Irish Catholic. But
after being [here] a while I realized that an Anglo can be an Anglo
only if there's someone who's not."3
Most discussions of multiculturalismavoid this kind of insightabout the
production of knowledge of identityand thereforeundercut theirmost radical
[Link] maybe preciselybecause theywanted to avoid appearing too radical
that the authors of the New York State report assumed that identitygroups
preexistedratherthan followedfromdiscrimination;it may also be thatto have
historicizedthe question of identitywould have antagonized a significantand
vociferous minorityconstituency,one invested in establishingits autonomous
and unified historicalexistence. (Support for this argument mightcome from
the curious absence of attentionto gender in the reportand fromthe commit-
tee's contortedapology about it at the end: "We were repeatedlycautioned to
2. Stuart Hall, "Miminal Selves," in Identity:
The Real Me, (London: ICA, 1987), p. 45.
3. Anthony de Palma, "Campus Ethnic DiversityBrings Separate Worlds," New YorkTimes,
May 18, 1991, p. 7.
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16 OCTOBER
avoid lettingissues related to sex-roledifferencescome to dominate the work
of [Link] were remindedthat,too often,when mattersof cultural,
ethnic,and language biases are addressed and attentionis called to the impor-
tance of sex-roledifferencesand sexism,the sexismquestion dominatesdiscus-
sion and action. Thus we treated sex-role groupings as contexts for the
developmentof culture-likeconsistencies"(draftversion,p. 68). The paragraph
goes on to acknowledgethe "double and even triple"burden carriedby women
in "low status" cultural groups (as if such an acknowledgmentin the report
could compensate for the exclusion of attentionto gender and sexualityin the
proposed curriculum).Whateverthe explanation-and I suspect many factors
were at work-the result leaves the discussionsafelywithina liberal pluralist
frameworkand makes eminentlyplausible the objection of another of the
dissenters on the committee,Arthur Schlesinger,Jr., that in the proposed
curriculumtherewas too much emphasison the "pluribus"and not enough on
the "unum."
The alternativestrategy-to historicizethe question of identity-is to
introducean analysisof its productionand thus an analysisof constructionsof
and conflictsabout power; itis also, of course,to call intoquestionthe autonomy
and stabilityof any particularidentityas it claims to define and interpreta
subject'[Link] enough, giventhechargesof incoherenceand anarchy
made against multiculturalapproaches, historicizingthe question of identity
also offersthe possibilityof a more unifiedviewthanthatof theliberalpluralists.
Here is S. P. Mohantytakingup an argumentmade by Cornel West against a
notion of separate canons, of new canons entirelyreplacingold:
How do we negotiatebetween my historyand yours?How would it
be possible for us to recover our commonality,not the ambiguous
imperial-humanistmythof our shared human attributes,which are
supposed to distinguishus fromanimals,but, more significantly, the
imbricationof our various pasts and presents,the ineluctablerela-
tionships of shared and contested meanings, values, and material
our lived
resources?It is necessaryto assertour dense particularities,
and imagined differences;but could we affordto leave untheorized
the question of how our differencesare intertwinedand, indeed,
hierarchicallyorganized? Could we, in other words, affordto have
entirelydifferenthistories,to see ourselves as living-and having
lived-in entirelyheterogeneousand discretespaces?4
His answer is obviouslyno. Instead he calls foran alternativeto pluralism
that would make differenceand conflictthe centerof a history"we" all share.
4. S. P. Mohanty,"Us and Them: On the PhilosophicalBases of PoliticalCriticism,"YaleJournal
ofCriticism2 (Spring 1989), p. 13.
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Multiculturalism
and thePoliticsofIdentity 17
If Mohanty's solution seems obvious to many of us, we are in a clear
minority,as the struggle over multiculturalismunfolds in the context of a
prevailingideology of [Link] the language of the con-
servatives'critique of multiculturalism, of the liberal universities'accommoda-
tion to its newly diverse populations, and of the identitypoliticsof minority
groups. In the 1960s and '70s proponents of affirmativeaction and identity
politicstook economic, political,and social structuresfor granted in theiranal-
yses (one could invoke "experience," for example, and mean somethinghistor-
ically,culturally,and discursivelyproduced, as feministsdid in consciousness-
raisingsessions to great politicaleffect);but in the 1980s and '90s the ideological
pendulum has swung back to individualism(and "experience" now signifiesa
prediscursive,direct,and unmediated apprehension of social truth).The courts
are reversingaffirmativeaction decisions; the presidentvetoes civil rightsleg-
islation;and the historyof discriminationas evidentin statisticsis being denied.
All this is being done in the name ofjustice for individuals,who are conceived
to be entirelyequal units,livingin a culturaland historicalvacuum.
The logic of individualismhas structuredthe approach to multiculturalism
in [Link] call for toleranceof differenceis framedin termsof respect
for individual characteristicsand attitudes; group differencesare conceived
categoricallyand not relationally,as distinctentitiesratherthan interconnected
structuresor systemscreated throughrepeated processes of the enunciationof
[Link] hired psychologicalconsultingfirmsto hold
diversityworkshopswhichteach thatconflictresolutionis a negotationbetween
[Link] thatpunish "hate-speech"justifypro-
hibitionsin termsof the protectionof individualsfromabuse by other individ-
uals, not in termsof the protectionof membersof historicallymistreatedgroups
fromdiscrimination,nor in termsof the wayslanguage is used to constructand
reproduce asymmetriesof power. The language of protection,moreover, is
conceptualized in termsof victimization;the way to make a claim or to justify
one's protestagainst perceived mistreatment these days is to take on the mantle
of the victim.(The so-called Men's Movementis the latestcomer to thisscene.)
Everyone--whether an insulted minorityor the perpetratorof the insult who
feels he is being unjustlyaccused-now claims to be an equal victimbefore the
law. Here we have not onlyan extremeformof individualizing,but a conception
of individuals withoutagency.
There is nothingwrong,on the face of it,withteachingindividualsabout
how to behave decentlyin relationto othersand about how to empathize with
each other's pain. The problem is that difficultanalyses of how historyand
social standing,privilege,and subordinationare involvedin personal behavior
entirelydrop out. Chandra Mohantyputs it thisway:
There has been an erosion of the politicsof collectivitythroughthe
reformulationof race and differencein individualisticterms. The
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18 OCTOBER
1960s and '70s slogan "the personal is political"has been recrafted
in the 1980s as "the politicalis personal." In other words,all politics
is collapsed into the personal,and questionsof individualbehaviors,
attitudes,and life-stylesstand in for politicalanalysisof the social.
Individual politicalstrugglesare seen as the only relevantand legit-
imate formof politicalstruggle.5
Paradoxically,individualsthen generalize their perceptionsand claim to
speak for a whole group, but the groups are also conceived as unitaryand
autonomous. This individualizing,personalizingconception has also been be-
hind some of the recentidentitypoliticsof minorities;indeed it gave rise to the
intolerant,doctrinairebehavior thatwas dubbed, initiallyby its internalcritics,
"politicalcorrectness."
It is particularlyin the notionof "experience"thatone sees thisoperating.
In much currentusage of "experience,"referencesto structureand historyare
implied but not made explicit; instead, personal testimonyof oppression re-
places analysis,and this testimonycomes to stand for the experience of the
whole group. The factof belonging to an identitygroup is taken as authority
enough for one's speech; the directexperience of a group or culture-that is,
membershipin it-becomes the only testof true knowledge.
The exclusionaryimplicationsof this are twofold: all those not of the
group are denied even intellectualaccess to it,and thosewithinthe group whose
experiences or interpretations do not conformto the establishedtermsof iden-
titymust either suppress theirviewsor drop out. An appeal to "experience"of
this kind foreclosesdiscussion and criticismand turns politicsinto a policing
operation: the borders of identityare patrolledforsignsof nonconformity; the
testof membershipin a group becomes less one's willingnessto endorse certain
principlesand engage in specificpoliticalactions,less one's positioningin specific
relationshipsof power, than one's abilityto use the prescribedlanguages that
are taken as signs that one is inherently"of" the group. That all of this isn't
recognized as a highly political process that produces identitiesis troubling
indeed, especially because it so closely mimics the politics of the powerful,
naturalizingand deeming as discernablyobjective facts the prerequisitesfor
inclusionin any group.
Indeed, I would argue more generallythat separatism,with its strong
insistenceon an exclusive relationshipbetween group identityand access to
specialized knowledge (the argumentthat only women can teach women's lit-
erature or only African-Americanscan teach African-Americanhistory,for
example), is a simultaneousrefusaland imitationof the powerfulin the present
5. Chandra Talpade Mohanty,"On Race and Voice: Challenges for Liberal Education in the
1990s," CulturalCritique14 (Winter 1989-90), p. 204.
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and thePoliticsofIdentity
Multiculturalism 19
ideological context. At least in universities,the relationshipbetween identity-
group membershipand access to specialized knowledge has been framed as an
objection to the controlby the disciplinesof the termsthatestablishwhatcounts
as (important,mainstream,useful, collective) knowledge and what does not.
This has had an enormouslyimportantcriticalimpact,exposing the exclusions
that have structuredclaims to universal or comprehensiveknowledge. When
one asks not only where the women or African-Americansare in the history
curriculum (for example), but why they have been left out and what are the
effectsof theirexclusion,one exposes the process by which differenceis enun-
ciated. But one of the complicated and contradictoryeffectsof the implemen-
tation of programs in women's studies, African-Americanstudies, Chicano
studies, and now gay and lesbian studies is to totalize the identitythat is the
object of study,reiteratingits binary opposition as minority(or subaltern) in
relation to whateveris taken as majorityor dominant.
The alternative,to treatidentityas the unstable,never-securedeffectof a
process of enunciation of cultural difference,is often dismissed as impractical
for pedagogy and political [Link], as Denise Riley has persuasively
argued, except for the "catastrophicloss of grace in the wording,"it makes far
more sense for a feministpolitics to have Sojourner Truth ask "Ain't I a
fluctuatingidentity?"and therebyrecognize both the dangers and benefitsof
the collectiveconsolidationimplied in the category"women."6In a similarway,
it makes more sense to teach our studentsand tell ourselves that identitiesare
historicallyconferred,thatthisconferralis ambiguous (thoughitworksprecisely
and necessarilyby imposinga false clarity),that subjectsare produced through
multiple identifications,some of which become politicallysalient for a time in
certain contexts,and that the project of historyis not to reifyidentitybut to
understand its production as an ongoing process of differentiation, relentless
in its repetition,but also-and this seems to me the importantpolitical point
-subject to redefinition,resistance,and change. Such an outlook might also
call fora more complicatedstrategythan organizingpoliticalcampaigns around
identitygroups (conceived in pluralistterms),and that,in the currentcontext
in thiscountryat least, mightbe all to the good.
6. Denise Riley,"AmI ThatName?"Feminism and theCategory of"Women" in History(Minneapolis:
Universityof Minnesota Press, 1988), p. 1. An example of the literalnessof the worst kind of
politicalcorrectnesscan be found in Tania Modleski,FeminismWithoutWomen:Cultureand Criticism
in a "Postfeminist"
Age (New York: Routledge, 1991). ModleskideliberatelymisreadsRiley'sreference
to Sojourner Truth as ahistorical,antiwoman,and certainlyracist,therebycompletelymissingRiley's
accomplishmentfor feminism,which is to historicize,not repudiate, the category"women."
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