Žižek on Multiculturalism,
Or Why Liberals Love a Good Tea Party
WILLIAM J. URBAN
NOTES
1 Cf. (Adams 2007: 69, 86) for a sample of the many statistical data Adams cites to support his championing of Canada’s domestic policies and its impact on the collective consciousness of Canadian self-identity. However, we find that he fails to extend his emphatic claim that ‘Canada is special’ (ibid, 48) as objectively having any real global influence. Thus, we argue that his overtly immodest tone underlying the entire book (perhaps best captured in its title, Unlikely Utopia: The Surprising Triumph of Canadian Multiculturalism) must necessarily stop at the Canadian border. Kymlicka also speaks in a similar optimistic vein of other Western democracies which are ‘successfully’ following what he calls a ‘multinational federalism,’ based on peace and democracy. (Kymlicka 2001: 269) As we hope to indicate, however, it is precisely this underlying, ultimately phantasmatic, logic of a ‘utopia at work’ in these cheerful ‘rainbow coalitions’ Žižek finds patently false. (Žižek 1997:47)
2 As Žižek points out, in quoting Dofman in the interview cited above, ‘America always behaves as though it were special’ and we argue that this perhaps has always been the deciding factor behind its world cultural dominance. This reading is consistent with other major theorists as well. Baudrillard, for example, in his America and elsewhere, correctly locates the (cultural) lag other countries have with respect to the US, since the latter has not ever concerned itself with questioning its own identity (repeatedly dubbed by Baudrillard a ‘weak value’), but only ever forged ahead with its destiny. (See, eg, Baudrillard 1998: 19, 49; 1988:41, 78, 98)
3 The inability to formulate this fundamental question results in the familiar (hysterical) protestation for the right to narrate one’s experience of victimization, a sentiment which underlies many of the essays found in Encountering the Other(s). Exemplary in this respect is the essay by Ross, who, after discussing Hegel’s master/slave dialectic, implores of us: ‘What restitution can we dream of for their injustices? What public standing can be granted private wounds? What hope do our institutions offer of granting private victims public standing?’ (Ross 1995: 22–3) As Žižek sadly notes, the ‘discourse of victimization is almost the predominant discourse today.’ (Žižek 2001c)
4 Kymlicka says much the same: ‘[T]he US is indeed a multination state, a federation of distinct nations. The US treats these groups as permanent and enduring, and as the subject of group rights.’ (Kymlicka 2001: 270) Of course, the important difference is that while Kymlicka’s analysis, consistent with much of the multiculturalist literature, begins with this result and treats it as a given, Žižek endeavors to uncover the logic of the historical processes that lies beneath such ‘empirical’ facts.
5 All quotes in this paper with italics represent the cited author’s original emphasis.
Lacanian-themed puzzles
