Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri in Arabs are democracy's new pioneers in The Guardian say that the revolts in Tunisa, Egypt and Libya:
have immediately performed a kind of ideological house-cleaning, sweeping away the racist conceptions of a clash of civilisations that consign Arab politics to the past. The multitudes in Tunis, Cairo and Benghazi shatter the political stereotypes that Arabs are constrained to the choice between secular dictatorships and fanatical theocracies, or that Muslims are somehow incapable of freedom and democracy....These Arab revolts ignited around the issue of unemployment, and at their centre have been highly educated youth with frustrated ambitions – a population that has much in common with protesting students in London and Rome. Although the primary demand throughout the Arab world focuses on the end to tyranny and authoritarian governments, behind this single cry stands a series of social demands about work and life not only to end dependency and poverty but to give power and autonomy to an intelligent, highly capable population.
the multitude is able to organise itself without a centre – that the imposition of a leader or being co-opted by a traditional organisation would undermine its power. The prevalence in the revolts of social network tools, such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, are symptoms, not causes, of this organisational structure. These are the modes of expression of an intelligent population capable of using the instruments at hand to organise autonomously.
Multiculturalism is back in the news. Once again it is under attack in spite of Australia being a country of immigration, and consequently a multicultural society. A public debate is forming.
What is being attacked is the idea of multiculturalism as a nation of many nations. The resulting metaphor was a mosaic, with the various migrant cultures representing small pieces that combined to form a larger whole. Thus we use the the word "hyphenates" to describe Australians who were Italian-Australian, Jewish-Australian, or Anglo-Australian--to express the idea of the idea of mosaics, mixed salads, and all those other terms.This has been used to develop multicultural policies involving the attribution of special rights to groups defined by their cultural, linguistic, religious, or ethnic identity, with a view to preserving the latter against the assimilationist impulses of majority groups.
It may be a good idea to reject this melting pot model of multiculturalism, as it implies enclaves and tolerance of a culture of introversion and violence (towards women, children, homosexuals, bisexuals, and transsexuals). It implies that citizens are no longer expected to mingle and mix and work together: rather, they should set up their own little private communities catering for their own, cultivating parochial identities and priorities – be they white middle class, or Muslim, or evangelical, or whatever.
What to replace it with? What is a better conception of multiculturalism in a globalised world?
We need one that recognizes we become Australian not through cultural assimilation or declarations of patriotic loyalty but, rather, through participation with others in the labour market, local schools, neighbourhood life, civil society associations, and local and national politics. When things go well, one becomes Australian through mixing and mingling and working and arguing with other Australians of diverse cultures.
When things don't then we have the conservative line of attack that holds multiculturalism a failure because Muslim immigrants are not integrating withe the host society.
A different conception is that Australian citizens must accept the basic principles of Australian society. These include the Constitution and the rule of law, parliamentary democracy, freedom of speech and religion, English as a national language, equality of the sexes and tolerance. The basic principles is given a liberal twist---equal rights, the rule of law, freedom of speech and representative democracy. So we have liberal multiculturalism.
In his Space and Politics blog Gastón Gordillo introduces the concept of resonance to make sense of what is happening in the streets of Cairo. He says:
What has coalesced as a powerful, unstoppable force on the streets of Egypt is resonance: the assertive collective empathy created by multitudes fighting for the control of space. Resonance is an intensely bodily, spatial, political affair, materialized in the masses of bodies coming together in the streets of Egyptian cities in the past thirteen days, clashing with the police, temporarily dispersed by teargas and bullets, and regrouping again like an relentless swarm to reclaim the streets, push the police back, and saturate space with a collective effervescence. Resonance is what gives life to this human rhizome and the source of its power.
Ideology, slogans, and speeches are all part of resonance, but at its most powerful moments resonance is sheer affect: bodies joining forces to control space and voicing their passions through openly gestural expressions (chants, screams, signs) and, as in Cairo, violent confrontations with armed bodies sent by the state. Resonance is collective empathy so overwhelming and bodily that it defies representation. What is most unfathomable about resonance is its power, a power that has fueled all the revolutions of human history.