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Journal of Political Ideologies (1996), 1(1), 53-73

Pluralism, multiculturalism and the

nation-state: rethinking the

connections

WILLIAM E. CONNOLLY

Department of Political Science, John Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA

Pluralism and the nation-state

Pluralism, in politics, is the interaction of diverse, overlapping constituencies

who divide and combine in shifting constellations. But traditional pluralism is

confined by the very nationalism its defenders often purport to transcend. And

multiculturalism? Is it post-nationalistic? Or does it refer to quasi-national

enclaves, each defined by a criterion of common identification that overwhelms

all others?

My sense is that the introduction of the term 'multiculturalism' into the

pluralist conversation signifies something, not entirely new, but distinctive

enough to deserve special attention. Multiculturalism, as a series of ideas in

motion, speaks to a distinctive time when declining empires find former colonial

peoples migrating to the imperial centers; when the globalization of economic

life enables affluent workers to cross national boundaries at a faster rate and

propels large numbers of 'guest' workers into alien states; when television and

other electronic media draw diverse cultures into closer proximity; when the

acceleration of speed in practices of communication, war, fashion, and political

mobilization makes the contingent and constructed character of what we are a

little more palpable.

Multiculturalism calls into question traditional pluralist presumptions about

territory and temporality. But it may do so in ways that sow confusion in

multicultural movements themselves. For example, the enclave version of

multiculturalism is in tension with this list of conditions and impulses out of

which the general movement has sprung. Moreover, this same set of conditions

foster fundamentalist reactions to the disturbing experience of contingency in

culture. If fundamentalism is any movement that insists upon the certainty and

exclusionary character of its own identity, it emerges above all as a reaction

*An earlier version of this paper was given at the Bohen Foundation Sympo sium on Cultural Diversity, New Y ork

City, February, 1994. I am indebted to the participants in this sym posium, and m ost particularly to Etienne B alibar

and Tom Keenan, for their comments.

1356-9 317/96 /01005 3-21 1996 Journals Oxford Ltd

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PLURALISM, MULTICULTURALISM AND THE NATION-STATE

I would never admit that men form a society simply by recognizing the same leader and

obeying the same laws; only when certain men consider a great many questions from the

same point of view and have the same opinions on a great many subjects and when the

same events give rise to like thoughts and impressions is there a society . . . Anyone taking

the matter up from that angle ..., will discover that the inhabitants, though divided under

twenty four distinct sovereign authorities, nevertheless constitute a single nation.

4

There is an innumerable multitude of sects in the United States . . . Each sect worships God

in its own fashion, but all preach the same morality in the name of God . . . America is still

the place where the Christian religion has kept the greatest real power over men's souls;

and nothing better demonstrates how useful and natural it is to man, since the country

where it now has widest sway is both the most enlightened and the freest.

5

Tocqueville identifies a set of correspondences between Christianity, morality,

comm on m ores, secular reason, a nation and the political imagination. 'Am erica'

territorializes this code. Anything that breaks the code must be forsaken or

excluded, not because Tocqueville himself entirely endorses each element,

though he does concur in most, but because once a nation identifies its 'great

social principles', it must introduce them everywhere. For only when 'a great

many questions . . . give rise to like thoughts and impressions is there a soc iety'.

This American civi-national-territorial complex, in turn, spawns violence

against whomever or whatever breaks its code. Tocqueville, unlike many who

reiterate his model, acknowledges this. The 'Indian', for example, consisting of

millions of non-Christian peoples who preceded European 'settlers', must be

sacrificed. They lack the prerequisites for participation in the American nation.

That is: they lack agri-culture, beingin Tocqueville's eyesa 'nomadic',

wandering people; they lack Christianity; they, therefore have culture but lack

'civilization', which is 'the result of prolonged social activity taking place on the

same spot'. Regretfully, Tocqueville accepts the decimation of the Indian, the

sacrifice of millions of lives to the consolidation of the American nation. It is

because the 'Ind ians' traversed the land but did not occupy it, displayed religious

faith but lacked Christian monotheism, that one could 'properly call North

America', before the Europeans, 'an empty continent, a deserted land waiting for

inhabitants'.

6

The American holocaust is an unfortunate necessity, grounded in the onto-

civilizational conditions of a democratic nation. It is not exactly immoral for this

same reason. This combination places Tocqueville, the stolid moralist and

devotee of a Christian God, in an uncomfortable bind. But what impels the

combination? Tocqueville is driven to it by his implicit insistence, first, that th e

civilizational conditions of morality must not themselves contain elements of

immorality and,

second

that a democratic state must be grounded in a national

culture.

Acknowledgement of a strain of immorality within morality would, he

fears,

shatter the fragile crystal of morality itself. And pluralization of the

Christian, Angloid nation would defeat the political possibility of democratic

action in concert on the same territory. The price Tocqueville pays to secure the

appearance of purity in morality and the necessity of nationality to a democratic

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W. E. CONNOLLY

civilization is the demoralization of systematic Euro-American violence against

Amerindian peoples who preceded them. The Amerindian peoples pay a higher

price.

The Indian, then, is both the first casualty of the Tocqueville/American/

territorial imperative and a figure for a series of other others defined, demoral-

ized and degraded in turn by it. A reading of Tocqueville on women, blacks

(even though he opposes slavery), atheism, criminality and non-Christian reli-

gions would specify a set of others sacrificed in turn to the civi-national-

territorial complex, though most of these latter are never attacked so thoroughly

as the first American other. The 'atheist', for instance, is figured as an internal

reflex of the 'Ind ian '. His lack of Christian faith m akes him am oral and nomadic.

The nomadism of the atheist takes the form of selfishness, restlessness, materi-

alism, and unreliability. Tocqueville thereby refers with approval to American

unwillingness to elect an avowed atheist to public office. And things have not

changed on that front since Tocqueville wrote.

While Tocqueville provides important leads for elaborating a model of

pluralism appropriate to the contemporary age, his national model of pluralism

must be revised and reworked substantially today. It was ethically unsuitable for

the world Tocqueville visited, let alone for the mobile, globalizing, multicultural

worlds we now inhabit. Its demands for a dense code of territorial universals

guarantees the continuous production of a series of domestic others (those w ithin

who deviate from one or another item in the core code), foreign others (those

outside whose existence threatens the self-confidence of the domestic code), and

interior others (those aspects of any self or group that break the demands of the

code). These others pose threats to the Tocquev illian/Am erican code of national-

ity even when they do not pose a military threat to the state or break its laws

against violent crime or subvert its practices of governance by democratic

election. They disturb the purity of the nation by being.

Todayunder new conditions of state and interstate politics unimaginable to

Tocquevillethe Tocquevillian legacy of national pluralism splits into two

contending visions. On one side are movements to denationalize pluralism,

drawing some sustenance from Tocqueville's appreciation of diversity in politics

and the positive role he assigns 'democratic agitation' in giving life to demo-

cratic politics. On the other is the drive to

depluralize the nation

organized

around invocations of a (now 'Judeo-Christian') God as the national basis of

morality, a Euro-centric cultural imagination, territorial borders closed to multi-

cultural immigration, and cultural war against every constituency that resists this

set of presumptions.

William Bennett, the former philosophy professor, Reagan Secretary of

Education, Drug Czar under Bush, and current Republican public philosopher,

proclaims the second side of the Tocquevillian legacy. Consider this invocation:

Th e first question . . . is: W hy did the founders see a conne ction betwe en religious v alues

and political liberty? Alexis de Tocqueville, the French statesman, historian, and author of

the classic

Democracy in America,

points to an anwer. 'Liberty regards religion . . . as the

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safeguard of morality, and morality as the best security of law and the surest pledge of the

duration of fr e e d o m . . . ' Am ericans today agree with Tocquevi l le. W e are among the most

religious people in the world (a City University of New York study done in 1991 revealed

that nearly 90 of the Am erican people identify them selves religiously as Christians or

Jews, while only 7.5 claim no religion).

7

Let us call the Bennett model the common sense of a nation of regular

individuals. Whenever Bennett invokes 'the American people', 'our culture',

'our children', 'the Judeo-Christian tradition', 'family values', or 'common

sense', he summons the imagination of a country in which each regular

individual is a microcosm of the nation and the nation is the macrocosm of the

regular individual. The church, the nuclear family, the elementary school, the

media and the university are institutions that must maintain these two primal

units of culture as reflections of each other. The endlessly reiterated phrase 'the

American people' captures this combination precisely: It at once speaks to a

widespread yearning for identity between individual and nation and conveys the

sense of a diverse set of constituencies, perhaps even a majority, falling below

this spirituality. It sustains the necessity of an ethnic, religious, linguistic center

in a democratic culture rapidly becoming one of multifarious minorities.

8

'The

American people' is exactly that ghostly spirit that necessitates 'The Fight for

Our Culture and Our Children'.

What drug users, drug dealers, inner city residents, non-European immigrants,

state bureaucrats, homosexuals, liberal church leaders, secularists, atheists,

liberal arts academics and liberal journalists share, according to Bennett's model

of the nation, is that each constituency contains a large number of individuals

who deviate variously as individuals from the spirituality of national individual-

ism. For every defection from the nation is by definition a product of individual

will:

this

individualism is the fundamental faith of the nation and a sign that

marks you as deviant if you defect from it.

Bennett know that this vision of a nation can only be pursued through

'cultural war' under contemporary conditions of life. His 'war on drugs' was one

operation in a series of militant campaigns in religion, education, media

reporting, public patriotism, and electoral politics. I concur with Bennett in one

respect. A cultural war to (re)nationalize the state is an unnecessary act of

cultural aggression against deviants from this imagination only if the Toc-

quevilleian model of a democratic nation itself is significantly exaggerated.

Is it possible to imagine a multicultural pluralism where the center itself is

more pluralized? To imagine, for instance, multicultural differences and inter-

dependencies across several overlapping dimensions, where no single source of

morality inspires everyone and yet where the possibility of significant demo-

cratic collaboration across multiple lines is very much alive? Is it possible to

imagine a multicultural regime in which a floating majority, if and when it

exists, becomes less anxious to fundamentalize what it is?

Consider a rhizomatic model at odds with the Tocquevillian image of

arboreal/national pluralism:

A rhizome as subterranean stem is absolutely different from roots and radicles. Bulbs and

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tubers are r h iz o m e s . . . A rhizome ceaselessly establ ishes connections between semiot ic

chains, organizations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences and social

struggles. A semiotic chain is like a tuber agglomerating very diverse acts, not only

linguistic but also perceptive, mim etic, gestural and cognitive . . . To be rhizomorph ous is

to produce stems and filaments that seem to be roots, or better yet connect with them by

penetrating the trunk, but put them to strange new uses . . . We re tired of trees. They ve

made us suffer too much ... Eve ry rhizom e conta ins lines of segm entarity according to

which it is territorialized, organized, signified, attributed, etc., as well as lines of deterrito-

rialization down which it constantly flees.

9

The rhizome, first, brings out how national portraits of pluralism are rooted in

a metaphor they have neither interrogated closely nor compared to other

possibilities. Second, it shows how the demand for a hard core (a national

conception of civilization, an insistence upon mono-theism, or, its twin, mono-

secular reason) can itself produce irreconcilable conflicts, particularly when it

encounters contending forms of dogmatism posing exclusionary demands on the

same ground. That is, the rhizome calls attention to how arboreal regimes

themselves foster the very forces of fragmentation and suffering they purport to

be the remedy against. Third, it attends at once to the indispensability and

problematical character of boundaries, encouraging us to ask whether it is

possible to prize the indispensability of boundaries to social life while resisting

overdetermined drives to

overcode

a particular set; whether, say, the boundaries

of a state must correspond to those of a nation, both of these to the final site of

citizen political allegiance, and all three of those to the parameters of a

democratic ethos. Fourth, it calls into question the arboreal assumption that

political lines of connection and collaboration must rest upon a single cultural

trunk; it does so by suggesting how possible lines of political connectionflow

in multiple directions when the relevant parties are not so deeply rooted that they

are unable to move . The contemporary imagination of 'difference' is so domi-

nated by the idea of identities with deep roots that counter examples posed to

debunk the rhizomatic imagination typically invoke deviant groups with deep,

exclusionary roots of their own which already break with the rhizomatic

imagination: fundamentalists, fascists, skinheads, citizen's militia, etc. That is,

the typical 'counter-examples' to the necessity of deep national roots are

themselves extreme embodiments of that quest; the exemplars often express

radical opposition to the state in the name of extreme devotion to the nation.

Finally, the rhizom e calls attention to the relation between 'deterritorialization '

and freedom, attending to the element of freedom in those energies of deterrito-

rialization that open up new lines of pluralization.

Nonetheless, the rhizome is not by itself a sufficient alternative to the model

of a nation. What if one type of grass, say pampas grass, chokes out another

type,

say European Beach grass? How could diverse grasses, now placed on a

human register, foster multiple lines of intersection within a general ethos of

forbearance and generosity? And what are the multiple grounds (or, better yet,

sources)

of such an ethos, once the Tocquevillian onto-national ground has lost

its sacred standing as the singular source? Perhaps the possibility of a rhizomatic

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pluralism arises initially out of a historical modus vivendi between multiple

constituencies thrown together on the same territory, a

modus vivendi

in which

each initially locates within its own traditions and traces of the other in itself a

set of moral and prudential limits to the domination or assimilation of others. If

and when such a condition becomes actualized the possibility increases of

several constituencies

then

becoming inspired to

work on themselves

to cultivate

a positive ethos of forbearance and generosity between multiple constituencies.

10

No singular, universally authoritative source of morality guarantees such an

outcome; its contingent historical possibility may indeed depend upon a

significant set of constituencies affirming the incorrigiblefragility of ethics and

the

contestable

character of every traditional source of ethical restraint and

generosity. In such a context numerous constituencies would subdue reciprocal

and competitive drives to sink ever deeper roots, enabling several to appreciate

more robustly and comparatively the contingent, relational, and contested

character of what they are. Each would link resistance against its own tendencies

to sink the roots of exclusionary identity so deeply, first, to the imperative to stop

the flow of violence against other constituencies, second, to release selective

lines of collaboration with them, and third, to open up previously unforeseen

possibilities of freedom for itself to become other than it is. Several constituen-

cies could draw such self-conceptions into a general ethos of forbearance and

critical responsiveness to diverse cultural formations. Such a general ethos must

flow through a multi-cultural complex if diversity is to be cherished rather than

simply encountered. It need not flow from a single tap root (say, Christianity or

its modern, neo-secular offspring, Kantianism). Rather, it emerges best from

numerous sources. Such ethical intersections are not Tocquevillian in shape; they

resist the violent demoralization of violence upon which T-morality is grounded.

We shall return to these issues after engaging multiculturalism.

Multiculturalism

Is the multicultural imagination arboreal/moralistic or rhizomatic/ethical? It is

too soon to tell. But it may be possible to detect elements of both contending

within the multicultural imagination. When oppressed nationalities in Iraq (the

Kurds), Ireland (northern Catholics), Bosnia (the Muslim minority), Canada (the

Quebecois and aboriginal peoples), the lands occupied by Israel (the Palestini-

ans) demand recognition, they often demand territorial autonomy to organize

their national existence. Often they want to turn a putative nation into a

nation-state. The case on behalf of such a demand is that the condition of each

people reflects a history of oppression from those who dominate the territories

in question. The primary reservation against it is that each of these constituencies

itself harbors minorities on the same territory who may well be oppressed in

turn. There are times and places where the reservation must be overridden by

concern to rectify the historical effects of oppression.

But one dilemma of the late-modern time is that there is not enough ground

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for every 'people' to have its own national territory. The most fundamental

objection, not to the state but to the nation-state, is this: it is no longer a

universalizeable form, if it ever was. For every 'people' to 'own' a land, and

then for every landed, nationalized people to build a state, you would have to

erect multi-level garages on the face of the earth. Stacking territories so there

would be enough bounded land for each people. Many would not get much sun.

Then you would have to organize massive migrations, drawing each dispersed

people to the place assigned for it. Even hybrids, of innumerable sorts and

varieties, would require garage space. And these multifarious migrations would

then have to be ratified by prohibitions against intermarriage, travel, economic

intersection, so that the forces of hybridization and dispersion would become so

powerful all over again.

The nation-state is not a universalizeable form. This simple fact, comprising

most great theories of democratic politics in the 'West', either makes some form

of multiculturalism an ethical necessity within territorites or sets up a future

pattern of violent drives to nation-statism that make the American holocaust

against the Indian but an early shot in an endless series of civil wars.

We need models of multiculturalism that do not eternalize the wish either to

universalize the nation-state or to multiply something like minor nation-states

within large territorial states. Some strains within contemporary feminism and a

major current within gay/lesbian rights movements provide valuable pointers

here.Many in contemporary gay/lesbian political movements, for instance, press

against the abjectification of minority sexualities imposed by the naturalization

of heterosexuality in favor of a positive pluralization of sexual/gender identities

across the same territory.

11

The production of such a plurality, however, requires

modifications in the relational self-identities of straights, impelling many to

come to terms more closely with the constructed, relational character of

heterosexuality. This pressure upon the self-identities of established constituen-

cies explains the historical fact that every drive to pluralize identities in the

domains of sexuality, gender, religion, language, and nationality is accompanied

by the corollary temptation by dominant identities to fundamentalize what they

are.

For, again, the effort to pluralize a historical pattern of being in any domain

also presses dominant constituencies in that domain to revise the terms of their

own self-recognition.

It is not too difficult to see how such a positive model of pluralization could

be adjusted to inform relations within and between diverse races, religions,

genders, ethnicities and rationalities traversing the same territory. For example,

if and when a minor 'nationality' (the term becomes extremely porous in this

context) within the American state (say, Amerindian, Afro-American, Japanese,

Jewish, or Irish) presents itself as a minority ethnic group, the pluralizing effect

of this presentation depends significantly upon acceptance of such a designation

of

itself

'by a previously unmarked, Angloid 'nationality'. For the first presen-

tation to proceed far, the latter must no longer insist that the (Christian) religion

or its Kantian offshoot, the English language, and the texts it accepts as

canonical provide the universal standard to which all others must be assimilated.

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This shift in the self-recognition of a dominant constituency works best if it

acknowledges the shifting and historically contingent character of, say, the

sensualities, language, faith, and canonical texts that have inspired it the most.

The long term result of such a series of shifts in several domains would be the

historical transition of America from a majority nation presiding over num erous

minorities in a democratic state to a democratic state of multiple minorities

contend ing and collaborating with a general ethos of forbearance and critical

responsiveness.

Such a shift has today become the best hope for democracy in

a world of states with porous territorial boundaries. For under contemporary

conditions of life, traditional gender, racial, religious and national constituencies

can only retain their standing as the official embodiments of 'the American

people' by waging cultural war against a host of 'minority' constituencies.

Today, the major historical alternatives are reduced to the national fundamental-

ization of democratic politics or the pluralization of democratic states along

multiple dimensions.

Multiculturalism enters the picture in this context of multifarious struggles

between the politics of fundamentalization and the politics of pluralization. It

does not, however, merely pose a challenge to national models of state politics

and arboreal models of national pluralism. // also embodies within itself a

quarrel between the national protection of diverse cultural minorities on the

same territory and the pluralization of multiple possibilities of being within and

across states.

Let's examine how one convert to multiculturalism responds to these issues.

Multiculturalism, Charles Taylor says, is founded on the idea that 'the withhold-

ing of recognition can be a form of oppression'.

12

Yes. But what form does

affirmative recognition assume? Rousseau, Taylor says, gave this question its

modern form, helping to define the form the quest for recognition would hitherto

assume. But Rousseau's model does not quite fit the demands of a multicultural

society. He demands close unity of purpose (on the same territory) so that when

one obeys the public will one is also obeyingoneself. Equal recognition breaks

with the model of honor in which the recognition of some always involved the

debasement or obscurity of others; it involves each recogn izing others to be w hat

everyone is fundamentally.

The Rousseauian model of national homogeneity thus creates a 'very small'

margin for difference. But Taylor does not quite concede how much the

Rousseauian model of equal recognition itself contributes to this result. It seems

to me, though, that the conjunction of unity and 'authentic' recognition (Taylor's

term) in Rousseau does not simply signal a shift from unequal recognition (the

old model of honor) to a model of equal recognition, with the latter then being

compromised by a demand for social unity that Rousseau appends to it. Rather,

the Rousseauian ideal signals a shift from one model of unequal recognition

to another disguised model of inequality in a homogeneous culture. The

Rousseauian model of recognition in a homogeneous community rests, for

instance, on confinement of women to the household so that each family will

speak in the public realm with one voice. But Rousseau does not (usually)

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interpret this to be an unfortunate injustice necessary to the unity of the nation.

The arbitrariness of subordination is masked by asserting that this status

corresponds to the authentic nature of wom en. Similar points could be m ade with

respect to civil religion, the cultural model of chastity, and so on. In each case

the demand to nationalize a populace itself produces a series of others on the

same territory to be corrected, improved, subordinated, punished or expelled. If

Taylor goes all the way with the 'Rousseauian' logic of recognition in a

homogeneous community he undercuts his commitment to multiculturalism; if

he breaks with 'Rousseau' he undercuts his corollary drive to vindicate intrinsic

identities within authentic communities. Taylor responds to this dilemma with a

compromise formation, an enclave-tnulticulturalism within the territorial state

that speaks only to a couple of the pressing issues of diversification today.

Taylor's two prime examples of constituencies who must be recognized in

Canada today, the Quebecois and aboriginal peoples, are territorially encased.

This territorialization makes it possible to dream of each becoming a community

of equals (a quasi-nation) within a larger, heterogeneous state. But this model of

multiculturalism simply does not fit a lot of cases (e.g. women, gays, lesbians,

atheists, several racial, religious and ethnic minorities)

dispersed across the

space of a territorial state.

Taylor's focus on territorial constituencies thus

expresses a residual commitment to the Rousseauian model of recognition.

Taylor considers two models of liberalism, the first of which he finds to be

'guilty as charged' in its blindness to difference. The first model, finding

differences in conceptions of the good life within any society to be unamenable

to rational resolution, commits itself to a procedural republic in which the state

treats everyone fairly while remaining 'neutral' with respect to alternative

conceptions of the good life. But, this conception first pretends that such

neutrality is possible and then condemns the Quebecois for breaking the code of

neutrality in its laws about language use. 'Difference blind' liberalism is

unconsciously rude to minority cultures.

Taylor thinks a second version of liberalism comes closest to giving priority

to certain collective goals while respecting cultural diversity. On this (quasi-

Tocquevillian) model, a society can be committed to a particular conception of

the good life 'without this being seen as a depreciation of those who do not

personally share the definition'.

13

This is accomplished by giving certain rights

to all members as individuals, including rights to free speech, freedom of

religion, and trial by jury, while promoting the prerogatives of a territorially

contiguous culture whose existence would be jeopardized without those prerog-

atives.

Taylor thus seeks to protect the Quebecois and aboriginal peoples while

giving primacy to certain collective goals in Canada as a whole. The 'Canadian

problem', as he recognizes it,

arises from the fact that there aresubstantial numbers ofpeoplewho arecitizens andalso

belong to the culture that calls into question our philosophical boundaries. The challenge

is to deal with their sense of marginalization without compromising our basic political

principles.

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But the generosity of this combination depends upon what is included within

'our philosophical boundaries' and what 'compromising' them involves. Taylor

is hesitant here. Included in 'our boundaries' are those fundamental rights

already noted. But what else? We may detect other elements in the 'our' by

attending to Taylor's most generous formulation of the 'favorable presumptions'

'we '

offer minority cultures within 'our' civilization. Here is Taylor's presump-

tion, presented, fairly enough, as an 'act of faith'.

As a presumption, the claim is that all human cultures that have animated whole cultures

over some considerable stretch of time have something important to say to all huma n

beings ...

W hat has to happen is what Gadam er has called a ' fusion of horiz on s' . W e learn

to move in a broader horizon, within which what we have formerly taken for granted as the

background to valuation can be situated as one possibili ty alongside the different back-

ground of formerly unfamiliar cultures.

15

Taylor contends that through the fusion of horizons you cultivate a capacity for

appreciation and judg ment that exceeds the categories with which either side

began. For instance, the Quebecois demand to secure their culture through

self-protective legislation will not now be seen as such a deep affront to

individual rights; and the rights of dissenting minorities within Quebec will be

given procedural protection. This discussion is important, both in its conception

of how ethical judgment proceeds at its best and in the preliminary presumption

with which it starts. But what limits are set by Taylor on the effects the fusion

of horizons might have on constituencies? Could it render 'whole cultures' more

alert to the contingent character of what they are and more responsive to the

essentially contestable character of presumptions built into their respective

identities?

16

Taylor stops fusing horizons just when these questions becom e most

pertinent.

To summarize, the following presumptions in Taylor's multiculturalism

seem to me to be problematical. First, by focussing attention on territorially

based minorities ('whole cultures') he deflects attention from numerous

minority constituencies dispersed across the territories in question. Second, by

de-emphasizing the extent to which the contemporary condition of aboriginal

peoples results from the history of Christian/secular/territorial conquest thought

by its (Tocquevillian/American) agents to be necessary to civilization itself she

deflects attention from persistent features within Christian/secular moralities that

foster the evils to be redressed. Third, by insisting that a culture must have been

around for a considerable 'stretch of time' before it receives this presumption of

faith, he smuggles a teleological ontology into the prose of multiculturalism and

deflates the politics of pluralization by which a

new

constituency is formed out

of the injuries and identifications imposed upon it. Fourth, by modestly and

hesitantly adjusting the Rousseauian model of reciprocal recognition, he fails to

engage the possibility that the dignified recognition by dominant constituencies

of a new identity also propels them to acknowledge profound elements of

difference and contingency in themselves. Fifth, by gesturing toward the (Chris-

tian) anchor of morality in the commands or love of a god Taylor may give too

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W. E. CONNOLLY

much privilege to the very ground of morality that most needs to be

contested

and

pluralized

in a multicultural world.

Toward a positive vision of pluralism

Secularism, presenting itself in Euro-American states as the alternative to both

Christendom and Christian nationalization may be a little closer to its adversary

than its proponents recognize. Tocqueville recognizes this. He recognizes the

Christian church to be the 'first political institution' of America; its themes enter

silently into secular reason and imagination. So the separation of church and

state does not, according to him, place Christian faith outside politics. Rather,

the contours of faith insinuate themselves into the structure of secular politics.

17

Taylor, too, recognizes that from the perspective of a faith such as Islam the

American distinction between the secular and the sacred looks very Christian.

Seculere, in Christian Latin, means 'the world', as opposed to the church or

heaven. It means, according to the OED, 'belonging to the world and its affairs

as distinguished from the church and religion'. The early church recognized the

secular realm, but treated the secular as residual, disconnected from that which

is most fundamental and authoritative. The Christian secular is thus the profane

that is limited and suspect even while necessary to wordly life. This dependent,

derivative sense of the secular persists for centuries, so that Ben Franklin is

moved to say, ironically, that he speaks as 'a mere secular man', and so that

William Gladstone could reiterate with confidence that 'I do not believe that

secular motives are adequate either to propel or restrain our race'. William

Bennett continues the Tocquevillian tradition with respect to church/state rela-

tions.

Eventually, though, secularism breaks out as a set of doctrines designed to

prevent struggles between Christian sects from tearing apart the fabric of public

life. Again, the

OED

suggests this 'secular' development (in long, worldly time)

when it defines modern secularism as 'the doctrine that morality should be based

solely in regard to the well-being of mankind in the present life to the exclusion

of all considerations drawn from belief in God or in a future state'. Secularism

now emerges as a counterpoint to Christian conceptions of morality, even if the

cultural space it makes available is more precarious than, say, radical and liberal

secularists of the nineteenth century expected it to be by the late-twentieth

century. But what if secularism remains, on points crucial to pluralism, too close

to the partner it struggles against? And what if these affinities contribute to the

periodic return of violent fundamentalisms in western states?

18

Both the celebration and lament of the (precarious) victory of the secular

underplay the degree to which the Christian sacred remains buried in it. The

rewritings of the Augustinian

Genesis

(which was itself a profound rewriting) in

Hobbesian, Lockeian and Rousseauian renderings of the state of nature represent

critical moments in this development. Rousseau's version is exemplary because

it both modifies the Christian sacred and provides a formula through which the

secular eventually comes into its own. Rousseau insists that 'everything is good

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as it leaves the hands of the Author of things, everything degenerates in the

hands of man'.

19

By treating the fall as the after-effect of natural innocence, he

relieves humanity of the primordial guilt Augustine builds into the first human

act. We fall again and again because the shape of each new set of circumstances

typically exceeds the limited experience we draw upon to respond. This is the

Rousseauian appreciation of contingency. We have just enough experience to

measure each new evil but not enough to avoid future ones generated by the line

of escape we adopt; this deficit can be reduced only in a culture that curtails

sharply its pace of change and contact with foreign cultures. In a culture that

takes the form of a nation.

The Rousseauian rewriting of Genesis does not seek a return to the state of

nature. It does demand a civilizational ground of morality as automatic and

authoritative in its way as innocence was in the state of nature. The Rousseauian

ideal of equal recognition in a unified territorial republic thus seeks a moral

identity that simultaneously

repairs and transcends

the condition from which we

have fallen.

20

It is pertinent to recall how indebted Tocqueville and Taylor are to Rousseau,

to his conception of recognition, his conception of territory, his conception of a

national will, his demand for a deep ground of morality, his insistence that

public morality itself must not appear ambiguous, and his drive to slow the pace

of cultural change. Tocqueville and Taylor both loosen the intercoded set of

demands governing Rousseau, but each remains aRousseauian pluralist. Each is

pulled by the impossible ideal of alignment between national identity and

territorial space. Rousseau, Tocqueville, Bennett and Taylor all love trees. But

Taylor is the one on this list best equipped to enter into relations of agonistic

respect and selective collaboration with constituencies honoring identities and

moral sources significantly different from his own. He simply requires access to

an alternative vision that brings out alternative lines of possibility.

This is the triple plea lodged within several contemporary Christian/secular

political doctrines: the moral m ust be without fundamental ambiguity in itself;it

must rest upon an authoritative

ground;

and the authoritative ground must

provide the anchor of a territorial, national state. Secular conceptions of the

state of nature, the social contract, universal rights, the transcendental subject,

the original position, a rational consensus, deliberative rationality, attunement to

an intrinsic purpose in being, and utility all gravitate toward these demands, even

though most advocates eventually conceded that the 'regulative ideal' in ques-

tion cannot be realized fully. Some of these same advocates then take recourse

in a monotheistic god as a 'postulate' or final 'source' of the morality they

endorse.

These connections between the sacred and the secular in predominantly

Christian societies support two complementary models of identity in politics.

Those versions of modern Christianity hitched to nationalism tend to transcen-

dentalize the identities they admire the most; while modern versions of secular

nationalism tend to naturalize or exceptionalize them.

Each tradition also

contains a subordinate drive to the mode of essentialism given primacy by the

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other. The allergies of representatives from both traditions to the intellectual

practices of genealogy and deconstruction signify their attachments to these two

tendencies. They embody the fear that deconstruction of deep moral sources

and/or natural identities would mean the loss of ethical direction itself rather,

than say, its enhancem ent by com ing to terms m ore profoundly with closures and

dogmatisms inhabiting any ethic or identity.

Indeed, Christianity is sometimes more productively divided against itself

today than conventional secularism, on the issues of most profound import-

ance.

21

But drives to transcendentalization and naturalization must be challenged

from outside as well as inside this duopoly, contesting the demand to have pub lic

media, films, schools, military organizations, literary texts, faculty meetings, talk

shows and neighborhood gossip ratify as intrinsic, universal or neutral what has

become national regularity in religion, sexuality, race, rationality, class, or

gender.

Multicultural pluralization introduces alternative conceptions and sources of

ethics into this historical duopoly; it pluralizes the sacred/secular duopoly

without eliminating either party as a major player. It taps into subsidiary eddies

and currentsalready flowing through this duopoly to foster generous possibilities

of agonistic respect and selective collaboration between diverse constituencies

thrown together in historically contingent, territorial relations of interdependence

and strife.

Let me start with a conception of identity and difference that invokes such an

alternative. As I see it, the very d rive to secure an intrinsic, self-sufficient,

transcendental, or national identity tempts its bearers to secure that standing by

defining as evil, irrational, abject, or abnormal some otherwise harmless differ-

ences they themselves depend upon to specify what they are. Agents of intrinsic

identity convert these human signifiers of uncertainty, dependence or incom-

pleteness in what they are into expressions of evil or defect. For even when the

differences in question do not threaten the livelihood, security or ontological

necessities of civilizationitself,they do pose threats to the demand of the regular

individual to embody the national universal around which everything else

revolves. This is the resistible strain of fundamentalism residing within the drive

to truth in identity.

The need for specification through internal and external difference is not

eliminable from any modern identity or morality. But the terms by which such

specification is achieved are always in need of critical interrogation. A culture

of pluralization interrogates contending drives to intrinsic identity. It does so,

first, by respecting the productive role of disruption and disturbance in politics,

whereby congealed identities are pressed to come to terms with elements of

historical contingency, uncertainty and difference in themselves; second, by

honoring a role for genealogy and political disturbance in cultural life, as

historical elements of artifice, power and chance in established unities are

exposed through these intellectual strategies; third, by cultivation of critical

responsiveness to new movements of pluralization proceeding from old injuries,

differences and energies; and, fourth, by participating in coalitional assemblages

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that install the economic and political conditions of forbearance and generosity

in relations between contending, interdependent identities.

How does the politics of pluralization proceed? It is precarious and paradoxi-

cal in form. Political enactment of a new identity out of existing energies,

differences and injuries embodies a drive by the insurgent force to attain a

positive standing even before its positive identity has crystallized fully; and it

calls upon established identities disturbed by this very movement to

forebear

from automatically reiterating fixed standards that return it to an obscure or

degraded place. A culture of pluralization cultivates an ethos of forbearance in

political initiatives and of critical responsiveness to new movements. Critical

responsiveness itself embodies a delicate combination: its bearers respond

affirmatively to new drives to pluralization while resisting tendencies in each to

become a new, exclusive orthodoxy. Most of the time, the accent is properly on

the first gesture. For, as we have seen, a new drive by a culturally depreciated

constituency to reform the recognition it receives also issues a disturbing call to

other constituencies to redefine recognition of themselves.

Eventually, an ethos of critical responsiveness encourages an enlarged set of

cultural identities to appreciate more profoundly, and

sometimes

to come to love,

the (contestable) element of social construction in what they are, the profound

dependence

they have on those differences that endow them with specificity, and

the deep contestability of the cultural assumptions that vindicate what they are

(e.g. as Christians, Jews, Kantians, Muslim, atheists, masculine, feminine, etc.,

etc., etc.). These developments, in turn, enrich the ethical sources from which

generosity in relations between alternative constituencies can emerge. The

interaction between such constituencies reveals the indispensability of ethics to

social life, the

multiplicity

of possible ethical sources, and the incorrigible

fragility

of ethics. The pluralized 'we's' now enhance their experiences

of interdependency with the interior, internal and external differences they

are measured against. New possibilities of political intersection with alter-

constituencies become available by lifting a little higher those anchors of identity

that never sank all the way to the ocean floor anyway. In such a pluralized

culture many may find themselves at different times on the initiating side, the

receptive side and ambiguous middle of the politics of enactment by which

something new is brought into being.

An ethos of critical responsiveness opens up possibilities of negotiation across

differences as it also expands the available range of diversity. It is the latter

collaborative

effect so many arboreal critics of rhizomatic pluralism overlook.

They persist in concluding that the reciprocal recognition of hybrid origins and

the element of historical contingency in what they are by an expanding network

of constituencies automatically means social fragmentation and loss of the

political capacity for action in concert through the state. Perhaps this insistence

flows from the residual sacred/secular assumption that morality itself must

rest

upon a solid ground, identity, rationality or contractual agreement rather than

reside

in multiple intersections between interdependent identities, each of which

acknowledges elements of contestability in the source it admires the most. In

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W. E. CONNOLLY

fact, the opposite effect is more often the case:

the relentless pursuit of unity in

meaning or identity fosters the very violence and fragmentation Un itarians

purport to fear the most. For each concerted campa ign to own the center issues

in a contending set of drives to occupy it.The break-up of the former Yugoslavia

is not due to the 'proliferation of difference' but to war between contending and

exclusive identities each of which is bent upon effacing its own contingencies

and uncertainty. The Tocquevillian/American war on Amerindians flows from a

closed conception of civilization. The 'cultural war' registered by William

Bennett reflects an overweaning drive to retain the national-moral center by a

constituency that has in fact become a minority among other minorities.

The politics of enactment is that politics by which a movement forged from

differential injuries and energies struggles to place a new candidate on the

cultural field of legitimate identities. The most ethically revealing political

moment occurs when such a movement teeters on that perilous line, when it

resists previous definitions of what it is without yet moving its own members

and/or alter-identities far enough to institutionalize itself in a new way. This is

the moment when it is highly vulnerable to recolonization by the devaluations

it struggles against.

Numerous recent and current instantiations of such a moment are discernible.

As when those who claim the right to medically assisted death when terminally

ill press against the traditional Christian view that 'suicide' is always a sin and

the insistence lingering in some corners of secularism that death must wait until

nature wills it. Or when sexual minorities struggle against the compulsory

heterosexuality lodged in traditional Christian conceptions of sex and secular

medicalization of the hetero/homosexual pair to pluralize the cultural possibili-

ties of positive sexual identity. Or when a former 'traditional culture' or 'minor

nationality' presents itself as an ethnic group in a pluralistic culture. Or when

citizens of a state risk charges of treason or irresponsibility to the 'nation' by

participating in non-statist, cross national political movements to modify state

and interstate priorities in the domains of ecology, national security, sexual

rights, racial diversity, refugees, state policies of torture, state terrorism, and so

on. Or when devotees of nontheistic, post-secular reverence for the abundance

of life over the organization of identity strive to pry open ethical space between

the conventional distinction between sacred and secular moralities.

Each of these movements, if and when its carriers concede space to others on

the same field, is a drive to cultural diversification. Each is precarious at a

critical moment, partly because the definitions it resists might be re-inscribed

upon it by regular identities in charge of media, education, military organizations

and legal judgment and partly because it has not yet settled into a definitive set

of positive aspirations. Each movement is thus doubly vulnerable to defeat

through compulsory reassertion of Christian/secular conceptions of death, the

sinfulness/abnormality of 'homosexuality', the civilizational necessity of a

national center, the necessity of state control over citizen politics, and the

(Christian) sacred/secular regulation of legitimate moral codes.

How, then, does justice function in the politics of pluralization? A successful

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movement to positive recognition m igrates from an obscure, degraded, or

abnormal form subsisting below the thresho ld of justice to a positive identity

now recognized to have been discriminated against by the previous practice of

justice. The very economy of justice that recently formed a barrier to recognition

of the new constituency now becomes the vehicle for entitlement of a new,

positive identity. But this means that the politics of pluralization operates upon

an ambiguous practice of justice that is often an obstacle to it before becoming

a protection of it. Indeed, one crucial condition of the struggle against the

element of injustice in the economy of justice is the acknowledgement that

justice is never sufficient onto

itself:

the practice of justice, when we are lucky,

resides within a more general ethos of critical responsiveness to pluralization

that both exceeds its reach

and

enables it to modify itself in response to new

drives to pluralization.

22

Put another way, the practice of justice is both

indispensable to a pluralist culture and a barrier to the politics of pluralization

by which that culture reanimates itself.

Each new introduction thereby reveals retrospectively a set of contingent

closures in an historically contingent matrix of identity/difference relations that

persistently tends to congeal into a universal ground. And each new identity,

once consolidated, is likely to enter into a new set of historically contingent

settlements in need of future disturbance and rectification. If you anticipate, as

I do, that in a mobile, pluralist culture pressures toward the naturalization of

historically constructed identities return indefinitely, you may be driven to

conclude that the practice of justice as fairness requires a more fundamental

ethos of critical responsiveness to new lines of flight and new possibilities of

enactment. Sensing this, you now contend politically against strains of unde-

served suffering persistently inhabiting an established economy of morality and

justice, struggling against the forgetfulness and innocence among those sacred/

secular universalists who insist that neither you nor they can be moral

unless

a

code of morality is unambiguous and/or securely grounded. For, on the view

advanced here, morality and justice at their best are never entirely reducible to

a code nor securely anchored to a

ground:

the code circulates through an ethos

of critical responsiveness that enables and exceeds it.

Pluralizing the sacred/secular duopoly

Justice presupposes an ethos of critical responsiveness that exceeds it. Pluraliza-

tion requires an ethos of critical responsiveness to new drives to identity. But

how could critical responsiveness itself be grounded in a democratic culture that

displays appreciation for the constitutive tension between pluralism and plural-

ization? The uncertain historical possibility of cultures of critical responsiveness

is set first by the fortunate emergence of a

modus vivendi

between contending,

interdependent constituencies thrown together on the same territory. This histori-

cally contingent condition, if and when established, then opens a window of

opportunity for development of a more robust, spiritualized ethos.

A pluralizing culture cultivates responsiveness to the production of new

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W. E. CONNOLLY

identities, actively seeking to negotiate new patterns of co-existence and inter-

section between contending, interdependent constituencies. In doing so it opens

up the possibility of reciprocal appreciation of the large

number and kind of

sources from which an admirable ethical sensibility might spring. Social move-

ments that disrupt the (Christian) sacred/secular divide as historically constituted

might, for instance, open up space through which care is cultivated for the

abundance of life (or

differance\

or 'un truth', or 'the rea l', or 'alteri ty', or 'the

vague', or 'ontological difference', etc., etc.) over the organization of identity

and culture. Such a source is not entirely reducible to a code of rationality, the

dictates of commanding/designing/loving god, or a fixed set of human interests.

Fitting neatly neither into the command, contract, teleological nor pragmatic

traditions of morality such a source scrambles familiar sacred/secular options

while drawing selectively upon minority perspectives within each tradition.

(Hence, there is no claim to be 'new' here.) It shares with many voices in sacred

traditions the faith that every practice of identity, morality, rationality and justice

is inhabited by energies that enable and exceed it; and it shares with many voices

in the secular tradition a refusal to invest a commanding or designing god in

those forces. Hence it tempts spokesmodels on both sides of this line to define

it as relativistic, parasitic, nihilistic or anarchistic. Even Taylor cannot resist

dismissing 'half-baked neo-Nietzscheans' as he cautiously opens up cultural

space for

other

perspectives to be.

Carriers of post-secular care for the diversity of being contend that fugitive

differences and surplus energies circulating through officially defined Identities

and Differences provide crucial conditions of possibility for an ethos of critical

responsiveness while persistently subverting attempts to find a certain, secure,

solid ground for morality. We do not obey a transcendental command or follow

a pragmatic maxim; we cultivate care for a protean diversity of being already

flowing through and around us to some degree or other. If and when that care

is absent it cannot be created by a stack of arguments. So, when asked

why

we

care in some ultimate sense, we respond by contesting the form of the question.

For we suspect the question to be governed by the imperative to find a final,

authoritative basis for morality: it thereby diverts attention from the cultivation

of care for the protean character of being by searching for authoritative sources

which command that care into being. In a world marked by the indispensability

and fragility of ethics we find nothing more fundamental than care for the

protean diversity of being. We cannot ensure, of course, that such a source will

always or often be enough. We are wary of efforts to provide such a guarantee.

The demand to 'secure' the ground of morality reminds us of those long

Christian campaigns of conquest and conversion against alien cultures. We thus

rethink the shape as well as the type of moral sources, translating quests to

secure a ground or pragmatic basis for morality into efforts to breathe more

generosity and responsiveness into the ethical atmosphere. Released from the

demand for a ground and/or a final answer to the (unanswerable) question 'Why

be moral?', we may be better able to appreciate and contend against the injustice

in justice itself.

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PLURALISM, MULTICULTURALISM AND THEN ATION-STATE

To reverse effervescent forces circulating through

the

universal,

the

true,

the

real,thenationand the regular individual,to beinspiredby them

because

they

do

not

embody commands from

a god, the

dictates

of

rationality,

a

transcen-

dental subject,

a

national contract

or a

pragmatic consensus

is to

draw upon

an

important sourceofforbearanceinpolitical initiativesandcritical responsiveness

tothepolitics of pluralization.

23

Epicurus, Friedrich Nietzsche, Henry Thoreau,

William James, Immanuel Levinas, Michel Foucault, Luce Irigaray, Judith

Butler

and

Jacques Derrida

all

introduce significant variations

of

this theme into

ethical discourse. Several pursue a culture of pluralization with significant

resemblances

to the

version

I

have been sketching.

This post-nationalist vision of a pluralistic state is no more uncertain,

contestable

or

unreliable than those contending gods, contracts

and

rationalities

in

the

monotheistic

and

secular traditions. Indeed,

it

shares

the

elements

of

uncertainty

and

unreliability with them.

It is

just that this perspective folds

the

appreciationofpersistent contestationanduncertainty intoitsvery understanding

ofthe fugitive sources of ethics,its corresponding support of agonistic respect

between alternative ethico-political perspectives, and its cultivation of critical

responsiveness to new drives to identity.

24

Such a pluralization of the sacred/

secular moral duopoly diversifies culturally available sources of ethics and

extendstheethosof pluralism intonew coiners. This pluralization of pluralism

exceeds

the

national homogeneity

of

Jean Jacques Rousseau,

the

national

pluralism

of

Alexis

de

Tocqueville,

the

mono-nationalism

of

William Bennett,

the multicultural nationalisms

of

Charles Taylor

and the

rhizomatic lines

of

flight

and connection of Gilles Deleuze/Felix Guattari. It doesso by pursuing debts

and differences with each of these thinkers.

Certainly,the rhizomatic imagination ofpluralismisunrealistic.Itsintroduc-

tion requires economic conditions

of

existence

not

addressed here.

25

And

such

a

multi-dimensional regulative ideal could never be realized fully at one timein

any specific place. There^is always more to do, on one front or another, to

promotetheethosofpluralism.Aprime valueof sucha political imaginationis

that

it

provides

the

best position from which

to

name

and

contend against

numerous pressures

to the

fundamentalization

of

politics

at the end of the

twentieth century.

Notes nd references

1. Alexis

de

Tocqueville,

Democracy inAmerica, two

vols, trans. George Lawrence

(New

York: H arper

Row, 1969),

p. 292.

2.

de Tocqueville, ibid p. 292.

3. de Tocqueville, ibid p. 327.

4.

de

Tocqueville,

ibid p. 373.

5.

de Tocqueville, ibid pp.

290-291.

6.

de

To cqueville,

ibid p. 280.

7. William

J.

Bennett,

TheDevaluing ofAmerica: TheFightfor OurCulture and OurChildren(New

York:

Touchstone Books, 1993),

p. 207.

8.

The

portrait

of

American nationalism

I am

drawing

has

debts

and

affinities

to the

discussion

of

Australian

nationalism

in

Bruce Kapferer,

Legends of People/Myths of State

(Washington: Smithsonian Institution

Press,

1988). Kapferer calls

the

Australian type 'egalitarian nationalism',

to

capture

the

sense that

all

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W. E. CONNOLLY

individuals are equal as members of the nation, though they may be unequal in the degree to which they

live up as individuals to the spirit of the nation.

9. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University

of Minnesota Press, 1987), pp. 6-7, 15. Emphasis added.

10. John Rawls, in Political Liberalism (New York: Columbian University Press, 1993) makes some

invaluable comments about the relation between an historical modus vivendi and the development of a

political ethic. These reflections, in a way, pour some Machiavellian salt on Rawlsian justice. Rawls thinks

that the historical compromise which occurred with the rise of the moden secular state out of religious

strife between Christian sects is the last one we need. But the historical time is right to seek another.

11.

For an excellent elaboration of this position see Judith Butler,

Bodies That Matter

(New York: Routledge,

1993).

12 .

Amy Guttmann, ed.,Mu lticulturalism and The Politics of Recogn ition : An E ssay by Cha rles Taylor with

Commentaries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 36.

13. Taylor, ibid p. 58.

14.

Taylor, ibid p. 63.

15.

Taylor, ibid p. 67.

16.

Charles Taylor is the Las Casas of the late twentieth century. Las Casas delivered a critical message to

Christian Spain in the sixteenth century after painfully coming to terms with the incredible violence

imposed by the Christian/conquistador conquest of the Aztecs. Once a highly respected priest, Las Casas

lost moral authority in his own church and country after repudiating the charges of idolatry against the

Aztecs and apportioning good and evil more evenly between the Christian faith from which he proceeded

and the unfamiliar faith of Montezume he approached. What does it signify that Taylor, a twentieth century

Christian, must reformulate this same message to Christian/secular faiths in the late twentieth century?

Does Taylor himself remain too centered in the very constellation that must be challenged and decentered

if multicultural pluralization is to have a chance? Tzvetan Todorov, in

The Conquest of America: The

Question of the Other,

trans. Richard Howard (New York: Harper & Row, 1985), explores shifts in the

thinking and fortunes of Las Casas. A reflection on Todorov's account of this historic encounter can be

found in Connolly, Identity/Difference: Democratic Negotiations of Political Paradox (Ithaca: Cornell

University Press), ch. 2.

17.

'Thus while the law allows the American people to do everything: there are things which religion prevents

them from im agining and forbids them to becom e . . . Religion, which neve r intervenes directly in the

government of the American society, should therefore be considered as the first of their political

institutions'.Democracy in America, p. 292. It is important to see that nationalists like Bennett think they

respect the separation of church and state. To them it means that a monotheistic culture sets the matrix

of morality, while the state refrains from publicly endorsing any particular sect within western monothe-

ism. The same goes with respect to the nationalism of regular individuals and race. Since any member of

any race is (thought to be) free to endorse all the components of national individualism, this drive to

assimilation is not thought to be racist.

18. The best history of the philosophical vicissitudes of secularism in its historic battles with Christianity of

which I am aware is provided by Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age (Cambridge: MIT

Press, 1983). Blumenberg argues against the 'secularization' hypothesis, the claim that secularism forgets

its intrinsic dependence upon a conception of the sacred to which it must return. He then endorses a

secularism appropriate to 'modernity'. I concur in Blumenberg's resistance to the theme of return but

dissent from his failure to consider complementarities between modern Christianity and secularism.

19.

Rousseau, Emile or On Education, trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1979), p. 37. Rousseau

himself,

of course, emphasizes his discontent with Christianity as a doctrine that subordinates the

organization of earthly life to preparation for the afterlife. But concentration upon this point conceals other

respects in which he carries this tradition forward.

20.

Of course, Rousseau can be read against the grain in ways that emphasize the inability of each drive for

unity and authority to secureitself, and Rousseau himself might have intended this message to reach some

of his readers. I concur in such readings up to a point, as long as they do not imply that, because this is

the case, the Rousseauian pursuit of unity does not contribute to exclusion and violence. Sometimes, at

public lectures, when one resists the communitarian drive to unity, someone will respond that since the

drive to community is always 'deconstructed' by the attempts to achieve it, there is really not that much

to worry about. But there is plenty to worry about. The

drive

itself, as the Tocqueville example shows,

imposes incredible violence along the way.

21. The Christian god is often presented as a god of moral command and/or moral design, but, both within

and beyond these presentations, the god is also sometimes presented as the being which exceeds every

human reception of being, command, justice, morality, or purpose. To the extent the second god is given

priority over the first, conversations between Christian political theorists and post-Nietzscheans such as

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Deleuze, Derrida, Foucault, and Irigaray improve. The first set of thinkers begins to recognize a crucial

part of themselves in the other, rather than reducing the other to nihilism or anarchism to suppress this

recognition.

22 .

I argue this thesis with specific reference to the Rawlsian theory of justice in 'Suffering, Justice and the

Politics of Becoming',

Medicine, Culture and Society,

forthcoming, 1996.

23. Charles Taylor, to whom I am indebted on this point, also replaces the theme of the ground of morality

with that of moral sources. He knows that a source is never encountered directly; it is always moved by

the very articulations that draw it into being. Taylor seems to leave formal space open for some to cultivate

nontheistic, post-secular moral sources, but he is also a little tone deaf to those like Derrida, Foucault and

others who have already followed this trail. See Sources of the Self:The M aking of Modern Identity

(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989).

24. By 'agonistic respect' I mean a relation of respect and forbearance between contending perspectives

embodying appreciation by each side of the contestable character of the presumptions that vindicate it.

Agonistic respect is an ideal relation to pursue between two contending perspectives that both have a

definite foothold in the established culture. This theme is developed in Identity/Difference. Critical

responsiveness, on the other hand, is a receptive orientation by a powerful constituency to an identity in

motion that presses to reconstitute its recognition by challenging the necessity of its current constitution.

It is a

critical

responsiveness because, for instance, sometimes the drive to a new cultural identity seeks

to universalize what it is or sometimes its very formation rests upon the imposition of serious suffering.

25.

I address this issue in ch. 3 of The Ethos of Pluralization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,

1995).

The first point to make here is that even if the economic conditions were established that would

not guarantee a culture of pluralization. These are joint, interdependent conditions. The second point is

more controversial: but I also contend that a state in which rhizomatic pluralism is developed is also one

most favourable to the formation of majority assemblages in support of the economic conditions of

pluralism.

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