The New Cultural Politics of Difference

Abstract

In the last few years of the twentieth century, there is emerging a significant shift in the sensibilities and outlooks of critics and artists. In fact, I would go so far as to claim that a new kind of cultural worker is in the making, associated with a new politics of difference. These new forms of intellectual consciousness advance new conceptions of the vocation of critic and artist, attempting to undermine the prevailing disciplinary divisions of labor in the academy, museum, mass media, and gallery networks while preserving modes of critique within the ubiquitous commodification of culture in the global village. Distinctive features of the new cultural politics of difference are to trash the monolithic and homogeneous in the name of diversity, multiplicity, and heterogeneity; to reject the abstract, general, and universal in light of the concrete, specific, and particular; and to historicize, contextualize, and pluralize by highlighting the contingent, provisional, variable, tentative, shifting, and changing. Needless to say, these gestures are not new in the history of criticism or art, yet what makes them novel-along with the cultural politics they produce-is how and what constitutes difference, the weight and gravity it is given in representation, and the way in which highlighting issues like exterminism, empire, class, race, gender, sexual orientation, age, nation, nature, and region at this historical moment acknowledges some discontinuity and disruption from previous forms of cultural critique. To put it bluntly, the new cultural politics of difference consists of creative responses to the precise circumstances of our present moment-especially those of marginalized First World agents who shun degraded self-representations, articulating instead their sense of the flow of history in light of the contemporary terrors, anxieties, and fears of highly commercialized North Atlantic capitalist cultures (with their escalating xenophobias against people of color, Jews, women,

Operatives’ experiences of cultural diversity on Australian construction sites

“…Within organizational management literature there is a similar concern that in-group identification (whether that be ethnic-based, culturally based or even some other informal group units) detracts from corporate affiliation and the super-ordinate goals of the organization (Brickson, 2000;Gomez et al ., 2000;Hogg and Terry, 2000). In conceptual terms the contrast between strong within-group affiliation versus crossgroup affiliation can be traced to arguments revolving around the politics of identity versus the politics of difference (more appropriately referred to as diversity) (West, 1990;Young, 1990). These more abstract discussions of policy settings reflect changing paradigms of thought on the best means of empowerment, social inclusion and civic participation for minority groups.…”

Selling Out Higher Education

“…Knowledge as capital in the corporate model is privileged as a form of investment in the economy, but appears to have little value when linked to the power of selfdefinition, social responsibility, or the capacities of individuals to expand the scope of freedom, justice, and the operations of democracy. [33] Knowledge stripped of ethical and political considerations offers limited, if any, insights into how schools should educate students to push against the oppressive boundaries of gender, class, race, and age domination. Nor does such a language provide the pedagogical conditions for students to critically engage knowledge as an ideology deeply implicated in issues and struggles concerning the production of identities, culture, power, and history.…”

‘We raised it with the Head’: the educational practices of minority ethnic, middle‐class families

“…Because I think at one stage … I think teachers because um … it's a horrible thing to say but the minute they'd see an email … well the minute they found out that [detail of Sameena's occupation] I felt there was a real change […] I don't think it's a fancy on my part, but it was like recognition -you go in there and they'll listen, they'll listen This recognition afforded her a visibility (West 1990) to be recognised as a parent whose views 'count' -albeit, as noted above, within certain parameters.…”