Zombie multiculturalism meets liberative difference: searching for a new discourse of diversity

Abstract

This paper grapples with an unresolved tension – twenty-first century Britain is indelibly multicultural and yet diversity is increasingly depicted as a threat to social cohesion. A society characterised by superdiverse cities where some suggest that ‘multiculturalism has failed’. On the basis of an analysis of three dominant theoretical and ideological discourses – community cohesion, multiculturalism and interculturalism – it will be argued that there is an urgent need to forge a new understanding of diversity that can counter the zombie discourse that characterises current debates about diversity in Britain. Difference will be framed as a potential source of mutual liberation, not a problem seeking a solution. It will be argued that a critical engagement with political theology can help us to fashion a new discourse of diversity that is characterised by a hermeneutics of liberative difference, which can help to defeat the zombies sucking the life out of diverse Britain.

Keywords:

• Multiculturalism
• community cohesion
• identity
• political theology
• liberative difference

Notes

1. Throughout the terms ‘race’ and ‘racial’ are placed in inverted commas to signify that ‘race’ is a social construction rather than a valid biological category.

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