Mute Vol. 2 No. 2: Dis-Integrating Multiculturalis

Since the advent of multiculturalism in the 1970s, the redefinition of race in cultural terms has gone hand in hand with an official discourse of respect for cultural difference and diversity. Today, in the wake of 9/11, the rhetoric of tolerance is visibly breaking down. As state policy shifts from the celebration of difference to an anxious call for assimilation, the racial other (whether citizen or immigrant) is under renewed pressure to integrate herself into society.

In this issue of Mute, contributors read the crisis of multiculturalism – political, scientific and social – as both a neoliberal offensive and a challenge to rethink the relationship between particular identities and universal rights, evolutionary science and biopower.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Values on the Ground: Multiculturalism and the War on Terror
By Hari Kunzru
Disrespecting Multifundamentalism
By Melancholic Troglodytes
Under the Beach, the Barbed Wire
By Angela Mitropoulos
Proud Scum – The Spectre of The Ingrate
By Matthew Hyland
Dividing the species: Race, Science and Culture
By Marek Kohn and Luciana Parisi
Show Some Disrespect!
By Daniel Jewesbury
Acts of God and Enclosures in New Orleans
By George Caffentzis
Free Speech as Shibboleth: on the Danish Cartoons
By Benedict Seymour
The Netherlands: from Multiculturalism to Forced Integration
By Eric Krebbers