Haunted Nations: The Colonial Dimensions of Multiculturalisms

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Psychology Press, 2004 - Literary Criticism - 171 pages
Postcolonialism has attracted a large amount of interest in cultural theory, but the adjacent area of multiculturalism has not been scrutinised to quite the same extent. In this innovative new book, Sneja Gunew sets out to interrogate the ways in which the transnational discourse of multiculturalism may be related to the politics of race and indigeneity, grounding her discussion in a variety of national settings and a variety of literary, autobiographical and theoretical texts. Using examples from marginal sites - the "settler societies" of Australia and Canada - to cast light on the globally dominant discourses of the US and the UK, Gunew analyses the political ambiguities and the pitfalls involved in a discourse of multiculturalism haunted by the opposing spectres of anarchy and assimilation.

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Contents

public spaces private
12
The terms of multi cultural difference
15
the colonial seeds of multiculturalism
33
Corporeal choreographies of transnational English
51
performing ethnicity
67
Can ghosts emigrate? Diaspora exile and community
107
Notes
133
Bibliography
145
Index
165
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About the author (2004)

Sneja Gunew is Director of the Centre for Research in Women's Studies and Gender Relations at the University of British Columbia.