In "Re-examining the Rhetoric of the 'Cultural Border'" Chang (1999) focuses on the individual as a way of liberating us from an essentialist view of cultures. This paper argues that a "social" rather than "individual" approach to multiculturalism has more explanatory power. Through a discussion of Saussure’s structuralism and Bakhtin’s heteroglossia, I illustrate modifications to Chang’s constructivist description of multiculturalism that would make it more applicable to a social and an individual understanding of others.

In "Re-examining the Rhetoric of the 'Cultural Border'" Chang focuses on the individual as a way of liberating us from an essentialist view of cultures as distinct separate wholes. She argues that a perspective of multiculturalism as constructivist, where people perpetually update the distinctions made between them, has more theoretical and practical value.

Although I agree that such a constructivist approach is preferable to one that reifies others into broad categories, this paper will argue that a "social" rather than "individual" approach to multiculturalism has more explanatory power. Through a brief discussion of Saussure’s understanding of structuralism and Bakhtin’s notion of heteroglossia, I intend to illustrate modifications to Chang’s constructivist description of multiculturalism that would make it more applicable to both a social and individual understanding of others. Although these modifications are theoretical, their practical application will be made evident through examples.

De Saussure’s Structuralism

Ferdinand de Saussure developed a novel approach to language and meaning in the early part of the 20th century. What is now referred to as structuralism is based on the principle that meanings of things (e.g., words) are more dependent upon their relationships to other things than on the objects to which they refer. For example, the meaning of the letter "A" in the English alphabet is defined negatively in reference to those letters it is not (e.g., "B," "C," "D," through "Z").  Rather than being self-referential or representing quintessential "A-ness," the meaning of "A" is understood in the context in which it occurs.

For example, when I met an individual from Egypt for the first time, it was not my first exposure to things that are common-sensically thought of as Egyptian. I had a great deal of "American" notions of what Egypt and its people were like. Therefore, while I was meeting this person, I doubt I ever got through my notions of "things Egyptian" to experience something truly different from me. Like the letter "A" being meaningless alone, "things Egyptian" have no meaning outside of my American notions of them. Although I may improve my American characterizations of "Egyptians" over time, anything currently beyond my referential realm of possibility would have no meaning to me. In this way, multiculturalism could be referred to as "culturalism" or simply as "culture," as Dewey (1916) describes in the following lines:

Whereas De Saussure's structuralist perspective on understanding others has realistic explanatory power, there is an all-too-shocking record in support of such argument that one cannot really understand the other.  This leads to a claim that knowledge of the other is often more dangerous than the contrary, supported by citing the violence that has occurred in so-called "multicultural situations": e.g., the relationships between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland and between Palestinians and Jews in Israel.

Bakhtin’s  "Heteroglossia"

To respond the theoretical dilemma produced in light of these tragedies, reference to Mikhail Bakhtin’s theoretical contribution would serve us better. One way to resolve the dilemma of multiculturalism’s assumption that multicultural tensions are the result of an absence of knowledge of the "other"- when faced with real life accounts to the contrary - is to incorporate a theoretical perspective that can accommodate such phenomena. Bakhtin’s contribution, particularly in regards to his notion of heteroglossia, is just such a response. Through a brief description of a few of the major tenets of Bakhtin’s approach, I hope to temper the sort of structuralism I argue is of use to Chang's description of constructivist multiculturalism.

In the introduction of "Discourse in the Novel," Bakhtin (1981) delineates the essential factors any structuralist theory of culture must accommodate:

The principal idea of this essay is that the study of verbal art can and must overcome the divorce between an abstract "formal" approach and an equally abstract "ideological" approach. Form and content in discourse are one, once we understand that verbal discourse is a social phenomenon – social throughout its entire range and in each and every of its factors from the sound image to the furthest reaches of abstract meaning. (p. 258)

Exchanging the term "verbal art" for the work of culture, "culturalism" or multiculturalism, the warning against structuralism’s tendency to be utilized as an "abstract formal approach" is well taken. As well, when "verbal discourse" is seen as a metaphor for the work of culture, the entirely social nature of such activities becomes evident.

For Bakhtin, meaning in language is realized through heteroglossia. If thought of as a linear development, one begins with a unitary and uninteresting aspect of language (e.g., repeatedly responding to a
greeting by saying "fine") and in an effort to make more (or more interesting) meaning, attempts to depart from the unitary nature of that aspect of language (e.g., responding by saying something new like "not
too bad"). This then leads towards disunity.

The world of music is full of such examples of "meaningful disunity". For classical music aficionados, a particular recording must be defined, not only by the composer and the title but also by whom the piece was played.  Each time the particular piece of music is played, it takes on a new meaning. Heteroglossia illustrates the essential importance of context in terms of a word's meaning. Applied to issues of culture, heteroglossia adds strong support to the idea of the primacy of the social context over that of the individual.

When conducting cultural analysis, like language analysis, one can focus on those forces that make unity and similarity possible or those that make disunity and difference possible. Bakhtin referred to these forces as centripetal (unifying) and centrifugal (dispersing). Applying such metaphors to multiculturalism leads to further questions. Is multiculturalism all about two distinct groups coming to know one another or is it about two similar groups wanting to differentiate themselves from each other?

When faced with examples of multicultural strife, assuming that the two groups do not know each other and are failing to learn of each other (from disharmony towards possible, yet not obtained, harmony) is no longer the only possibility. The examples from Northern Ireland and Israel mentioned earlier exemplify the sort of "culture as cacophony" that Bakhtin’s work has illuminated.

Conclusion

Our attempts at better understanding multicultural phenomena directly limit our ability to analyze heteroglossia. As empirical research is driven by an effort to classify and categorize, we are methodologically compelled to suppress the "form" of our observations in lieu of their "content."  This being the case, developing some way to accommodate heteroglossia (diversification within a culture) in the development of a constructivist approach to multiculturalism is a major objective. We must vigilantly struggle against the tendency to disregard or suppress through classification the locus of centripetal and centrifugal forces that mediates meaning.

Similar to Bakhtin’s (1981) reference to verbal discourse, I believe the work of culture (and multiculturalism) to be social "throughout its entire range and in each and every of its factors" (p. 258). It is for this reason that I caution any focus on the individual when developing a theoretical foundation for the discussion of multiculturalism.

REFERENCES

Bakhtin, M. (1981). Discourse in the novel. In M. Holquist (Ed.), The Dialogic imagination. (pp. 259 – 422). Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. New York: The Free Press.

Varenne, H. and McDermott, R. (1998). Successful failure: The school America builds. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

NOTES & ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

1. I am grateful to Hervé Varenne from whose web pages and links I gathered much of the information used to write this article.

2. Varenne and McDermott (1998) are critical of classical constructivist notions of culture due, in part, to many in the social sciences who treat psychological (or individual) phenomena as if it were social.

3. I put this term in quotation marks to indicate its dubious nature. Applying this sort of structuralist reasoning to multiculturalism precludes the possibility of cultural distinctiveness for the members involved. Once they are in contact with each other, the distinctiveness of a particular culture lacks structural meaning in this context.

4. This quotation was found amongst several other challenging "definitions of culture" collected by Hervé Varenne.

5. I use the phase "the work of culture" in place of "culture" in an attempt to urge the reader to focus upon the social aspects of culture.

6. As Levi-Strauss believes the natural and the social to be perpetually intertwined, when I say "naturally," I am actually referring to something that is social in nature.