Performing Diversity: Why Multiculturalism Is Impossible Without Multilingualism (Stephanie Chang)

 

    Jeffrey Alexander explores the three modes of socially incorporating minorities in The Civil Sphere: assimilation, hyphenation, and multiculturalism; the latter manifesting in American civil spaces as a celebration of diversity, or at least its idealized form. Alexander writes that “In multicultural incorporation, particular differences do not have to be eliminated or denied, so the sharp split between private and public realms recede” (2006:452). Rather than assimilating one’s cultural identity or splicing values through hyphenation, multiculturalism supposedly encourages marginalized peoples to embody their hybridity with a sense of pride. This contrasts the notion of banishing ‘primitive’ and polluted traits that Mary Douglas observed, emblematic of the obsolete prerequisites to participate in the American public sphere.

    In this image, Canada’s premier Inuit governor-general and native speaker of Inuktitut, Mary Simon, studies the decorated guards of Rideau Hall in Ottawa, the capital of Canada. Last year, the Inuit people of Nunavut sued the territorial government citing the lack of educational instruction in Inuktitut compared to English and French, despite the language’s foremost status. This lawsuit claimed infringement of language rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, contributing to the ever-haunting history of residential schools in Canada. Without linguistic diversity that serves the demands of marginalized communities, multiculturalism remains a public performance, with minority language inclusion wrongly “portrayed… in a separatist, fragmenting light” (2006:454).

    In the vein of hyphenation, Alexander may argue that multiculturalism readily lacking multilingualism still promotes “hierarchies in the valuations of primordial traits… increasing separation of civil society from existing primordial affinities” (2006:450). As a remnant of Canada’s colonial past, the continued subjugation of Indigenous languages over their revival merely results in falsified acts of multiculturalism. Such acts only benefit the powerful and public majority, who do not suffer the consequences of forced cultural amnesia.

 

Works Cited

Alexander, Jeffrey C. 2006. The Civil Sphere. New York: Oxford University Press.

Douglas, Mary. 1966. Purity and Danger. London and New York: Routledge. 

"Mary Simon, Canada’s first Inuit governor-general and a native Inuktitut speaker, inspects the honour    guard as she arrives at Rideau Hall in Ottawa.” July 26, 2021. From The Globe and Mail. Retrieved March 29, 2022 (https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-mary-simon-installed-as-30th-governor-general-first-indigenous-person/).