Granting the colonized their culture simultaneously trapped them as interchangeable representatives of it.

Evidence

Here respect for the culture of the Other is presented as born out of a European impulse to treat former colonized subjects well, a reading the recipients of such generosity would surely question. … At the very moment the Other got his culture back, he lost his freedom: his personal name disappeared into the name of community; he became an example, nothing more than an interchangeable representative of a particular class of beings. While receiving an unconditional welcome, the Other found that he no longer has any freedom of movement, any means of escape. All originality was taken away from him; he was trapped insidiously in his difference. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 276

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Finkielkraut’s paradox — the gift of culture becomes a prison, the welcome removes freedom of movement — is a genuinely paradigm-shifting inversion of the standard multicultural generosity narrative. The individualizing self-image of Europeans is purchased against the collectivization of the Other.
• SEED: An essay angle: ‘the gift that imprisons’ — how well-meaning recognition of cultural difference can function as a cage, applied to contemporary debates about cultural representation in institutions.
• DEFINE: Clarifies how ‘respect for culture’ operates as a form of arrest for the colonized subject rather than liberation.