Multicultural coexistence requires simultaneously pursuing equality and the recognition of difference.

Evidence

Recognizing the dangers of ideas of ethnicity in any absolutist form, he further argues that we must pursue these demands without “reverting to new forms of ethnic closure.” Thus, for him, if this whole process will (in Chantal Mouffe’s terms) be inevitably “agonistic,” and if there are no clear solutions at hand, there are nonetheless some compass points by which we can steer. Thus, he avers, our aim must be to transcend the cul-de-sac created by a binary vision that insists that we either treat individuals as a free-floating entities, outside any particular culture, or communities as solidaristic, pregiven wholes in which the authority of a pregiven tradition must reign supreme. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 155

Categorization

• DEFINE: ‘Double demand’ — the simultaneous pursuit of equality and difference-recognition — is a core Hall concept to carry forward into Islamophobia readings as the frame for fighting exclusion without ethnic closure.
• XREF: Chantal Mouffe’s ‘agonistic’ politics connects to the reader’s Scaffolding Theory module on hegemony; the binary of free-floating individuals vs. pregiven communities prefigures Hall’s later critique of essentialist identities.