Multicultural politics must build plural public spheres resisting liberal formal equivalence.

Evidence

However, what is clear is that the process cannot be allowed to remain with this political assertion of a radical particularity. It must attempt to construct a diversity of new public spheres in which all the particulars will be transformed by being obliged to negotiate within a broader horizon. But it is essential for this space to remain heterogeneous and pluralistic, and for the elements negotiating within it to retain their différance. They must resist the drive to be integrated by a process of formal equivalence, such as is inscribed in a liberal conception of citizenship, which is to recoup an Enlightenment assimilationist strategy via a long detour. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 375

Categorization

• DEFINE: Sets out the mechanism of multicultural politics: new public spheres where particulars negotiate while retaining différance, resisting liberal citizenship’s formal equivalence as ‘Enlightenment assimilationism via detour’.
• XREF: The critique of liberal citizenship’s formal equality as covert assimilation is the exact move that recurs in critiques of secular-liberal neutrality in Islamophobia scholarship (e.g. dehumanizing ‘moderate Muslim’ framings). — connects to: Countering white Christian nationalism requires a cross-ideological popular front. — Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry, The Flag and the Cross: White Christian…, 60