Multicultural politics must think beyond liberal-communitarian binaries to combine difference with equality

Evidence

How, then, can the particular and the universal, the claims of both difference and equality, be recognized? This is the dilemma, the conundrum—the multicultural question—at the heart of the multicultural’s transruptive and reconfigurative impact. It requires us to think beyond the traditional boundaries of the existing political discourses and their ever-ready “solutions.” It suggests that we have to put our minds seriously, not to reiterating the sterile arguments between liberals and communitarians, but to some new and novel ways of combining difference and identity, drawing together on the same terrain those formal incommensurables of political vocabularies—liberty and equality with difference, “the good” and “the right.” — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 374

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘transruptive’ multicultural question frames how Islamophobia readings must hold equality and difference claims together — connects to Hall’s own framing carried into the field.