Multiculturalism is unfinished, contested, and predates modernity

Evidence

As ever, he begins by setting the question within a broad historical theoretical framework and insisting that, in the first place, one should speak of “multiculturalisms” in the plural, as it is, by definition, an unfinished and always-contested term, rather than the simple signifier of some preestablished Promised Land. It signifies neither a single doctrine or political strategy nor any already-achieved state of affairs. Moreover, he notes that it has a significant prehistory and far from being a new phenomenon was a constituent part of a variety of previous empires (Greek, Roman, and Ottoman). Today, he suggests, the crucial thing is to understand multiculturalism within the context of the complex dynamics in which the homogenizing tendencies of globalization simultaneously meet the “subaltern proliferation of differences.” — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 153

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes multiculturalism as a plural, contested, premodern term rather than a settled achievement.
• QUESTION: How does Hall’s ‘subaltern proliferation of differences’ get taken up in Islamophobia scholarship specifically?
• XREF: connects to: Multiculturalism dates to the 1960s and remains unfinished — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 868