Terms like multiculturalism and race can only be used under erasure yet remain indispensable.

Evidence

The term “multiculturalism” is now universally deployed. However, this proliferation has neither stabilized nor clarified its meaning. Like other related terms—for example, “race,” ethnicity, identity, diaspora—multiculturalism is now so discursively entangled that it can only be used “under erasure” (Hall 1996a). Nevertheless, since we have no less implicated concepts to think this problem with, we have no alternative but to go on using and interrogating it. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 306

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the deconstructive principle of using a term ‘under erasure’ — usable but crossed through — that is core to postcolonial critique of loaded categories.
• XREF: Connects to the reading purpose’s scaffolding task: ‘race,’ ethnicity, identity, diaspora are the very terms the Islamophobia field assumes. The under-erasure move applies to them equally.