Multiculturalism and Publicity

Maria Lugones

Hypatia, Volume 15, Number 3, Summer 2000, pp. 175-181 (Article)

Published by Indiana University Press

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SYMPOSIUM

Multiculturalism and Publicity

MARA LUGONES

This review considers the process of expansion of subjectivity that Mara Pa Lara introduces in Moral Textures: Feminist Narratives in the Public Sphere. As the complexity of Laras understanding of multiculturalism is exhibited, the process of achievement of self-realization and autonomy is critiqued as inconsistent with the hidden transcript/public transcript distinction. The we to be fashioned intersubjectively in the dialogical process of subjective expansion cannot countenance that crucial distinction to the understanding of those narratives.

I read Mara Pa Laras Moral Textures: Feminist Narratives in the Public Sphere (1999) at a time when I was considering other Habermasian proposals that attempt to resolve the problem of plurality/diversity/multiculturalism. Laras is the most nuanced and complex approach I considered. In addressing her text, I have enunciated three sets of related questions that focus on issues related to a particular understanding of multiculturalism. The understanding of multiculturalism from which I write highlights asymmetries of power between dominated and dominator. The dominant and subaltern cultures are imbricated: the practices, ways, perceptions, strategies, and other cultural productions of both dominators and dominated are interrelated, and each contains reference to the specicities of their asymmetrical relation to power. Ella Shohat and Robert Stam have called this understanding of multiculturalism polycentric (Shohat and Stam 1994, 48). It frankly sides epistemologically with those with double consciousness. Social groups or aggregates are crisscrossed by relations of power; thus, though there are subaltern groups, none are mono-cultural or mono-logical, but complex, heterogenous, pluri-logical. Social reality is thus understood as multiple rather than fragmented. It is not
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constituted by what Nancy Fraser calls cultural variations (Fraser 1996, 2034). It is thus in sharp contrast with what I shall call diversity of equal atomic cultures multiculturalism. This version of multiculturalism I take to rest on a ction either at the ideal communicative level or at the descriptive level. Focusing on that understanding of multiculturalism, I address Mara Pa Laras particular version of counter-publicity with three sets of questions: First, do oppressed subjects achieve self-realization and autonomy through a process of public recognition of their expanded subjectivities? Is that recognition preceded by a process of expansion and conguration of subjectivity in model narratives? Does a publicist directionto use Frasers termguide the expansion through the narrative process? (Fraser 1996). Or is the attainment of recognition not necessarily starting from a publicist intention that is addressed not just to subaltern groups, but in a wider direction? Is Laras project one of suggesting a politics in the sense of a political strategy against oppression or a proposal of an ideal conception of justice? Second, can Laras proposal accommodate the infrapolitical? In both James Scotts (1990) and in Robin Kelleys (1994) senses? A way into this question is to discuss whether Ralph Ellisons Invisible Man (1995), Robin Kelleys Race Rebels (1994), Audre Lordes Sister Outsider (1984), or Gloria Anzaldas Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987), among others, do what Lara is understanding as the process at the intersection of aesthetics and morality, self-realization and self-determination, authenticity and autonomy. None of these authors seems to me to have the proper publicist intention, but that may not matter. They dont even seem to have a counter-public intention, since the counter-public intention must ultimately be a publicist one, if recognition is understood as complete only within a universalist understanding of public. I understand that subaltern publics for Lara must aim to reach recognition from both oppressors and oppressed. Finally, does Laras use of monocultural/multicultural include relations of power between heterogenous, complex, open-ended groups of people who have developed cultural practices in relation to each other, in relation to oppression, and in complex in-group relations? At what level of conception? At the ideal level? Are these relations of power constituting the cultures in Laras use of multi-cultural? I add to the particular understanding of multiculturalismpolycentric multiculturalisman emphasis on infrapolitics, because both of these interpretive frameworks are important to me as I theorize a politics of resistance to intermeshed oppressions. As I read Lara, this is an appropriate theoretical location from which to interrogate her own position. Infrapolitics is a term introduced by James Scott in Domination and the Arts of Resistance (1990) and Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (1987). The phenomena he describes are familiar and have been

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given several theoretical accounts, my own included. Scott says, I shall use the term public transcript as a shorthand way of describing the open interaction between subordinates and those who dominate. The public transcript, where it is not positively misleading, is unlikely to tell the whole story about power relations (Scott 1990, 2). Public, in Scotts use, refers to action that is openly avowed to the other party in the power relationship. If subordinate discourse in the presence of the dominant is a public transcript, I shall use the term hidden transcript to characterize discourse that takes place offstage, beyond the direct observation by powerholders (Scott 1990, 4). The frontier between dominant and subordinate transcripts is a zone of constant struggle between dominant and subordinatenot a solid wall (1990, 14). Besides the most obvious forms of hidden transcript, Scott unveils a third realm of subordinate discourse that lies strategically between the openly avowed to those in power and that which takes place beyond the perceptual eld of the dominator. This is a politics of disguise and anonymity that takes place in public view but is designed to have a double meaning or to shield the identity of the actors. Rumor, gossip, folktales, jokes, songs, rituals, codes, euphemismsa good part of folk culture of subordinate groupst this description (19). Infrapolitics designates the wide variety of low prole forms of resistance that dare not speak in their own name (1990, 19). Scott, together with a number of authors, believes that not enough attention has been paid to the infrapolitical. He believes it to be a highly effective form of resistancewithin certain interesting limits. He also tells us that the analysis of infrapolitics offers us a way of addressing the issue of hegemonic incorporation (19). Robin Kelley tells us that he chose the title Race Rebels (1994) for his book because he looks at forms of resistance organized and unorganized that have remained outside of (and even critical of) what weve come to understand as the key gures and institutions in African American politics (Kelley 1994, 4). Kelley proposes that this turn redenes the political. The historical actors I write about are literally race rebels and thus have been largely ignored by chroniclers of black politics and labor activism (1994, 5). The title points to the centrality of race in the minds and experiences of African Americans. Race, particularly a sense of blackness, not only gures prominently in the collective identities of black working people but substantially shapes the entire nations conceptions of class and gender (5). Part of what Race Rebels explores is the extent to which black working people struggled to maintain and dene a sense of racial identity and solidarity (5). He rejects the technique of playing down class and gender differences in Black history and mainstreaming representative Negroes. He not only questions whether a handful of representative Negroes can speak for the mass of working-class African Americans, but also suggests that some of the most dynamic struggles take place outside

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indeed sometimes in spite ofestablished organizations and institutions (7). Subordinates, subalterns challenge those in power by constructing a hidden transcript, a dissident political culture that manifests itself in daily cultural practices. Like Scott (1990), Kelley is interested in that third realm of subordinate discourse, the hidden transcript emerging on stage in spaces controlled by the powerful, almost but not quite always in disguised forms (1994, 8). Kelley does not articulate a fourth realm of subordinate discourse that is also on stage, though he gives wonderful examples of it. The fourth realm I would characterize by the absence of deviousness, though there may be a necessary duplicity to the discourse. The public transcript is often conceptually loaded in such a way that the cognitive content of the hidden transcript remains coded, unintelligible. Decoding it requires taking sides, journeying politically and conceptually outside the parameters of what makes subjection possible and justiable. This journey would enable the oppressor to understand the subaltern as subjects even if subjected. It would enable them to understand resistance to oppression and the formation of identities in resistance. For example, the public script that regulates the perception of youth of color in U.S. cities as criminals ignores the social placing of youth of color outside the economic mainstream. Criminalization forms a veil that hides very publicly, on stage, transcripts of self-afrmation and creative resistance, even if not autonomy or self-realization. The creative, resistant, world behind that veil is very hard to access because of the layers of cognitive barriers placed in the path of anyone steeped in the public transcript. Ellisons Invisible Man (1995), Lordes Sister Outsider (1984), and Gloria Anzaldas Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987) are interesting and inuential texts from the point of view of the infrapolitical and help us look at Laras project critically. Though each one of these texts is conceptually complex, more complex than my present discussion of them can begin to countenance, each author contributes concepts, central to their narratives of self, that are important to the issues raised by Laras proposal. Ellison focuses on invisibility, Anzalda on border-dwelling, Lorde on the interdependence of mutual non-dominant differences. Each of them uses a discourse that is not just outside the masters tools, but also outside the masters perceptual eld and the masters perceptual possibilities if the perceiver maintains a loyalty to an oppressive sociality. Each of them invokes a sociality to be fashioned out of what is valuable in the hidden transcript and in the intersection between the hidden and the public transcriptsthat space that is Scotts, Kelleys, and my own focus. Before answering my questions, I want to attempt to bring out briey my understanding of what in Lara is relevant to the answers. In Moral Textures, Lara replaces the abstract Kantian sense of autonomy with a concrete one by

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linking self-determination and self-realization. Self-realization requires expansion of subjectivity. Differentiation among subjects, far from being understood as a barrier to this expansion, is seen as its foundation. This expansion is performed through the introduction of life narratives in the public sphere. Life narratives make it possible for subalterns to envision the need for political discourses (1999, 59). The literary public thus becomes the arena for the performative illocutionary forces displayed in those new texts and for creating new ways of living. That is for Lara how the historical transformation of womens self-conception rst entered the public sphere (1999, 59). Dialogue between author and public is necessary for recognition. Engaging the other in an understanding of the ego is crucial here; disclosure is crucial to identity formation. Self-realization, then, involves both responsibility and self-reexive consciousness. Here lies the link with self-determination, with autonomy, in Laras concrete understanding of autonomy: One cannot be self-determining unless one is capable of envisioning a self-realizing project (86). Autonomy, thus, requires public recognition (87). Recognition is complete only when acceptance of the public has taken place (82). If differences are necessary for subjective expansion, their value must be asserted in front of others and the dialogue must not only show what makes one different but also that those differences are part of what should be considered worthy (156, 157). Groups needing to be heard must conquer channels of communication to call attention to the way they have been treated; recognition is thus a struggle (151, 157). It is their descriptions of what is missing in their lives that make their claims meaningful and understandable to others (151). But the achievement of solidarity must form a bridge to the others understanding of what are considered to be worthy features and needs of human beings. (157) As she fashions an understanding of recognition, Lara proposes a universalist model. She attempts to theorize what she understands as womens achievements in the public sphere. She sees the immediate goal of achieving systematic and free communication in public spaces, but she interprets the aim not only as denouncing the exclusion of women from public spaces, but as recovering those spaces in light of the revolution required to transform concepts and practices in social, political, and democratic life (1999, 149). That is, it isnt just about inclusion but about an extension of subjectivities that constitutes a transformed we. Laras universalism lies precisely in this expansion of the we produced intersubjectively, a we which is thus, necessarily, not homogenous. This is a normative we understood by Lara as in permanent tension with the declarative we, a tension that allows us to thematize what is heterogenous, other, different, incongruent, unfamiliar (154). Universalism is thus an open-ended ideal. It is this complex sense of universality through recognition that creates moral textures.

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Let me say that one of Laras important contributions, from where I stand, is her careful dialogical, performative construction of autonomous and selfdetermining subjectivities. Though she does employ a normative ideal, her emphasis is on process. She does not perform a leap to the policy maker position; she does not recommend either a politics of difference nor a universalism that afrms what Fraser calls cultural variations (1996). Thus she does not commit herself to an equality of atomic equal cultures multiculturalism at the ideal, end state level. Because her ideal is processual, it can take in differences more concretely, critically, and heartily than either Youngs (1990) or Frasers (1996). Having said that, I dont think that Laras project can appreciate the complexities and importance of the hidden transcript as a dissident political culture in resistance to oppression. It does not really have conceptual room for the varieties of hidden transcripts. The project needs to elude the public transcript/hidden transcript distinction. Obviously, it cannot side with the public transcript. But it cannot side with the hidden transcript either, because as hidden in any of its senses, it cannot be addressed to the oppressor: either it is purposefully outside the oppressors perceptual eld, or it is on stage but disguised, or it is hidden by the public transcript. The key terms: address the other, dialogue between author and public, claim recognition, subject ones point of view to the analysis and consideration of others in the public arena, or even form a bridge to the others understanding of what are considered to be worthy features and needs of human beings are all inconsistent with the infrapolitical since they require a publicist direction, an addressing the public, including ones oppressors. One could think of a restricted public, but I dont see Lara recommending this as a political direction. She thinks that enclaves and monads are bad because they dichotomize the relation between oppressor and oppressed. Yet, though the relations between oppressors and oppressed are enormously complex, they are real. Lara issues no injunction or methodology for the oppressor to journey to the world of the oppressed, so as to expand his or her subjectivity. This would be compatible with the hidden/public transcript distinction in the midst of oppression. It seems possible for the oppressed to create a new story of self, but it is within the hidden transcript that their narratives of freedom, resistance, and understanding wrongs are articulated in a concrete vein. Maybe the active role for the oppressed should lie in moving in resistance to oppression from within the hidden transcript through narratives that describe the perils, strategies, possibilities, and conditions for coalition and for an expanded subjectivity. It is here that a narrative of invisibility is very powerful, clarifying, as one is negotiating life in both the public and the hidden transcripts. Border-dwelling conceptualizes a standpoint, a location, a condition for germinating an emancipatory sociality. Interdependence of mutual non-dominant differences ar-

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ticulates a conception and condition for coalition, one that requires an expansion of subjectivity through a putting aside the conceptual parameters and institutions that organize life under oppression. Foregrounding invisibility, border-dwelling, or interdependence of non-dominant differences can also inspire the oppressor to journey away from the relationality of oppression, but the inspiration cannot be the outcome of being addressed by the author, since the logic of the hidden transcript does not permit that possibility.

REFERENCES
Anzalda, Gloria. 1987. Borderlands/La frontera: The new Mestiza. San Francisco: Spinsters/Aunt Lute. Ellison, Ralph. 1995. Invisible man. New York: Vintage. Fraser, Nancy. 1996. Justice interruptus. New York: Routledge. Kelley, Robin D. G. 1994. Race rebels. New York: The Free Press. Lara, Mara Pa. 1999. Moral textures: Feminist narratives in the public sphere. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lorde, Audre. 1984. Sister outsider. New York: Crossing Press. Scott, James C. 1987. Weapons of the weak: Everyday forms of peasant resistance. New Haven: Yale University Press. . 1990. Domination and the arts of resistance: Hidden transcripts. New Haven: Yale University Press. Shohat, Ella, and Robert Stam. 1994. Unthinking eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the media. New York: Routledge. Young, Iris Marion. 1990. Justice and the politics of difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press.