Multicultural Politics of Recognition and Postcolonial Citizenship: Rethinking the Nation (Postcolonial Politics)

"This book examines claims for recognition of cultural difference from immigrant and Indigenous minorities, highlighting the ways in which they intersect with ideas of national community. Busbridge argues that there is an important, albeit under-explored, relationship between nation and multicultural politics of recognition. Drawing on the Australian context, the book explores how nation features as a productive, if somewhat ambivalent, discursive resource in contemporary Muslim and Aboriginal struggles to be recognised. In demanding recognition, minorities enter into the business of ‘making the nation’ by positing alternative conceptions of national identity, culture and belonging that are more attentive to their differences and claims. This dynamic is engaged as an expression of ‘postcolonial citizenship’. Postcolonial citizenship is imagined in terms of the ways in which minority groups actualise multicultural realities through rewriting ideas of national community. It underlines the critical importance of revising the power relations that deem some groups ‘more national’ and others less so – and which, in Western multicultural societies, are typically tied to notions of the ‘West’ and its ‘others’. This book is an important conceptual, theoretical and political intervention that brings postcolonialism and multiculturalism into dialogue on the increasingly potent issues of nation and national identity. It will be of great interest to scholars and students of sociology, politics, postcolonial studies, culture, identity and nation."-- Provided by publisher Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Table of Contents -- Preface -- 1. Rethinking the nation -- From recognition to postcolonial politics -- Multicultural politics of recognition -- Postcolonial citizenship: between integration and separation -- From Australia ... beyond? -- Plan of the book -- Notes -- References -- 2. Conceptualising nation: Discourse, democracy and postcolonial debate -- Nations and nationalism -- Nationalism and postcolonial theory -- Nation and Australia -- Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- 3. Postcolonial politics of recognition? -- Recognition, selfhood and identity -- Recognition, politics and difference -- Recognition as ideology and the postcolonial critique -- Fanon's recognition -- Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- 4. Contingent universals and shifting particulars: Reorienting recognition struggles -- From 'dead' to 'living' universality -- Postcolonial feminism and the struggle for recognition -- Feminism to nation: reorienting multicultural recognition struggles -- Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- 5. Beyond clashing civilisations: Muslim revisions of recognition in popular culture -- Misrecognition between the transnational and the national -- Popular culture, nation and the politics of recognition -- Beyond clashing civilisations -- Notes -- References -- 6. Aboriginal Australians and recognition politics: Reconciliation, apology, sovereignty -- Aboriginal recognition in the settler nation -- Reconciliation and recognition -- Nation, ideology and politics -- Saying sorry -- Recognition and Aboriginal sovereignty -- Notes -- References -- 7. Thinking postcolonial citizenship -- Multicultural citizenship and postcolonial citizenship as supplement -- Postcolonial citizenship and postcolonialism -- References -- Index Rethinking the nation : between recognition and postcolonial politics -- Conceptualising nation : discourse, democracy and postcolonial debate -- Postcolonial politics of recognition? -- Contingent universals and shifting particulars : reorienting recognition struggles -- Beyond clashing civilisations : Muslim revisions of recognition in popular culture -- Aboriginal Australians and recognition politics : reconciliation, apology, sovereignty -- Thinking postcolonial citizenship