differences. From this perspective, if diversity can only be secured and affirmed
within a broader unity, then multiculturalism is no more than a slight extension
to the prior politics of assimilation.^17Via Fanon, Bhabha criticizes first generation nationalism for repeating
the structures of imperialism upon which the foundation of the nation-
state depends. The homogeneity of the modern nation-state must be
called into question in order for decolonization fully to take place so
that the imperialist need for an essentialist version of the colonial self
is shown to be inadequate.
Bhabha demonstrates the emergence of post-colonial agency in
the twixt of displacement, demonstrating a crisis of signification
within the ëdouble-timeí and ëcontested spaceí of modern culture.^18
Against a liberal bourgeois politics of pluralist multicultural assimi-
lation, Bhabha posits, alongside Kristeva, an attention to the differ-
ential. This is comparable with the ëdialogic conceptioní envisaged by
Habermas whereby he argues: ëPolitics may not be assimilated to a
hermeneutical process of self-explication of a shared form of life or
collective identity.í The way in which the democracy of the modern
nation-state attempts to assimilate political discourses to ëthe clari-
fication of collective ethical self-understandingí such as that of ëthe
common goodí is put under pressure by Habermas, in the vein of
Bhabhaís critique of a liberal multicultural pluralism.^19
Bhabhaís anti-essentialist model of subjectivity has been criti-
cized by post-colonial nationalist critics who argue that it repeats the
very structures of violence that fracture and dissipate the knowledge
system of non-Western cultures. Vivek Dhareshwar and Manthia
Diawara have accused Bhabha of being postmodern and eurocentric,
as though postmodernism equals eurocentrism and thus imperialism.^20
17 Nikos Papastergiadis, ëAmbivalence in Cultural Theory: Reading Homi
Bhabhaís ìDissemiNationîí, Critical Studies, Writing the Nation: Self and
Country in Post-Colonial Imagination, ed., John C. Hawley (Amsterdam:
Rodopi, 1996), p.181.
18 Ibid., p.188.
19 Habermas, ëThree Normative Models of Democracyí, Democracy and
Difference, pp.23ñ4.
20 Cf. Vivek Dhareshwar, ëMimicry and/as Identity: Cultural Poetics of the
Colonial Habitusí, Mapping Colonialism, Group for the Study of Colonialism