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PARTISAN REVlEW
for it implies that each group should be allowed to develop in its own
fashion without interference from other groups. The particularist model
is based on a binary opposition between dominant and subordinate
groups. The effective goal is to invert the opposition, so that those who
have dominated may feel what it means to be subordinate. For a "white
male" (the favorite target of particularist resentment) to adopt the mul–
ticultural agenda, he may have
to
transform his own cultural interests.
When he undertakes a study of the colonialized Other, he must be vigi–
lant not
to
allow the prejudices or ideological preconceptions of his
own culture to distort the object of his study. He may even be told that
distortion is unavoidable and that he had best leave the study of the
Other to the other, the notion being that one necessarily understands
any experience better from the inside than one does from the outside.
The epistemology that supports this notion is a subjectivism which allows
no place for objectivity. Objectivity assumes that one can see with clarity
and understanding by standing at a distance from the object. One need
only reflect upon the inadequacies and failures of self-understanding that
characterize most lives in order to see how vulnerable the subjectivist
view is. In any case, the dominant subject finds himself in something of a
bind. He must attempt to know the other but never presume to know
it, because his knowledge , given his cultural position , is unreliable. He
winds up mistrusting his own claims about the other and suspicious, in–
deed guilty, about his own social and cultural experiences.
His pleasure in Shakespeare may be diminished, if not destroyed,
when he discovers a colonialist motive in the plays. His reading of
Heart
oj Darkness
may be an indictment of its putative imperialist imagination,
which in turn may be a prelude to a decision that the text be eliminated
from the canon.
(Heart oj Darkness
remains a central text for its hostile
critics, however, as a powerful negative example for ideological instruc–
tion.) Jane Austen's marriage plots are transformed from vehicles of de–
light and even fulfillment to structures for the oppression of women.
What the particularist version of multiculturalism requires is not self-crit–
icism, which is essential to education, but self-revulsion. The effect of
particularist multiculturalism is to induce anxiety or guilt in "dominant"
groups, which must expiate for their sins against subordinate and now–
insurgent groups. I have characterized the situation in stark terms, but
not hyperbolically, I believe, in order to explain what may sometimes
appear as irrational defensiveness against a benign multiculturalism.
Because diversity might mean separatism and the internecine belligerence
that separatism breeds, thought must be given to an idea of community
or solidarity beyond difference . The model that Ravitch proposes is one
of dialogue rather than unresolvable conflict.
