ABSTRACT
One of the striking changes wrought by living in a multicultural society, and writing about it, is the way it alters our relation to the concept of culture. For much of our lives we consider culture to be a handmaiden to history: a mirror, or a screen, to social reality. Culture is the symbolic realm through which we enact a range of imaginative aspirations that may subvert our mundane lives or exercise alternatives that supplement the leaden prose of the world. We may choose between cultural options, but we do not, strictly speaking, “choose” our culture, because it is the representational medium through which we know, or make, our choices in the first place. It is hardly surprising, then, that a strange self-consciousness comes upon us when our commitment to cultural rights in a multicultural society requires us to reflect upon the “right” to cultural choice.
