ABSTRACT
The positive theoretical work involves a critical-discursive articulation of alternative practices and values that are embedded in the often-damaged, fragmentary, hampered, or occluded works of minorities. The project of systematically articulating the implications of that subject-position a project of exploring the strengths and weaknesses, the affirmations and negations that are inherent in that position must be defined as the central task of the theory of minority discourse. Minority discourse must similarly be wary of 'pluralism', which, along with assimilation, continues to be the Great White Hope of conservatives and liberals alike. The intellectual appreciates the collective nature of minority cultures yet is cut off from those cultures by virtue of the relative privilege offered by educational institutions as part of their hegemonizing function. The study of minority cultures cannot be conducted without at least a relevant knowledge of sociology, political theory, economics, and history; otherwise, the specifics of the struggles embodied in cultural forms remain invisible.
