ABSTRACT
In a provocative essay for the journal Critical Inquiry (1997), the American academic Stanley Fish attempts to distinguish between two versions of multiculturalism. The first of these, says Fish, is so-called ‘boutique multiculturalism’, and is typified by such celebratory but largely cosmetic fare as ‘ethnic restaurants [and] weekend festivals, and [by] high profile flirtations with the other in the manner satirized by Tom Wolfe under the rubric of “radical chic”’ (Fish 1997:378). The other is ‘strong multiculturalism’, of the sort that does not wear its tolerance lightly, and which is ‘strong because it values difference in and for itself rather than as a manifestation of something basically more constitutive’ (Fish 1997:382). Whereas ‘the boutique multiculturalist’, according to Fish,
will accord a superficial respect to cultures other than his own, a respect he will withdraw when he finds the practices of a culture irrational or inhumane, a strong multiculturalist will want to accord a deep respect to all cultures at their core, for he believes that each has the right to form its own identity and nourish its own sense of what is rational and humane.
