Pluriculturalism: A Comparative Analysis

Traditional identity politics were premised on a veritable quagmire to create a singular space while ignoring one’s fluid and shifting positions within a complicated nexus of gender, race, religious, cultural, sexual and nationalist positionings. But more recent (and complex) cultural identity politics has gained ground as a matter of Becoming as well as of Being. Authentic identity has become a matter of choice, disposition, relevance and a feeling of rightness. It defines itself through a difference with that which is being resisted. It is the politics of recognising that all of us are composed of multiple social identities, not a singular one. Pluriculturalism is an approach to the self and others as complex, atypical rich beings which act and react from the perspective of multiple identifications. It is premised on the fact that we are all complexly constructed through different categories and different antagonisms; these may have an effect of locating us socially in multiple positions of marginality and subordination, but which do not yet operate …show more content…
Even though the essence of Kamini’s and Saroja’s shared experiences are the same for both of them, differences exist. Their memories of the significant people who shaped their lives and gave them a sense of identity and anchorage differ. Both Saroja and Kamini remember Kamini’s pure gladness whenever Dadda came home from his tours. Kamini recollects “Ten years ago, I had felt a simmering resentment against my mother. I believed she had wronged Dadda with her rigid anger, her unkind words. I refused to acknowledge the years that Ma had spent being a good wife, looking after her daughters , supervising the household, making sure that Dadda got his meals exactly on schedule” (Badami 84). Kamini’s memories and experiences of her childhood memories of her father and their servant Linda Ayah differ from those of