Multicultural imagined communities : cultural difference and national identity in the USA and Australia

![CDATA[In the last few years, the question of national identity has become an intense site of concern, debate and struggle throughout the world. Emerging from this problematisation is a growing awareness of what Homi Bhabha calls ‘the impossible unity of the nation as a symbolic force’. 2 The nation can assume symbolic force precisely in so far as it is represented as a unity; yet national unity is always ultimately impossible precisely because it can be represented as such only through a suppression and repression, symbolic or otherwise, of difference. It is in this context that ‘multiculturalism’ has become such a controversial issue. As a discourse, multiculturalism can broadly – and without, for the moment, further specification – be understood as the recognition of co-existence of a plurality of cultures within the nation. Celebrated by some and rejected by others, mnlticulturalism is controversial precisely because of its real and perceived (in)compatibility with national unity.]]