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

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.