Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

Multiculturalism is a performance of Whiteness in neoliberal times. Multiculturalism is a performance of Whiteness for neoliberal times. Multiculturalism is a performance in the service of neoliberalism, establishing the neocolonial hegemony of Whiteness through the codes of appropriate speech in the service of democracy and the market. A performance that works through the norms of civility, decorum, and speech code to silence difference. The image of multiculturalism thus established at the global sites of neoliberal articulation is based on White ideas of acceptable speech, constituted in relationship to the market. A performance that works to uphold a neocolonial narrative that justifies violence, torture, and imperial invasion under the guise of democracy and promotion of freedom. As the multicultural narrative works to reproduce imperial power by paradoxically marking symbolic articulations of cultural voices as inappropriate and therefore unacceptable, it reproduces

[Drawn from Lydia Wilson's "What I discovered from interviewing imprisoned ISIS fighters" published in The Nation and retrieved from http://www.thenation.com/article/what-i-discovered-from-interviewing-isis-prisoners/ on November 15, 2015] Listening to the voice of a young brown body all of 26, married, two children, with a large family to support. Listening to the voice of a young brown body all of 26, a lost adolescence, to the occupation that brought Freedom. Listening to the voice of a young brown body all of 26, wrapped in faith, love for family, lost for meaning. Listening to the voice of a young brown body all of 26, that lost a father, disappeared, murdered, jailed, perhaps in one of your Guantanamo camps. Listening to the voice of a young brown body all of 26, in search of faith, in search of meaning, in search of dignity.

The acts of violence on the streets of Paris depict the ongoing role of religious extremism as a site of terror. As my Facebook wall is inundated with the flow of emotions showing support for the people of Paris, I am struck by an all-too-familiar narrative that emerges in a global network of emotions mediated through new communication technologies. At the heart of this network of emotions is the framing of the world into a binary, parsing out "freedom loving" spaces and spaces that "threaten freedom." The freedom loving spaces are White, cultured, and democratic, juxtaposed against the brownness of the primitive bodies that inhabit the freedom threatening spaces. The Facebook narrative of 13/11 invokes the 9/11 archetype. When Hollande promises us a "pitiless response," I am eerily reminded of George Bush's promise: "America and our friends and allies join with all those who want peace and security in the world, and we stand t

The best of my teachers pushed my comfort zones and tested my ability to learn, stretching my imagination and my intellectual capacities, and emboldening me to be open to experimenting. The classroom as a site of experimentation and new learning however is increasingly becoming rare, ironically in a global environment that has latched on to the buzzwords of innovation, creativity, and experimentation. An increasing threat globally to the spirit of education as experimentation and new learning is the reduction of education to the dictates of a homogeneous mass market. A mass market-based logic conceptualizes education as a commodity measured on fairly homogeneous sets of criteria applied uncritically. Excellence, innovation, multiculturalism, global outlook—these are the buzzwords for most universities catering to a global market, with little room for differentiation. Each of these terms, excellence, innovation, multiculturalism, global outlook, otherwise admirable m

It was during the 1970s when the world witnessed the uprising of Jamaican people against the neocolonial in the country to improve their social conditions. It is thrilling to see the unique bond the movement shared with Reggae, its worldwide popularity, and how it reshaped the meaning of the whole movement. It is known that reggae music increased the visibility and popularity of the Rastafarian movement worldwide, but it also made the movement impure and gave rise to a new group called the pseudo-rastafarians, perpetuated the nuances of the two ideological groups - political and religious rastafarians into irreconcilable rift.   In its journey from the primitive studios in Jamaica to the state-of-the-art studios in the United States or Great Britain, the reggae music lost its true essence of the movement, and the portrayal of the Rastafarian movement metamorphosed into a pan-African movement. Unlike early roots reggae, the worldwide popular reggae music projected the Rastafarians,

Cultural studies has taken much inspiration from postcolonial studies, and adopted critique as its main strategy. Critiquing, although a powerful tool, especially in creating counter discourses, whether it is to counter colonial historiography or neoliberal consumerist logics, it is basically a tool in the hands of the literate intellectuals having abilities to express the critique eloquently. How does then cultural studies relate to the indigenous struggles and everyday lives of people? How does the project of cultural studies change the material conditions that facilitate neoliberal capitalism? As Pezzulo (2011) contends, drawing inspiration from Grossberg, that there is a need for pragmatic practices of social change (p.127). A necessary shift from postcolonial studies, according to me is to engage not in historical narratives, but with the contemporary ones, where change can be effected in the present. Cultural studies stands to offer important guidance for this age