In “In the Name of Love, Ahmed
reminds us of the ways that some speak of love by making hateful
objects of those who “threaten” their way of life. She wants to
move further, however, by arguing that it is not just in the
discourses of those whom we might call “hate groups” that this
happens. It also happens even in what she terms “places [the use of
love] has been seen as more beneolent, such as in discourses of
multiculturalism” (122). She seems to argue that although the
purposes of the use of love in arguments for multiculturalism seem to
be vastly different from the purposes of arguments of white
supremacists, some of the same mechanisms are at work, namely that
there MUST be something created by love discourse that becomes an
ideal love object and that the boding of groups in love for this
ideal requires that something or someone(s) fail to meet the ideal.
Ahmed starts with Freudian notions of
love to build her way to this ultimate argument by addressing
identification and idealization. She categorizes identification as
“love as being” and idealization as “love as having” (123).
Though she acknowledges Freud's idea that the ego ideal is contructed
in connection with the process of identification, Ahmed does not make
this process as neat and tidy as Freud who claims that the ideal love
object is produced by the process of idealization. Instead Ahmed gets
there by claiming that the ideal object is produced, not in the
process of idealization as separate from the process of
identification, but as intimately tied to identification in a way
that cannot be neatly separated. If I want to be like you, then I
must have what you have. In order to be the ego ideal that I have
created—the lovable version of myself—then I mus have that which
supports that image of myself. I desire that which is appropriate to
the image of myself I would like to see. So, the ideal love object,
in a sense, is still the reflection of the ego ideal.
In her understanding of nation as
ideal object of love, Ahmed purports that individuals are drawn
together around a “likeness” that they share and from that,
create a collective ideal. In multiculturalism, the ideal is not
openly that 'we' are protecting our nation which we love from 'they'
who are trying to destroy it. It is instead that 'we' who make up
this nation are inclusive of others who do not look like us and that
makes us the nation we have come to be. Ahmed argues that while this
sounds much more benign, there are investments made in order to
maintain it that do some of the same work that the white supremacist
narratives do. Love, after all, does involve a desire for a return on
an investment. In many cases, that return is never received. Part of
the requirement that love be reproductive is so that the possibility
of return is present for future generations even if not for the self.
The narratives about why the return does not happen in a timely
matter are often wrapped in a narrative of threat , injury or
hindrance (apparent in the white supremacist writings and rantings).
Ahmed argues that these same
rationales for the non-return of the investments are present in the
discourses of multiculturalism in the UK. Though the narrative of the
UK in its vision of itself as a multicultural nation is that “we”
embrace difference completely, the naturalization process for asylum
seekers often requires that some parts of that difference be shed in
favor a process of “becoming” British. Also those who are already
in the UK must participate in the “we” by living peacefully with
one another and not 'segregating' themselves, but instead being part
of the great multicultural 'we.' The problem is that the segregation
mentioned in the larger narrative was never the personal choice of
the segregated, but the result of centuries of racism and
ghettoization. Unrest between racial minorities and poor whites are
referred to in the larger discourse as the result of people failing
to be part of the 'we' as defined by the discourse without reference
to the deep seated racial and economic issues that existed between
these groups in the first place—before the great multicultural
'we.' came into existence. The national ideal—functioning on some
level as both ego ideal and ideal love object—has not returned the
love investment in the form of the promise of peace and harmony. It
cannot be acknowledged as the failure of the nation or of the
multicultural bent of the nation, so it must be constructed as the
failure of some others to assimilate. These others are stripped of
their uniqueness as they are lumped together as those who will not
cooperate. For the ideal of the embrace of difference to survive, the
uniqueness of the situations that cause threats must be overlain with
a narrative of failure.
Ok so what does ANY of this have to do
with reproductive rights in America???? Well let's see.Marina asked, “Why all of a sudden
are all these old white guys obsessed with talking about rape?” Wellll PLEASE watch to at least 6:00 into this and the read as I agree with Rachel Madow :-)
I
would contend that it began with the traditional discourses of love
of nation and a woman's
role in nation-building (which is itself
highly invested in the process of identification with the
Judeo-Christian patriarchs) that some have deployed in their
narratives. In this narrative, the U. S. is the city on a hill—the
beacon of light for all the world to follow toward salvation (of
course this salvation is not religious but ultimately to be had
through democracy and capitalism). The promise of the nation is the
good life filled with freedom and prosperity. The hetero-love-logic
Ahmed challenges in Freud is at work in the promise and its
prescriptions for behavior. In order to call the promise into
existence, everyone should seek to reproduce the greatness of this
nation both through the intensification of love AND actual
reproduction.
For some segment of the population,
the imperative to reproduce means that no one who can
reproduce—create a future—should make a choice that does anything
else. Personal freedom—one of the promises that we are in constant
anticipation and defense of—must be suspended for those who would
choose to live in a way that is not reproductive. Therefore, it is a
disruption (in the minds of the proponents of these ideas) of the
ability of the nation as idealized object of love, to return on our
investment for anyone to choose a non-productive activity. In this
way, women who choose abortions, doctors who perform abortions,
lawmakers who support a woman's right to an abortion (and don't
forget the queers who just choose an 'unproductive' life) are all
threats to the nation or at the very least, failing to meet the ideal
vision of the nation as strong and growing. If the woman's role in
the nation is to see after the children as the future of the nation,
these women who seek to reproduce only when and how it is convenient
for them are hindrances to the nation becoming the ideal love object.
Many of those who speak out against
abortion do so on what they call religious grounds. I would posit
that even this is about an ego ideal/ideal object moment. Those who
speak out against abortion on religious grounds would like to see
themselves in the places of those who were offered a nation of
offspring blessed and favored by God in the bible. If what we have
invests who we are, then these men—in order to move closer to their
ego ideals—must 'have' women who are willing and ready to produce
as many children as they can as the women in the bible who prayed for
children did. If the men who are having these conversations about
abortion from religious perspectives are to be the ancient
patriarchs, their ideal love objects must be women who see barrenness
as disgrace. The women who speak up and out for abortions are a
threat to the ego ideal by threatening to influence the ideal love
objects these men have created to bolster their images of themselves.
The women who sought abortions for a time were able to comfortably
fill the role of failure/threat in the narrative of love for nation
constructed as both political and religious imperative.
But
something...somewhere....changed....
(This is my last post so pardon the
preachy moment)
I would posit that the investments in
love for nation as ideal began to return, but not with the boundaries
that some expected. All this talk of freedom, liberty, equality began
to return in a way that gave voice to the same sentiments but
different speakers. Slowly, but surely, with its referent still in
place, the image of the ideal began to change. The hailing of others
into participation and maintenance of the ideal allowed others to
make impressions on the ideal until “freedom and justice for all
{white men of a certain class}” started to move toward a more
encompassing vision. The vision, for some, changed, but the discourse
survived. It survived, but with the re-interpreting of religious
texts and re-voicing of visions of freedom and democracy, it was
forever altered. It survived, but was sung no longer in the voices of
a single group and those who challenged the change found themselves
in a different space.
A narrative of love often blooms in
spaces of perceived loss, as we have seen in several of our readings,
and this situation is no different. As the “love of nation”
discourse was claimed by other voices, some of those initial voices
began to hold more tightly to their claim on “authentic” love of
nation. As the return that they had expected came back looking very
different, as Ahmed suggests happens (131), their investment
increased. Affect increased. The imperative to reproduce their vision
of the nation as ideal increased and suddenly, as one part of this
increased investment, nation building rhetoric (both political and
religious) including abortion-as-evil, was alive and well
again....but STILL, I hear Marina asking, “why the obsession with
rape???”
Again, my contention can be found in
Ahmed's theory. As the national ideal reshaped itself through the
participation of different voices, that original discourse eventually
came to be openly challenged on a regular basis. As the original
discourse continued to demand that women give birth without concern
for themselves because it was, “the right thing” for the nation,
the reshaping voices began to more insistently ask why? Because,
despite its reshaping, the core of he original discourse—especially
that part of it which found its origin in religious
identification—was still alive and well, the questions about the
argument began to be moral. If this is truly a moral issue then what
happens when the moral dilemma is not clear cut? What if it is muddy?
What if a woman is raped? Must she STILL bear the child for the good
of the nation? Out of loyalty to God? Opponents of the anti-abortion
movement asked a question and the anti-abortion movement began to
attempt answers.
This is where (at some risk) the
content of “Queer Feelings” becomes helpful. I will not lay out
Ahmed's entire argument, but will pay close attention to her
observations of comfort/norms and how they have operated within
queer culture. Ahmed views heteronormativity as the result of the
labor of repetition. It is the repetition of hetero messaging and
placement in the world that creates norms and therefore a space of
comfort for those who fit the norm and discomfort for those who do
not. The space that is created barely ruffles the body that fits
into it comfortably—in fact extends this body—but makes
noticeable impressions on the body that does not.
This uncomfortable body, however, is
not completely helpless because as the uncomfortable place impresses
upon it, it also impresses upon the space. The uncomfortable body is
capable of affecing the comfortable (for others) space, but is often
called upon to labor in the interest of mainting the space of comfort
for those who fit the norm (i.e. public displays of affection frowned
upon when the lovers are queer). Ahmed argues, the negotaitions that
queer people have to make in the ways that they approach the
discomfort created by heteronormativity are complex and should not be
always viewed in terms of assimilation vs. transgression with one
being good and another evil.
While I do not mean to co-opt queer
theory in defense of anti-abortion speech, there is one point that
might be interesting from which to consider this conversation. If
these men in the videos above are truly operating within a narrative
of loss in which they are having their nation stolen from them and
are fighting to take it back (pretty much the party line of the tea
party), then they likely understand themselves as being pushed into a
corner—marginalized—because of their refusal to assimilate to the
'new regime' of norms. They are being threatened by a new “norm”
that requires tolerance as inherent in the new ideal. In the space
created by this new norm, these men are uncomfortable. In a space
where the buzz words on which they have always been able to
depend—'life' and 'family' (with very firm definitions) as
imperative to love of nation—have been redefined and are no longer
sufficient justifications for certain ideas in and of themselves,
these men find themselves scrambling. And just like those who find
themselves uncomfortable with heteronormative claims on ideal love,
these men had to negotiate these spaces. In the space of the new
norms, these men—having been asked a difficult question and facing
the expectation of an answer—might have been doing their best to
maintain their right to be in this uncomfortable space. I AM NOT
arguing that they actually inhabit the space as uncomfortable in the
same way that queer people do—that they are truly caught up in a
space where norms have rendered them almost non-beings—but that
they FEEL like they have and therefore are reacting in a way similar
to the ways that some queer people do in spaces of discomfort. They
are refusing to assimilate—refusing to do the work of maintaining
the comfort of those who fit the 'norm' (tolerance)—as a way of
demanding space to be.
What I wonder—since we are talking
about affect within which (if we really follow Ahmed's work
throughout the semester) is sometimes propelled by mimetic slides—is
how the one I just exercised would function to make a steeped and
dyed queer activist angry that I even compared these guys to them at
all (I mean I'm kind of pissed about it myself :-).
- Looking at the arguments made in “Queer Feelings” about the ways in which heteronormativity is perceived to have produced the queer as a non-being or as having and un-livable life, can these concepts be translatable to any other groups with regard to relationships to norms? Why or why not?
- If the work of maintaining the ideal love object (in the form of the nation) relies on a group who does not meet the ideal to explain the failure of the ideal to present as a return on the investment in love, how does, (as I posit is the case with the anti-abortion comments) the voice of the failed other sometimes transform the ideal itself? (this could be a whole paper, but what are some contributing factors?)
Alaenor, I would like to begin by addressing the first question you have posed here, because it is the very thing with which jumped out at me over and over while reading Ahmed’s “Queer Feelings” chapter. I kept asking myself, do we not all feel as though we fail to meet certain standards of normalcy and internalize forms of guilt associated with those “shortcomings?” Do we not all feel “queer” from time to time? While some are more vocal about their discomfort (whether homo- or hetero-), by being “norms” there are expectations on all of us and a felt sense of rejection and failure when we do not meet the arbitrary and never standardized standards of standards. While I do not feign to believe that the discomfort I feel when my grandmother asks when I’m getting married is comparable to the discomfort felt recently by friend Jon when asked the same question by the same relative at his brother’s wedding is the same or even comparable, to assume the social pressure effects only one group in a detrimental way is overly simplistic. And I think Ahmed would agree with this. Hetero-normative expectations limit the lives and actions of heterosexual “deviants” as well— bachelor(ette)s, polygamists, exhibitionists, voyeurists, sadomasichists, etc. Essentially, any “non-productive” forms of sexuality and those who practice them are stigmatized as threatening to the social body. But also we should note that the expectations of those involved in these and other sexual activities are effected by factors such as race, gender, and age. We should, therefore, acknowledge that the discomfort felt by an individual is contingent upon a number of factors and does not simply result from his/her sexual preferences. As Ahmed says, “Discomfort is…not about assimilation or resistance, but about inhabiting norms differently” (155).
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, how the uncomfortable, i.e. the “queer,” handles his/her position, recognizing the boundaries between his/her own body and others, is not something that is just socially constraining. It is also constructive. It generates the very connectedness to one’s queer identity. And therefore, “Queer politics needs to stay open to different ways of doing queer in order to maintain the possibility that differences are not converted into failure” (154). In other words, there should be no queer standard, no queer norm. Queer-ness, thus, is based on an attachment of non-attachment, an attachment based on hetero-normative displacement, rather than a new set of expectations. By functioning in this way, queer politics leaves open the possibility of transforming the hetero-normative rather than forcing the assimilation of the uncomfortable into new norms.
ReplyDeleteQueer politics therefore is about more than homosexuality. It is about all “outsiders.” All “social deviants”: LGBT, the physically and mentally handicapped, criminals, etc. are all implicated by this form of political action. It places greater agency in the individual who is no longer forced to either consent or rebel. (S)he is free to become whomever (s)he would like and in the process transform norms themselves. But perhaps this is an overly optimistic reading of queer politics (or perhaps it is an overly optimistic political theory). As Foucault says in ‘Discipline and Punish,’ “We are much less Greeks than we believe. We are neither in the amphitheatre, nor on the stage, but in the panoptic machine, invested by its effects of power, which we bring to ourselves since we are part of its mechanism.” To have the freedom to lead the lives we’d like to lead and, on top of that, to recognize the legitimacy of lives “chosen” by others means to occupy a privileged position somehow outside of the panoptic eye. While we can and should recognize that, yes, norms do change—take for example the changing ages at which men and women in “normal” heterosexual relationships have gotten married, had children, entered the workforce, etc. over the past 30, 60, 90 years—yet, what caused these changes may have less to do with human agency and political action than economic pressures and incentives.
Transgression is the act of crossing the accepted boundary. The terms and conditions of acceptability vary depending on the cultural or sociopolitical context in a kind of eye-of the beholder sense. The eye(s) of those beholding, whether it be the individual family member who looks upon an act in disdain or disgust or the society at large have agreed in principle to accept a normalized construction of doing. It is the performance of the body in question that determines whether the act fits in the acceptable realm of actions. When we talk about the love of self, the love of the nation, community etc. it is predicated on certain expectations of performativity. So when General Petreaus the guardian of all things secret and covert in our society cannot manage to keep his extramarital affairs secret, we recognize that a boundary has been crossed. It is one thing to commit the moral sin of adultery, we generally can forgive that (Bill Clinton) but when it is your job to protect the nation’s secrets and we find out that your personal secrets cannot be kept, this becomes an unquestioned breach of your duty and a failure to perform your role. Jerry Sandusky was a mentor and role model in the manliest of men’s sports so it is doubly troubling that he would use his position of influence to sexually assault young boys, crossing boundaries of heteronormativity and the boundaries of adult-child relationships. Would it have been less surprising if he were a ballet instructor? What if he dressed up in a big red costume and spoke in an annoying high pitched voice? (Elmo) Maybe not depending on your orientation to the context at hand. Regardless of individual circumstances, we find out on a daily basis that maybe these transgressions are more normal than we anticipated.
ReplyDeleteThe issue is when these boundaries are crossed our love can quickly turn into hate. How could you do such a thing? Like the lover scorned our trust and love revolves around the thin line, easily permeable and extremely difficult to mend. Love is all about the expectations of performance and the idealized notion of self, whether it is the individual, ethnicity, race or nation. To many, the United States of America represents specific ideals of morality, leadership, strength, courage and stability. Real Americans look a certain way, have sex and reproduce a certain way, in other words the USA performs a certain way in this ideal. Of course not all Americans agree but many feel they should and if they don’t they are not performing like real Americans should. We as Americans should not be killing the unborn, because we care, but once they get here they are on their own. I don’t personally feel this way but a good percentage of the citizens do. In some sense the rhetoric of the marginalized begins to make sense here as the ways of a time past are viewed as archaic in public discourse. The more the left seems to push the more the right pushes back and vice versa to negotiate the acceptable lines of boundary. Hurray for democracy! After all, if you love yourself and your country you should be willing to fight for it, right?
Love and investment seem to be a strange pairing. Surely, romantics may exclaim, love can only inhabit a space foreclosed against the rationale of returns. Love springs eternal, a bottomless font recklessly overflowing with nature’s bounty of increase. Ah….increase, yes, love is always intertwined with the (re)production of some state of affairs or another. Given the diversity of familial norms across time and space, the family as such seems to make better sense as an economic order than as a center of “love,” yet this supposition would merely mask the importance of love as another face of the economic. With Black Friday now come and past, we see how a calculus of bourgeois love weaves throughout the points of contact between the family, the labor force, the goods needed to (re)produce a happy life, and the ideal image of “Americana” constantly hauled out of the closet and put on display each year in the performance of the holidays.
ReplyDeleteAlaenor, when you asked whether the concepts of Queer theory can be translated into any other normalizing situation, I think the Christmas season is a perfect place to look. I mean, the whole event is meant to be pervaded by an overwhelming air of exceptional circumstances and a profound feeling of togetherness. Orphans find homes, George Bailly discovers that no man is poor who has friends, and everyone is expected to be just that much nicer to each other. And don’t think we cynical academics are immune to this, either, at least those of us who’ve been initiated into the cult of Christmas since childhood. Imagine hearing about someone being evicted on Christmas, robbed on Christmas, starving on Christmas….the fact itself becomes less important than the fact that it’s happening on Christmas, disrupting the veneer of invulnerable love which is supposed to pervade the season (it’s also interesting to think about what it means to talk about “the season” as the temporally-infused (non)place where the Christmas spirit happens).
This narrative is powerful, and the fact that its intellectual articulations are often fictions of the most absurd flavor (Santa Claus, Rudolph, et al) does nothing to diminish its power in bringing together the normal American family. Yet like Santa’s un-unionized elves, the very conditions of the situation’s possibility reveal its contradictions. For Christmas to be possible, some must be excluded, must work so that others can take time off to drink eggnog, sing carols, and what not. Yet perhaps some of these loyal elves can still bask in the Christmas glow, even if only during a 12-hour shift. For others, however, Christmas in America (and much of Europe, I imagine) is a situation of profound normalization, and assimilation at some level is almost guaranteed. Most people worldwide do not celebrate Christmas, yet to be one of those people in a society which does is (I imagine) to feel completely overwhelmed by the lights, rituals, shibboleths, and everything else which accompanies Christmas. There is no escaping, and while there are socially appropriate ways to engage with some of the worst excesses (after all, isn’t this really about the holy FAMILY), to reject it wholesale is to risk becoming labeled as a “Grinch,” a “Scrooge,” or an “old man Potter.” On the other hand, assimilation is so very easy. Just buy a pumpkin spice latte, get a new CD for a friend, watch a holiday classic.
The Christmas economy of love also carries with it an implicit threat. You’ve been working all year for this, the chance to buy the good things in life, and if you don’t scramble and fight on Black Friday, you may not be able to buy the things you need to make your life worth loving. More ominously, however, is the hetero-normative threat bound up with holiday cheer. If you don’t have a family, or if you are alienated from your family (say, because of your sexual preferences) then you may find yourself living the horror of CHRISTMAS ALONE.
Okay…so maybe I am a victim of the rumored “biological clock,” but I feel as though the discussion about reproductive rights should include us “older” heterosexual women who do not (yet?) have children. We are as much of a threat, if not more so, to the nation loving white men in the video Aleanor posted. After all, it is a woman’s responsibility or more correctly her obligation to procreate and bless this country with future generations of loyal, patriotic, tax-payers. When we fail to do so, by either not getting pregnant or terminating a pregnancy, we are violating the norm that white male leaders of the country have mapped out for us. This MUST be why people seemed to be so obsessed with my sex life. “Don’t you want kids?” Could it be that people more concerned with procreation than with “traditional” values of marriage? Shouldn’t the question be, “don’t you want a husband?” followed by the trite question of child bearing? As a thirtysomething childless (and marriage-less) female, I find myself in the queer category that Ahmed speaks of. I threaten life because I have not added to the numbers. Actually, I may be a bigger threat because I do it intentionally. It is not a consequence of sexual preference (as a strict reading of queer would be); rather it is a conscious choice that I have held steadfastly. I think my choice to remain childless skews others’ perceptions of me. I’m seen as selfish, self-absorbed, vain, and egotistical, and perhaps a bit snobbish. A love object, a child in this case, is a representation of the ego ideal. By not having a child, I am saying that I AM my ego ideal. I’m already my “perfect” self. That is a bold statement to make and one makes me better than other people, at least in their interpretation of me. I am “too good” to have a baby rather than “too responsible” to bring a life into the world without being able to take proper care of her. I think this makes me UNselfish, but others do not see it that way. All of this thinking about me and my reproductive choices leads my thinking back to the rape obsessed male republicans specifically Tom Smith and his equivocation of out-of-wedlock and rape. I cannot help but think how he (and other religious zealots) would answer the question if the rape victim was not married. Do we just assume or take for granted that rape victims are married and thus, worthy of childbirth? Add bastard child to the “product of rape” label and you get a whole other mess of complications. Perhaps this post is just a set of ramblings and makes absolutely no sense or has no relevance to this week’ readings. Perhaps I am wrapped up in my own head and the decision to (finally) rectify my childless existence. Perhaps I am finally becoming a productive citizen of the United States by adding to the population in the very near future. Perhaps.
ReplyDeleteHow is it that I can love America and seek to protect this nation, and the white supremacists can love America and seek to protect it, yet we are at such odds with each other? We love different Americas, neither of which actually exists. The xenophobes and racists love an America of the past that never was; a land of whiteness, freedom, and plenty for all; an America of Sheriff Andy Taylor, Wally and the Beav, and white founding fathers on a mission from God. The America of the racists only exists as a hazy image distorted by time, myths, and sentimentality. It is only these others that stand in the way of what America was and would be again if freed from the affliction of others.
ReplyDeleteI, on the other hand, love an America of the future, what this nation may (but never will) become. One o the most powerful phrases in American history comes in the preamble of the Constitution: in order to form a more perfect union. Not a perfect nation, not a stagnate institution of static ideals, not an ideal government, but a more perfect union. We seek to come together and to the best of our ability work for mutual prosperity, not as this kind of nation or that, without direction from any external commandment, only a union, a common ground. I also hold dear the inscription on the Statue of Liberty:
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
This poem does not say anything about values, morals, or destiny, nor does it oblige anyone to adopt any code. It is only an invitation for those who need a place to call home. The America I love is a perpetual work in progress toward a more perfect union, but never a perfect union because no such thing can exist. My America is not a place of a certain type of people, or people with a certain ideology except the willingness to try to form a more perfect union. But I acknowledge that my America, like the America of the racists is a nation that has never existed and will never exist. As Ahmed sates, “…the national idea with an ideal image suggests the national idea takes the shape of a particular kind of body, which is assumed in its freedom to be unmarked” (p. 133). Yet, we can never be unmarked, but we can try.
On a completely different note, I think Ahmed overreached with Queer Feelings. The affect of queer love does not seem to have any greater chance of opening bodies nor is it the harbinger of non-repetition that Ahmed wants it to be. Queer love, like all love ultimately undermines itself by destroying or changing the object of love. When one possess or attempts to possess an object of love, it is an attempt to bring it into oneself or at least to attach it to oneself. This act, by its very nature, changes the object of love. Ahmed seems to recognize this regarding multicultural love, where the advancement of a multicultural agenda ultimately changes, dilutes, and destroys the very cultures it professes to love. At the same time, multiculturalism rejects the ideal of a culture to maintain its own purity.