Slavoj Zizek on multiculturalism.

Why are so many problems today perceived as problems of intolerance, rather than as problems of inequality, exploitation, or injustice? Why is the proposed remedy tolerance, rather than emancipation, political struggle, even armed struggle? The immediate answer lies in the liberal multiculturalist’s basic ideological operation: the ‘culturalization of politics’. Political differences - differences conditioned by political inequality or economic exploitation - are naturalized and neutralized into ‘cultural’ differences, that is into different ‘ways of life’ which are something given, something that cannot be overcome. They can only be ‘tolerated’. This demands a response in the terms Walter Benjamin offers: from culturalization of politics to politicization of culture. The cause of this culturalization is the retreat, the failure of direct political solutions such as the Welfare State or various sociapost-political ersatz.

Tolerance as an ideological categroy, Slavoj Zizek. in Critical Inquiry Volume 34, Number 4, Summer 2008
© 2008 by The University of Chicago. 0093-1896/08/3404-0009$10.00. All rights reserved.
Text available online HERE

Witnessing the differend. A grammar.

As a site of acknowledgement to Non-Western societies, often unknown by the public, the Musée du Quai Branly is the expression of France's will to give the right place to Primitive Art in its institutions. Further, it testifies there is no more hierarchy between arts than between peoples.

Text as appears at the exit of the Pavillon des Sessions exhibition

The concept of Art, as experienced in western culture, is far from being universal. In doesn't balance Western and "primitives", or "first" cultures. Rather, it assimilates the non-western World. While aiming at weakening the colonial dominant/dominated dialectic, our beatific admiration for primitive Arts actually gives it a new form.

A few typologies, reinforcing and making dialectics such as subject/object, self/other, dominant/dominated, art/ethnology, explicit, are tested on the site.

A collage of typologies.

From left to right and top to bottom

1. Panopticon
2. Irreductible dialectic
3. Curratorial project
4. Collage
5. Overwhelming totality
6. Collection of individualities

The satue says :

Left : Place de la Concorde Paris Auteur : GIRAUD Patrick
Right : ©musée du quai Branly (Paris, Place de la Concorde, Easter Island statue)

Comparable pictures. Comparable situations ?

On the left : one of the obelisks set on Place de la Concorde, Paris. They were offered to France by egyptian Vice-King Mehemet Ali in 1830. In exchange of the obelisks, France offered a clock, which orns, since then, Cairo's Citadel, but never actually worked. The other Obelisk (which was never brought in France) was officially given back to Egypt by President Mitterrand.

On the right, an advertisement for Quai Branly Museum's opening. To our knowledge, the statue on the collage never left Easter Island. But it is virtually taken away from its space and time (its authenticity, according to Benjamin), cleaned from its original meaning, and put in the middle of the piazza as a monument. The asterisk, recurring in the museum's communication, is giving it a voice. And oh, surprise ! the statue speaks french.