Towards an Ethics beyond Openness and Tolerance: Traversing the Ideological Fantasy of Global Multiculturalism

The dominant discourses of global multiculturalism embrace the principles of “fluidity,” “difference,” “connectivity,” and “boundary- crossing;” they have been virtually elevated to the status of the sublime objects in the imaginaries of identity, ethnicity, sexuality, and even spirituality.

Hence, “openness,” “tolerance,” or “respect” are believed to be the politically, culturally and ethically correct attitudes towards (ethnic, cultural and sexual) “Otherness.” Nevertheless, conflicts of small or large scale never cease to disrupt the status quo. Drawing on Lacanian and Žižian psychoanalytic theories, this paper attempts to examine the ideological fantasy of contemporary global multiculturalism in terms of the symptoms of paranoia, melancholy and perversion.

“Multiculturalism” formulated in this way will cover the aspects of “risk society,” “complaint culture,” “society of enjoyment,” “culture of conspiracy,” and cynicism. Some philosophical themes will be reconsidered in this context: the law and transgression, love, and freedom. Ultimately, this paper will broach the possibility of an ethics that does not lose sight of antagonism as the inescapable principle of the social, political and cultural discourses, an ethics beyond the semblance of openness and tolerance.

Bio: Cory Han-yu Huang acquired his Ph. D. at the Graduate Institute of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Taiwan University , in 2001. He is currently teaching as an assistant professor at the Department of English, Tamkang University. He has written several articles on cyberculture, cyberpunk, horror fiction, and Lacanian psychoanalysis, published in Chung-Wai Literary Monthly , Criticisms of English and American Literature , and Tamkang Studies of Foreign Languages and Literatures .