TY - JOUR
T1 - Epistemological blindness or violence
T2 - liberal multiculturalism and the Indigenous quest for autonomy
AU - Gaitán-Barrera, Alejandra
AU - Azeez, Govand Khalid
PY - 2015/3/4
Y1 - 2015/3/4
N2 - From 1960s onwards, liberal multiculturalism - from Iris M. Young's notion of a 'differentiated citizenship' or what Rodolfo Stavenhagen terms 'internal self-determination' to Will Kymlicka's multicultural citizenship and federacy arrangements, Arendt Lijphart's consociationalism and Rainer Bauböck's pluralist federation - has played a fundamental role in the recognition of difference as well as questioning the configuration of the nation-state as racially homogenous and administratively unified. So far, these liberal approaches have successfully addressed and accommodated some of the core political and cultural demands of religious and ethnic minorities. Yet, drawing on field research conducted in Chile and Nicaragua as well as a critical examination of this liberal canon on multiculturalism, this paper theorises that in the case of indigenous quests for autonomy, these approaches exude nothing but epistemological blindness, ignoring or dismissing alterity. At worst, they function as an epistemic violence that silences, incorporates and decontests synchronic alternative autonomist indigenous articulations.
AB - From 1960s onwards, liberal multiculturalism - from Iris M. Young's notion of a 'differentiated citizenship' or what Rodolfo Stavenhagen terms 'internal self-determination' to Will Kymlicka's multicultural citizenship and federacy arrangements, Arendt Lijphart's consociationalism and Rainer Bauböck's pluralist federation - has played a fundamental role in the recognition of difference as well as questioning the configuration of the nation-state as racially homogenous and administratively unified. So far, these liberal approaches have successfully addressed and accommodated some of the core political and cultural demands of religious and ethnic minorities. Yet, drawing on field research conducted in Chile and Nicaragua as well as a critical examination of this liberal canon on multiculturalism, this paper theorises that in the case of indigenous quests for autonomy, these approaches exude nothing but epistemological blindness, ignoring or dismissing alterity. At worst, they function as an epistemic violence that silences, incorporates and decontests synchronic alternative autonomist indigenous articulations.
KW - Indigeneity
KW - Indigenous Autonomy
KW - Latin America
KW - Liberal Multiculturalism
KW - Liberal Theory
KW - Liberalism
KW - Self-determination
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84924801554&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/07256868.2015.1008435
DO - 10.1080/07256868.2015.1008435
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84924801554
SN - 0725-6868
VL - 36
SP - 184
EP - 201
JO - Journal of Intercultural Studies
JF - Journal of Intercultural Studies
IS - 2
ER -