Changing Selves: Multicultural Education and the Challenge of New Identities

Abstract

The concept of identity provides a key framework for multicultural education. Dependent on the idea of the Enlightenment subject, the practices of multicultural education presume a unitary, naturalized self with a stable core. This article questions this formulation of identity and argues that the field must embrace a more dynamic and nuanced notion of self. Using data collected during a one-year ethnographic study of a multiracial high school in Durban, South Africa, I demonstrate how students actively produce self and other relationally. Identity and difference are constituted not through naturalized categories, but instead through practices that have the potential for constant reformation. In conclusion, I examine the implications of these students’ practices for multicultural education, arguing that “difference” must be engaged as a changing, not reified, formation.