Postmigrant perspectives: Radical diversity as artistic-political intervention

Abstract

In the last decade, the concept of radical diversity has gained traction, not least in the circles around the postmigrant theatre at the Maxim Gorki Theatre in Berlin. This essay explores this concept and interprets it as part of the overall tendency in postmigratory art and culture to move beyond clear-cut identity groups and to build alliances and coalitions beyond stable identity markers. Radical diversity thus not only denounces doctrines of cultural homogeneity and monoculturalism but also rejects the logic of integration and traditional ideas of multiculturalism. Against this background, radical diversity focuses on the multiplicity of subject positions in society, as well as on the complexity of structures of discrimination and marginalization. As a artistic-political intervention, this essay argues, radical diversity expresses some of the major characteristics of postmigrant societies and urges us to reconsider traditional research perspectives on migratory art and on the relation between culture and migration.