I don’t recall any Greek Australian from my generation waking up one fine morning and shouting out: ‘It is great to be white. I really feel white all over.’

On the contrary, my friend Doctor Marinis Pirpiris told me that when his fellows at the College of Surgeons referred to him as an honorary white, it made him squirm. His stomach muscles tensed, and he complained of being made to feel invisible.

His reaction was not irrational. Who has the power to bestow this honorary status? Is this patronizing comment also a means to brush the residual racism under the carpet and mask the unequal power relations?

On the other hand, being Greek is not everything in Australia. Nietzsche encouraged people to leave home so that they could see how small the spire was of their village church. For those of us who left home, there was a hunger for pleasures and curiosity for experiences that could not be found in the family.

Herodotus deployed the same technique. To write a world history, he had to go beyond the familiar. He travelled to the land of his neighbours and relied on them to guide him through their neighbour’s land. Knowledge was an extension from the self to the other’s other.

Socrates preferred to die in democratic Athens than to live under the tyranny of another city. He was among the most valiant in the defence of the city against the brutes from Sparta. However, Socrates also declared that he did not confine his citizenship to the polis, he was primarily a companion to the cosmos – a cosmopolitan.

Imposing a new hierarchy

Let us address the ways in which hypocrisy is making our small towns even smaller and closing the experiments with multiculturalism.

A few years ago, I was on a panel at Monash University to discuss the future of public art. My fellow panellist was the new manager of a municipal arts department. Her mission was to prioritise Indigenous claims in all public art projects.

To realise her worthy goal, she decided to focus on the Indigenous leaders and other artists he she had previously worked with. Eleni Arbus noted, with “her at the helm most of the fully functioning existing team could not do their job”. A generation of institutional knowledge, experience and network was wiped out with impunity and there was an attempt to impose a new hierarchy.

As I questioned the new manager it became apparent that, in the name of injecting a much-needed Indigenous perspective, she could not only erase the wisdom of white elders but also proceed by exempting herself from the conventional democratic procedures and artistic criteria. The manager was quick to insist that such checks and balances only served white privilege and that her mission was to correct the injustices of settler colonialism.

I interjected by saying that rule by despotic principles was not necessarily a move in the right direction. I was also very conscious that the process of claiming public space across a region with diverse Indigenous communities was also a fraught and highly contested process. Transparency and merit are values that I am not prepared to cede.

With the loss of senior staff, the municipal salary budget had been trimmed down. However, the manager’s term was also short lived and a meaningful partnership with Indigenous artists was barely advanced.

An empty formality

I must admit I am a bit of sucker for the ritual of public speaking. I enjoy speeches at weddings, and I think that the audience should be offered seats at book launches. I expect a proper story, even if it does not proceed in the strict order of a beginning, middle and end. The insertion of ‘welcome to country’ is to me a poignant sign of how our culture is evolving.

Of course, it is often reduced to an empty formality. However, when approached with dignified sincerity and historical imagination it can be an inspiring platform that not only animates the spirit of the place I am in but opens another portal into the world.

By contrast, I am becoming increasingly cynical about the way the ‘acknowledgement to country’ is being invoked by our leaders to stake their claim on the spectrum of virtue. This invocation often makes no difference to the rest of their operating manual, which, as ever is driven by the ruthless and venal pursuit of commercial and institutional goals.

Last week the kind and thoughtful dean of my faculty sent out an email on his last day in the office. Half of the very long message was dedicated to describing the process of his learning from Indigenous leaders. This recollection of personal growth is admirable. However, it also gave the misleading impression that Indigenous culture was now at the front and centre of the Arts Faculty.

This is not the case. The gap between rhetoric and reality remains stubbornly wide. What is meant by the mantra with which we acknowledge that the sovereignty of this land has never been ceded?

Moral evacuation

There seems to be a moral evacuation of the zone that exists between historical recognition and practical concessions. I have yet to meet a leader who has been prepared to cede any authority or territory. On the contrary, I am increasingly of the view, that such displays of virtue only bolster their power, and deepen the surveillance of manners.

Where do the ideals and policies of multiculturalism stand amidst the flux of contemporary society? Does anyone still mean what they say, and believe what they hear about multiculturalism?

Multiculturalism in public life has been one of Australia’s most original contribution to world civilization. Yet, this brief history which lasted from the 1970s to the 1990s has almost vanished. There is now either a depressing state of amnesia, or a regression into consumerist disposition of restlessly moving on to the next and the next.

Multiculturalism in public life has been one of Australia’s most original contribution to world civilization. Yet, this brief history which lasted from the 1970s to the 1990s has almost vanished. There is now either a depressing state of amnesia, or a regression into consumerist disposition of restlessly moving on to the next and the next.

My father grew up in a village in the north of Greece. His early life was structured by seasonal rhythms and ancient wisdom that had barely changed for millennia. In his lifetime he was catapulted from peasant culture to the industrial age. He ‘progressed’ to be one of the wogs that turned the cogs.

At the end of his life, he glimpsed the digital age. The relative stability of his culture that had survived the crudities of the Christian ideology, the invasion of the Ottoman empire, the spread of medieval plagues, and even perdured through modern migration has now been ruptured by machines.

Multiculturalism seems quaint and out of date

Multiculturalism is also caught in the transition from analogue to digital culture. The standard model now seems quaint and out of date, it has been overwhelmed by the plethora of political, cultural, and gender perspectives that are competing for public attention. Amidst this complex competition of voices is not only the age-old democratic challenge: converting noise into signal, but also the challenge of alliance building.

In the contemporary context, minorities are increasingly being encouraged to see themselves as unique and separate from each other. We have seen the introduction of a false hierarchy between established and emerging minorities. Suddenly, the Jews, Italians, and Greeks, are not just honourary white, but their journey is somehow complete.

We have seen the introduction of a false hierarchy between established and emerging minorities. Suddenly, the Jews, Italians, and Greeks, are not just honourary white, but their journey is somehow complete.

They are designated as minorities, who have not just arrived at their destination, but become part of the establishment. By contrast, a new bundle of groups from Sri Lanka, Somalia, South Sudan, and Afghanistan are deemed as emerging. They are given this status because they are classified as being in transition. The state recognises that some adjustments will need to be made, but this is a temporary phase on the way to becoming the next established community. In short, the margin of Australian culture undergoes some mutation, but the centre remains unperturbed.

One of the tools by which the centre achieves political quietism and quells cultural innovation is the wanton spraying of moral indignation. Minorities are adopting a vocabulary that exaggerates their cultural differences and a framework that destines them to exclusive ghettoes. We are increasingly told that unless you lived the life of X or Y then you will never understand what it is like to be X or Y. True.

I might never fully understand, but does this exclude the possibility that I can have sufficient empathy so that we can form a meaningful relationship? Similarly, we are warned against any act of cultural appropriation. Yet, if there is no cultural exchange and there is a cancellation of the process of hybridization, then all culture atrophies, shrivels up, and dies.

Most disturbing of all is how the centre stands back and revels in the moral dogfight that is occurring at the margins. This is what the political theorist Yascha Mounk calls “progressive separatism”.

A misguided fantasy

Many activists have the misguided fantasy that the route to power is through the moral high ground. Recent history tells us otherwise. The failure to dismantle the inhuman policies for detaining refugees and of the recognition of an Indigenous voice to parliament has demonstrated an unequivocal fact: capturing moral authority is not equivalent to gaining political influence.

The failure to dismantle the inhuman policies for detaining refugees and of the recognition of an Indigenous voice to parliament has demonstrated an unequivocal fact: capturing moral authority is not equivalent to gaining political influence.

What people may recognise as morally fair and publicly just, is not the same as what they privately want for themselves, and how much political change they are prepared to countenance. Therefore, if the particularistic pleas for “progressive separatism” are confined to correcting historical wrongs and injecting moral guilt without any constructive attempt to forge consensus and alliances that can tackle structural inequalities, then their self-righteous discourse will, at best, only spiral down the abyss of splendid isolation.

Such particularistic pleas for the discrete rights of any community are flawed. They tend to be overloaded with moral opprobrium and assume that the centre will yield authority because they can recognise their trauma. There are some who do not only feel pity but can act with compassion. These people do make genuine and noble sacrifices.

I am committed to training the imagination of my students so that they can draw on their impulse for care, curiosity, and creativity. However, it would be naïve to think that this is sufficient. We should not think that the centre of power will suddenly be overtaken by charitable impulses. Even if those in power did react in this deferential manner, any institutional setting would quickly direct the charitable impulse to serve a territorial agenda or channel it into a restrictive ideology.

To reboot multiculturalism is the age of digital warriors and ever polarized sphericles we need to rebuild the ideal of the common. This is neither the time to renew the narratives of nationalist assimilation, nor is there space for every minor identity to claim full autonomy let alone centrality in the public domain.

Australia is never going to become less multicultural, and now that a semblance of Indigenous consciousness in the non-Indigenous communities has been formed it will not dissolve in the next rainfall.

New lines of meaningful companionship

Rather than filling the arena with hollow platitudes and unrealistic promises, we could start extending new lines of meaningful companionship. It would be more useful if we could reboot multiculturalism as the framework within which our differences and historical injustices are articulated as well as a platform for reinventing ideals and values that can be held in common.

Holding together contradictory forces is difficult but not impossible. The French philosopher Jacques Ranciere pointed out that politics begins when the excluded – slaves, women, migrants, Indigenous people – gain a voice in the polis. My friend Sean Cubitt added that the work of love and the imagination is to plunge the subject into a shared project “in the world to make another world that now lies coiled up like a spring inside the old”. The trick to sustaining the productive energy of contradictions is that you don’t have to be only on one side. There is more to life than one identity.

Prof. Nikos Papastergiadis is the Director of the Research Unit in Public Cultures, based at The University of Melbourne. He is a Professor in the School of Culture and Communication at The University of Melbourne.