Pride politics and multiculturalist citizenship

This article examines public declarations of national pride and accusations of national shame printed in English national newspapers in the four weeks following the publication of the Parekh Report, in October 2000. A key aim of this article is to consider the role of emotions in policing the terms of belonging and entitlement to citizenry. I discuss the effects of displays of emotions on the kind of national community, and national subject, that is being imagined. First, I examine the role of emotions in distinguishing between legitimate and illegitimate patriotisms. The pride/shame debate reveals how the politics of pride seek to eradicate shame via an erasure of certain histories, and to sanitize Britishness under a veneer of tolerance. At the same time, multicultural tolerance necessitates the creation of intolerant culprits. Second, I uncover the formation of new economies of exclusion/inclusion and toleration through different acts of interpellating “others” to be seen to speak out as proud subjects of multicultural Britain. I show how the very recognition of “others” as legitimate speaking subjects reconstitutes them as “other” through a double process of de-racialization and re-racialization.