Geographies of identity: multiculturalism unplugged

Opposition to the relativistic, indeed ultimately solipsistic implications of epistemological insiderism; concern over the fragmenting, in certain respects disabling consequences of identity politics; resurgent interest in forms of civic commonality; rethinking of the modalities of and rationale for affirmative action, not only on the part of its longstanding critics on the right, but on the part of its longstanding defenders on the left – these and other developments suggest that, in some respects at least, the maximally differentialist moment may have passed. Brubaker (2003, 40–41)