Book Reviews

Tully, James. Strange Multiplicity: Constitutionalism in an Age of Diversity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

James Tully states what he calls the `impasse' of contemporary constitutionalism in the following terms: `How can the proponents of recognition bring forth their claims in a public forum in which their cultures have been excluded and demeaned for centuries?' (p. 56). But this impasse, Tully argues throughout his book, is an `illusion' (p. 57) - premised upon the theoretically naive and historically inaccurate presumption that constitutionalism is essentially and exclusively modern. And it is somewhat against its characterization as `imperial' (p. 37), as `a European monolith, imposed from the centre on to the periphery without any change or interaction' (p. 38), that Tully seeks to recover the `intercultural' (p. 37) and `dialogic' (p. 183) resources of what he calls `the hidden language' of an `ancient' or `common law' constitutional tradition (p. 57). Reconceptualizing constitutionalism as `a composite of [these] two dissimilar languages' (p. 31), his argument, therefore, is that constitutionalism is an `assemblage of languages ... composed of complex sites of interaction and struggle, both within Europe and with non-European peoples and cultures' (p. 38).

The language of constitutionalism may, after Wittgenstein, be considered as something like `an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, and of houses with additions from various periods; and this surrounded by a multitude of new boroughs with straight and regular streets and uniform houses' (p. 103). And, eliciting the charm of this constitutional city, Tully claims that `[t]his hidden constitutional language can be reconstructed to change our vision of a constitution and dissolve the impasse' (p. 57). It is in accordance with this re-vision, therefore, that Tully offers the characterization of constitutionalism as `a form of accommodation of cultural diversity' (p. 30): such that, his argument concludes, `people reach agreement on a constitution by means of an intercultural dialogue in which their culturally distinct ways of speaking and acting are mutually recognised' (p. 29).

Despite Tully's usefully direct approach to `one of the most difficult and pressing questions of our political era' (p. 1), his argument exhibits a fundamental paradox. He replaces an account of the absence (silence) of multiple constitutional traditions with an account of their presence (voice). But as such, and as I will indicate, it is in his apparent inability to conceive of any other possibility that his argument negates any reason for - or, indeed, any possibility of - that contemporary politics of cultural recognition which is his explicit concern.

Tully's interest is not in the history of a constitutional monologue, but rather in a monologic history of constitutionalism. It is this vision of history, he argues, which is `restricted' in the sense that it `forgets', `ignores' or `misinterprets' what is here re-visioned as the history of an `assemblage of languages' (p. 38) or, indeed, of `a `common' intercultural language' (p. 57). Tully's argument, therefore, is that constitutionalism has always contained, and so already contains, other voices. Consistently, then, he asserts that cultural diversity is `here and now in every society' (p. 11). Or, again: `The reason it is possible to understand one another in intercultural conversations is because this is what we do all the time in culturally diverse societies to some extent' (p. 133).

Tully's argument, in this respect, proceeds on the basis of a more or less anthropological critique of the `separation, boundedness and internal uniformity' of cultures (p. 10). Cultures are, rather, `overlapping, interactive and internally negotiated' (p. 10). They are `densely interdependent in their formation and identity', such that, he argues: `The modern age is inter-cultural rather than multi-cultural' (p. 11).

Tully's critique of the naivety of an essential cultural separation - and thus his contentions that constitutionalism cannot be considered as exclusively European and, correlatively, that claims to recognition cannot be considered to come from cultures that are incommensurably `other' (p. 10) - is doubtlessly important. As this historical vision fails to see/hear any resistance so, as Tully points out, it can only `accept the very self-image the most chauvinistic imperial theorists of modern constitutionalism sought to uphold' (p. 38). But as Tully enforces a distinction between the illusion of cultural separation/constitutional monologue and the reality of cultural relation/constitutional dialogue, the logic of his argument becomes clear. Tully does not dissolve the impasse of constitutionalism. He disregards it.

Tully reduces imperialism entirely to a vision of history; as though this vision would only need to be re-visioned in order to do away with imperialism altogether. Consider, for example, his rather odd complaint against the `imperiousness' of those `[m]any communitarian and critical theorists': `When they ask the crucial question of `whose justice?' and `which rationality?' the answers are always the same: some European, male traditions of interpretation set within the stages of European history; never a dialogue' (p. 97). Whilst one might support the contention that such accounts are exaggerated, perhaps even implausible, it is not, of course, clear that redescribing imperialism as a dialogue is any less implausible or, indeed, any less naive or illusory.

One might, indeed, want to resist - and in the name of resistance - that monologic history and its foundation upon the self-sufficiency of culture, which Tully himself contests. But, of course, dialogue is not the only manner in which cultures relate.

In the invocation of `cultural interaction and conflict, however unequal it may have been' (p. 38), Tully seems to offer the possibility of a more viable account. But, in a decisive theoretical gesture, he states the following: `[i]f one ... language or tradition gained ascendancy in a constitutional negotiation, it would cease to be a dialogue at all. It would be a ... monologue' (p. 57). Tully has already distinguished cultural interaction from the `restricted vision' of a non-interactive and monologic constitutionalism. But it is as he reduces all unequal cultural interaction to this monologism, that it too is consigned to the `restricted vision' of imperialism's illusory self-image. This, then, is the obvious consequence: if all cultural interaction is dialogic and all dialogue is egalitarian, then Tully has excluded the possibility of any unequal cultural interaction altogether.

As imperialism is conjured away so, for Tully, cultural interaction becomes an unqualified good. Cultural identity is relational to the extent, Tully says, that `[t]he loss or assimilation of any of the other cultures is experienced as an impoverishment of one's own identity' (p. 205). Or, again: `[o]ne's own identity as a citizen is inseparable from a shared history with other citizens who are irreducibly different; whose cultures have interacted with and enriched one's own' (p. 205).

This interaction, then, is affirmed to the extent that it is cultural diversity, rather than the diversity of cultures, which becomes the focus of Tully's argument. Indicatively, then, his concern with the `situation of a constitutional dialogue of people who are already constituted in various ways' (p. 55) appears not to be with the multiplicity of claims to cultural recognition, but with claims to something like a recognition of cultural multiplicity. As if, and this is the clarification he offers, such claims were only to `the constitutional right to speak and act politically in intercultural ways' (p. 55). Tully displaces that diversity which is his concern onto those peoples whom he comes to regard, not as demanding to have their cultures recognized, but as seeking the opportunity to `discuss' their `constitutional identities' (p. 55). It is here, of course - in this strained multiplicity - that Tully's inability to account for a contemporary politics of cultural recognition becomes discernible.

Culture, Tully tells us, is internally negotiated. It `is always different from itself, as well as from others' (p. 45). But, despite his consistent opposition of the `flexibility' of culture to its `stability' (p. 38), one is left wondering (not simply) what (but how) culture might be if it were not at least less different from itself than it is from others. Amidst the mutually enriching interaction of cultures, one is, then, left wondering, not only what might cause one to claim recognition for one's culture but, in respect of what such claims might be made at all.

As Tully himself points out, claims to cultural recognition are consistently manifest as claims to `self-rule' (p. 6). But presumably against a cultural interaction which is evidently not so enriching as Tully supposes - he can provide no account of this `self' that it might claim, or that it might want to claim, the right to rule, precisely, `itself'.

Colin Perrin
School of Law
The University of New South Wales

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