AustLit

Ommundsen examines some of the many uses (and abuses) of the term multiculturalism. She defines several models relating to the way this term operates in popular public discourse. The models, which are sometimes overlapping and sometimes in opposition, include: sentimental multiculturalism, folkloric or touristic multiculturalism, sophisticated cosmopolitanism, cultural preservation and 'ethnic ghettoes', cultural assimilation, reverse racism, politically or economically expedient multiculturalism, and 'the empty signifier,' where multiculturalism becomes 'nothing but a rhetorical gesture...a void, a silence'.