'I'm not Australian, I'm not Greek, I'm not Anything': Identity and the Multicultural Nation in Christos Tsiolkas's Loaded

Developing out of the changing demographic composition of countries in the
twentieth century, policies of multiculturalism embody an attempt by the state
to encourage and celebrate ethno-cultural difference within national boundaries.
It is, in the terms of Benedict Anderson’s influential model, a different way of
“imagining” community, one that requires a rethinking of sameness and ethnic
otherness so as to conceive of the nation as simultaneously fragmented and unified.
Justified as a pluralism that promotes integration, it has been explicated by
Charles Taylor as a “politics of recognition,” where individual dignity comes not
just from a discourse of equality (that we are all the same, and deserving of the
same protections), but also from a recognition of difference as fundamental to
that dignity. In this model, multiculturalism is a natural continuation of rightsbased
liberalism, adding to, but not disrupting, the ideological assertions of the
nation. Yet, as critics such as Smaro Kamboureli have pointed out, this reading is
problematic precisely because its “naturalness” remains unquestioned. In Taylor’s
formulation, multiculturalism never challenges the assumptions of the liberal
democratic state, it only reinforces them. A similar critique can be made of
multiculturalism’s official manifestations: in their codification and application by
government agencies, these policies function as a form of difference management,
containing diversity in the service of the nation without becoming disruptive of
it. In effect, official multicultural policy promotes a form of cultural heritage that
is ossified and stagnant, fixing difference through the emblem of community.