A rant on leftist naivity - Paul Gilroy

Am reading Paul Gilroy's Postcolonial Melancholia at the moment. I am tempted to say that Gilroy has a brilliant ability to make the debates about multiculturalism break open and reveal their underbelly. However, I find him to be a bit naive when he starts to critique the "civilizationism" of the US. This is because Gilroy celebrates the communitarianism of "ethnic groups" vis-a-vis the individualism of "skin heads" in the example he gives*, while critiquing the products of communitarianism in US - nationalism, global arrogance, etc. I can't figure out how we can celebrate friends without having enemies? This is the Schmitt problem. I think Gilroy sees it. I think his answer is to have nonnational group formations, the first taste of which were feminist and proletariat internationalisms. I find it difficult not to see Christianity and Islam as just older versions of such internationalisms. Which leads me to believe that he is working within a paradigm of civilizationalism without recognizing, or theorizing the way to stunt the growth of such civilazations before they try to take over the world. But don't we need the world to be taken over? I think the only way to keep multinationals at bay is to find some way to take over the world. I don't want some evil leader to do this, but we certainly need to extend the rule of law so far that one cannot evade it by hiring sweatshop workers to make whatevers for horrible pay only to ship this back to a place where their relative economy permits exploitation legally!. Legally. Legal illegality! That is what we have now. Clearly I am juxtaposing small L national law with some type of metaphysical Law, but mustn't we appeal to this? Otherwise we will have exploitation in the name of fashion ad infinitum (indeed we already have it). Communitarianism is the answer but writ large it involves nationalism, defense, civilization. We must face it that when we project ourselves collectively, which we cannot avoid (no one lives in a nameless town), it has the potential to get either ugly or beautiful, but it is the nature of the ethos of the communitas that will fix this. Not a denial of the very species of community. We will never avoid collective identity. If we do we are entirely atomistic, having minimal commonality with our neighbour. I don't want that place. I think I lived in it in Ottawa, the hell-hole of the entire world, where the Canadian apartheid of rich and poor is the Queensway: north of it lies little Italy and China town, as well as dirt poor white land (at least until you get to down town - the desert of capitalism); south of it lies the Glebe where houses sell for multiple millions. People drive beemers and VWs and Suvs. People recycle. Still - Still - this is the inequality of our capital (pun intended) and our liberal vision. Apartheid divides along race, liberalism divides on money and race. Is that any better?

* Gilroy's example:
One man interviewed by the Daily Mirror challenged the civilizationist folklore about the sources of the conflict [between skin-heads and Englishmen of Asian descent] with an important and neglected explanation of how the hatred directed by whites against Asians had come about: "'I'll give you an example of why they [the whites] dislike us so much,' he said, fingering a top-of-the-range Nokia mobile phone. 'It's jealousy. See, we start working young - I started helping my dad at 11 - and whenever we buy anything we pay cash. At 17 we have saved enough for our first car. It might cost two thousand pounds. A coupe of years later we sell it and buy one for five thousand, and by twenty one we've got a brand new BMW.'" (Postcolonial Melancholy 25).

I applaud the communitarianism, but I stick to my objections above.

Here are some lectures on the Canadian Economy by James Laxer.