Repetitive and Troubling Discourses of Nationalism in the Local Politics of Mosque Development in Sydney, Australia

Abstract

The contested nature of multiculturalism in Australia is stark in local debates over mosque developments in Sydney. Queer-theory concepts (citation, repetition, sedimentation, and troubling) are used to reveal the differing utilities of discourses on nationalism at this everyday level. Neoconservatives oppose the declining normativity of Anglo-Celtic culture, and nostalgically invoke “White (or Anglo-Celtic) Australia”. Mosque opponents are both limited and empowered by this discourse of nationalism. The official recognition of Australia's multicultural composition and the shift in rhetoric on national identity have provided a counterideology to the still hegemonic constructions of an Anglo-Celtic Australia. Muslim associations and their supporters have drawn on these symbolic tools in their arguments with planning-consent authorities, and in other local political forums. Through the repetition of their claims to local and national citizenship, and by evoking the rhetoric of multiculturalism, they challenged the hegemony of Anglo-Celtic culture. A deeper and broader multiculturalism may be sedimented through the reiterative deployment of the national discourse of multiculturalism.