Changing selves: Multicultural education and the challenge of new identities

The concept of identity provides a key framework for multicultural ab educa tion. Dependent on the idea of the Enlightenment subject, the practices of multicultural education presume a unitary, naturalized self with a stable c ore. This article questions this formulation of identity and argues that th e field must embrace a more dynamic and nuanced notion of self: Using data collected during a one-year ethnographic study of a multiracial high school in Durban, South Africa, I demonstrate hero students actively produce self and other relationally. Identity and difference are constituted not throug h naturalized categories, but instead through practices that have the poten tial for constant reformation. In conclusion, I examine the implications of these students' arguing that "difference" must be engaged as practices for multicultural education, a changing not reified, formation.