Under the rubric of multiculturalism, culture has come to be associated with local differences (the culture of blacks, gays, women, and ethnic groups) and opposed to an encompassing matrix viewed by some, at least, as non-cultural and defined in terms of the rational laws of the market place, natural rights, and universal truths. I want to argue that the latter is in fact a cultural level (which can be called, for want of a better term, omega culture). This is a hopelessly un-novel suggestion, since one principal claim made by proponents of multiculturalism is that the dominant culture of modern America is just another culture. What is novel is that claim that nation-state culture is not culture in the sense of multculturalism. It is not one of the cultures (which I propose to call alpha cultures) of multiculturalism which just happens to be dominant. It is a distinct level and perhaps kind or at least facet of culture. Curiously, within the nation-state the term culture has been appropriated to refer to that to which nation-state level culture is opposed, i.e., to alpha cultures. Consequently, the nation-state appears from this point of view to be acultural.

How is this emedding accomplished? There is a rather strange alchemistry at work here wherein culture produces its own metaculture--including the very terms culture and multiculturalism--which in turn defines part of itself as other than culture. It emphasizes certain of the general properties rather than others, separates out some aspects as acultural rather than cultural, and acknowledges relativity so as to claim universality and vice versa.

But it does not do so whimsically. There are in fact two faces of this Janus-like entity. Scholars have known about both for some time. Recently, however, one of the faces has been obscured through refinement of the other, hidden by the other's boldness and beautification. Because of the way some of us now think about culture, and because of the use to which the concept is put within the political arena, it has become difficult to see the other face for what it is. It is culture.

But it is not the culture that some proponents of multiculturalism imagine, that is to say, not in the sense of ancient traditions handed down across the generations, but rather in that of malleability, adaptation, and change; nor is it culture in the sense of homogeneously shared beliefs and practices of a people, but rather in the sense of diffusion, differentiation, and linkage; nor again is it culture understood as purely local truths, but rather culture as potentially universal ones, capable of spreading throughout humanity. It is a culture that is distinguished from the idea that "everyone's got it," aligning instead with the older sense of cultivation and learning. This view recognizes differentiations in the degree to which culture has been acquired. If we are to envision a genuine multiculturalism for modern America, we need, in our blindness, a tactile reconstruction of the other face of this complex beast.

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