Do we need to defend "diversity"?

Research Seminar - Department of Art History and Cultural Practices, University of Manchester

Do we need to defend "diversity"? Race and the cultural industries in authoritarian times

Professor Anamik Saha, University of Leeds

Abstract

This presentation considers whether the idea of ‘diversity’ in Western media and society is worth saving. Once a benign, even banal, concept, ‘diversity’ is now attacked from both Left and Right: for the former, as a performative gesture masking structural racism; for the latter, as a threat to meritocracy and national identity. Today, the far right most forcefully shapes public discourse, recasting diversity as elitism and white marginalisation. Yet, paradoxically, media culture remains ‘super-diverse’. In the UK, people of colour are more visible on screen than ever, represented through seemingly complex and varied characterisations. Even as diversity discourse becomes embattled, the diversity we see in media and the arts remains largely intact.

Focusing on British cultural industries, this talk traces the unravelling of diversity as a governing logic and asks how we can make sense of the coexistence of what I call ‘popular superdiversity' with the mainstreaming of far-right populism. Its central contention is that understanding the politics of diversity - in all its contradictory forms - is essential to grasping the current conjuncture. While there is an understandable impulse to defend ‘diversity’ in the face of attacks from the far right, this paper argues for the need to imagine a different, more radical politics of race and representation, adequate to our times.

Biography

Anamik Saha is Professor of Race and Media at the University of Leeds. His research explores race, media and cultural production, focusing on how racialised people experience and contest racism in the cultural industries. He is author of Race and the Cultural Industries (2018), The Anti-Racist Media Manifesto (with Francesca Sobande and Gavan Titley, 2024) and Race, Culture, Media (second edition, 2025). He also edits European Journal of Cultural Studies.

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