Niezróżnicowana różnica - czyli o tym, jak rynek buduje monowielokulturowe środowisko wychowawcze i kontroluje rozwój tożsamości

The issue of the text concerns the difference, considered as a category essential for the development of human identity. The starting point is the assumption of E. Laclau, that in contemporary, multicultural societies, identity is formed as a result of tension between particular and universal. From this point of view, particular represents existing, local forms of identity, while universal – the global identity, void of any local connections. Thus, all the attempts to either modify or blur the difference should be treated as an internally political process, blocking the access to identity. The context, in which I situate the analyzed matter, is the issue of global market, whose influence initiates the creation of two opposite, cultural tendencies: on the one hand – commercializing of the semantic realm, but on the other – fundamentalizing of local meanings, as a reaction to the unbearable pressure put by the global, commercial culture. First of them supports the unification of cultural identities, while the latter activates the predator identity. Consequently, the human existence gets stuck between the Disneyland and the Tower of Babel, what causes the perspectives of human development to drastically reduce. This situation faces the education with the defiance of surpassing the liberal point of view, which is based on universalistic model of identity, which leads to – masked by the rule of tolerance, assimilating orientation, assuming the need to adjust the minor cultures to the dominating culture.