"It is important to note that multiculturalism does not share the postmodernist stance. Its passions are political; its assumptionsempirical; its conception of identities visceral. For it, there is no doubting that history is something that happened and that those happenings have left their mark within our collective consciousness. History for multiculturalists is not a succession of dissolving texts, but a tense tangle of past actions that have reshaped the landscape, distributed the nation's wealth, established boundaries, engendered prejudices, and unleashed energies."
"Contention is inseparable from creating knowledge. It is not contention we should try to avoid, but discourses that attempt to suppress contention."
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Source: Joyce Appleby (2007). “A Restless Past: History and the American Public”, p.106, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
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