LAUSR

ABSTRACT In this article, I focus on the arguments Sivamohan Valluvan puts forward in The Clamour of Nationalism regarding nationalism and the left. Valluvan shows that, in all its ideological registers, nationalism is underpinned by racialized exclusions; in order to develop an adequate response to the contemporary political crisis, the left must reject nationalism favour of a race-conscious politics of class. Although Valluvan acknowledges that liberation movements are essential to anti-nationalist socialisms, there is less attention paid to axes of difference other than along the lines of class and perceived ethnicity. Responding to his call for a renewed leftist politics, I expand on Valluvan’s conceptualization of “everyday multiculture”, putting it in conversation with Avtar Brah’s understanding of England as a “diaspora space” as a way of thinking with histories of empire and the intersectionality of difference in order to deconstruct the nationalist myth of the English North–South divide.