The question of whether particularity is to be preferred to universality is played out in many different debates in contemporary political philosophy.  Of course, the issue is topical given the dimensions of the “culture wars” and especially recent responses to the multicultural challenge in the wake of the end of the Cold War.  Primarily in the face of the devolving nationalisms of the post-Soviet era following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, thinkers who shared some of the same political aspirations of multicultural critics nevertheless became uncomfortable with disconcerting similarities between the renewed politics of ethnic and national strife and arguments about ethnic and racial identity forwarded by colleagues in the academy.
olincenter.uchicago.edu/pdf/deneen.pdf