Through the Looking-glass of Interculturality: Autocritiques (Encounters between East and West)

This book starts from the premise that honest and constructive dialogue between scholars and educators of interculturality, especially from different geopolitical spheres, is needed more than ever. The book is about the important and yet contested notion of interculturality―a notion used in different fields of research. It was co-written by two scholars who have never met before and who got to know each other intellectually and personally in the process of writing this book, using interculturality as a looking-glass. (Re-)negotiating meanings, ideologies and their own identities in writing the chapters together, the authors enter into multifaceted dialogues and intercommunicate, sharing while accepting disagreements. The co-authors’ different profiles in terms of geography, generation, status, preferred paradigms and multilingual identity (amongst others) are put forward, confronted, and mirrored in the different chapters, leading to the joint negotiation of aspirations concerning interculturality in communication and education. While describing their current takes on interculturality they also conduct autocritiques of their past and present engagement with the notion. The following questions are also addressed: Who is talking the most about interculturality in the world today? Whose voices are not heard? How to disrupt current hegemonies around the notion for real? And how to promote epistemological plurality in the discourses and narratives shaping our understandings of the notion? Autocritiquing is proposed as a way of unthinking and rethinking interculturality ad infinitum. This book argues that engaging with the notion requires constant self-reflection, examining one’s positionality and intersectionality, listening to the voices that one projects onto the world of, e.g., research and education, and operating transformations in one’s thinking, trying out new paradigms, ideologies and methods. About the Authors Praise for Through the Looking-glass of Interculturality Contents List of Figures 1 Spiralling Through Interculturality Abstract 1.1 An Intercultural Smile 1.2 A Brush in Each Hand at the Same Time 1.3 Spiralling Together 1.4 Book Structure References 2 Paralleling Realities Abstract 2.1 Identity Matrixes 2.2 Determinants and Positions in the Field of Interculturality References 3 Core Voltage Abstract 3.1 Struggles and Emotions 3.2 Impetuses 3.3 Ambitions 3.4 What Are We Allowed to Hope For? References 4 Devenir-être; Devenir-langue Abstract 4.1 Influences 4.2 Looking Into Each Other’s Mirror—Reading Each Other 4.3 Devenir-langue—The Power of Words References 5 Fragmenting Intercultural Research Abstract 5.1 Who Are We Writing to? 5.2 Why Critique? 5.3 On the Need for Fragmentation in Intercultural Research 5.4 Rebalancing? References 6 Looking-Inward, Moving Forward and Destabilizing Our Rhetorics Abstract 6.1 Our Privilege/Subalternity A Priori? 6.2 Double-Peripheralization 6.3 Early Literary Influences 6.4 Revealing Political and Religious Beliefs in Interculturality Research: Unwise Practice? 6.5 Reorganizing the Table 6.6 Other Languages to Speak: A Different Taste of Interculturality? 6.7 ‘Disobedience’ in Interculturality Early-Careers’ Epistemologies 6.8 Moving Forward Not Moving On References 7 Zone Abstract 7.1 Fantasized Dialogues 7.2 Challenges in Writing the Book 7.3 Learning About Each Other 7.4 Learning with Each Other 7.5 Dissonance 7.6 Repositioning Interculturality? 7.7 Concepts to Take Away 7.8 Summarizing Our Main Messages 7.9 Proposals for Research Practices 7.10 Moving to and fro... References