My Way to You: How to Make Room for Transformative Communication in Intercultural Education

Abstract

As populations around the globe become increasingly culturally diverse, just inter-personal relations seem dependent on our ability to find new ways of communicating with people from other cultures whose values and linguistic strategies may vary from our own cultural practices. Hence, in the increasing body of literature on intercultural education, intercultural education means helping students to acquire the right language and communication skills for enabling mutual understanding and transformation between cultures. However, several post-colonial scholars have pointed out that there is a tendency to homogenise differences and neglect relations of power and the culturally untranslatable in the Western conception of language. This paper explores some implications of the post-colonial critique of intercultural education by following Luce Irigaray's writings on language and communication. Taking as its point of departure the Western 'common sense' conception of language as an instrument for communication and transfer of information, the paper first elaborates on the importance of exploring new ways of relating to language if we want to speak and listen to the other as other. It then offers a close reading of Martin Heidegger's existential analysis of the nature of language as Saying-Sowing and of Irigaray's response as she develops it in two of her later works. By way of conclusion the paper discusses how a more poetic and attentive listening could open up for a transformative and non-hierarchical communication in difference, and considers what implications this has for the promotion of social justice and pluralism in intercultural education.

The Role of Intercultural Education in a Bachelor of Education Program at Nelson Mandela University in South Africa

“…Despite the good intentions of intercultural education, several scholars have critiqued it for neglecting power imbalances which often occur within intercultural interactions, ignoring racism and homogenizing cultural differences (Allmen, 2010;Langmann, 2016).…”

Luce Irigaray: A philosophy of teaching in ancient and modern perspective

“…First, the idea of difference is an essential aspect of Irigaray's thought, and in many ways it is the key to her philosophy (Jones, 2014; Langmann, 2016; Wilson, 2014). For Irigaray, the difference between male and female is the paradigm case for thinking about difference or otherness in general.…”

“…As she comments: ‘Recognizing you means or implies respecting you as other, accepting that I draw myself to a halt before you as something unsurmountable, a mystery, a freedom that will never be mine, a mine that will never be mine’ (Irigaray, 1996, p. 104). As Elizabeth Langmann (2016) points out, however, this limitation is also the condition for further enhancement and growth:

However, this other cannot, according to Irigaray, be a being merely there, at my disposal, as a part of my world. Wanting to meet the other only inside of my own horizon would prevent the other from ever being or ‘taking place’ in front of me.

…”

La escucha en la educación

“…Otra investigación en esta línea es la de Francos (2015): con el español como segunda lengua, la voz del otro y la interculturalidad, categorías que ya nos van acercando a las temáticas centrales de 2015-2016. La educación intercultural es punto de partida para conceptos novedosos como la escucha poética y atenta, que podría abrirse a una comunicación transformadora y no jerárquica en la diferencia para la promoción de la justicia social, el pluralismo y el reconocimiento de las diferencias culturales (Langmann, 2016).…”