On the Paradox of ‘Organised’ Encounter

ABSTRACT

Encounters are politically and pedagogically charged. They have long been celebrated for their ability to chip away at prejudices, enact cultural destabilisations, shape subjectivities, and produce new knowledges. Yet encounters come with risk. The paper argues that encounters should be taken as very specific genres of contact and offers a conceptual interrogation of the notion of encounter, and its (dis)organisation, as a way of reflecting on the paradox of ‘organised encounter’. In particular, the paper suggests that the promise and hope of organised encounter stands in tension with the recognition that encounters are inherently unpredictable –that they are about rupture and surprise. Taking this tension forward, the paper asks what possibilities remain for forms of planned encounter in intercultural contexts and focuses on two concerns. First, a concern with what happens when something that is inherently unpredictable becomes a site of intervention and secondly, a concern with the risks of encounter, and for whom the risks are most acutely felt. It finishes by reflecting on what it might mean to keep hold of the unpredictability of encounter in organised settings and what it means for questions of difference, power, and privilege.

KEYWORDS:

• Encounter
• difference
• enchantment
• vulnerability
• contact
• social transformation

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to the editors of the Special Issue, two anonymous reviewers, and Jonathan Darling, for valuable comments on earlier versions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributors

Helen F. Wilson is an Assistant Professor in Human Geography at Durham University. Her work focuses on the geographies of encounter, and questions of difference and otherness. This has included work on the possibilities of tolerance, everyday multiculture, anti-violence programmes, and more-than-human ethics. She is coeditor of Encountering the City: Urban Encounters from Accra to New York (2016, Routledge).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by BA/Leverhulme [Grant Number SG130284] and Royal Geographical Society [Grant Number SRG 23.13].