Difference, becoming and rhizomatic subjectivities beyond ‘otherness’. A posthuman framework for intercultural communication

ABSTRACT

The recent turn in intercultural studies demonstrates an increasing concern with contingency, precarity and fractures over the search for reliable indicators of competence and measurable outcomes. In order to harness this potential emerging in the intercultural field, I aim to engage theoretically with the notion of otherness from a posthumanist perspective. Employing the notions of difference and becoming through biomythography and the ‘fusion of outsider identities’ I argue in this paper that rhizomatic subjectivities as sites of desire and becoming can shift the understanding of the intercultural beyond the binary self and other .

Il recente cambio di direzione nello studio dell’intercultura dimostra un interesse verso la precarieta’ e i punti di rottura in contrasto con la ricerca di indicatori affidabili e quantificabili di competenza. Tenendo conto di questo cambiamento, questo studio propone una riflessione filosofica sul concetto di alterita’ adottanto una prospettiva post-umanistica. Utilizzando i concetti di divenire e differenza attraverso la biomitografia e la ‘fusione di identita’ outsider’, questo articolo propone il concetto di identita’ minoritarie come siti di desiderio e divenire oltre la divisione binaria tra l’io e l’altro.

KEYWORDS:

• Difference
• becoming
• rhizome
• post-human
• critical interculturalism
• intercultural communication

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor

Giuliana Ferri is a senior lecturer in education at Brunel University London. Her research in intercultural communication has explored the framing of otherness and the notion of competence from a philosophical perspective. Giuliana has published Intercultural Communication: Critical Approaches and Future Challenges for Palgrave Macmillan.