Attending to the “face of the other” in intercultural communication: Thinking and talking about difference, identity, and ethics

ABSTRACT

This essay contributes to the discussions in intercultural communication scholarship on key intercultural urgencies, issues, and challenges in today's world through the ethical framework of Emmanuel Levinas and his discussion of “absolute otherness” that informs and expands the dialogue on interculturality, cultural humility, and ethics. Levinas's discussion of “absolute otherness” aims to preserve difference—the otherness of the other—by asserting the ethical relation prior to the ontological relation and carries significant communicative implications in terms of the relation of the self and the other as well as making sense of difference and identity, and offers a new way of talking about these issues in the field of communication studies, specifically in intercultural communication. An illustration of attending to the other beyond reduction to the same is offered through a pedagogical application of the Levinasian framework in the intercultural communication class.

KEYWORDS:

• Difference
• identity
• ethics
• Levinas
• (inter)cultural humility

Notes

1. Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1995). Please refer to the web page of Levinas for his biography: http://www.levinas.sdsu.edu/