The critical and decolonial quest for intercultural epistemologies and discourses

ABSTRACT

The Introduction to this Special Issue – Journal of Multicultural Discourses (JMD) starts the discussion about the terminologies currently used to describe the structures and relations in culturally diverse societies and provides a critical analysis of the academic debates and different accounts of the related issues. Finally, this Special Issue gives evidence of different types of praxis, that is, of different conceptual frameworks in articulation with practical implementations in different fields which nonetheless represent one vision of one particular experience in one context, that are indicative of possible perspectives and approaches already proved to be feasible, but not representative of general conclusions. It includes some articles which provide us with different philosophical, sociological and pedagogical perceptions, approaches and decisions to deal with the praxis of cultural diversity in education.

KEYWORDS:

• Intercultural
• cultural diversity
• critical interculturality
• multicultural
• epistemologies
• decolonial

In the 10th anniversary issue of the Journal of Multicultural Discourses, its Editorial reminded us that ‘culture is not just innocent “difference” in knowledge, values or customs external to action and communication’ and that ‘culture is integral part of the life practice of a social community in relation to others’ (Shi-xu 2016: 2). Therefore, among the ‘morasses lying ahead and … heavy tasks to carry out’ by the JMD, some objectives remained clear as to ‘continue reflexive and critical efforts to systematically and thoroughly deconstruct cultural hegemony … and to participate in the construction or re-invention of various cultural frameworks of research’ (p. 6). Shi-xu had already warned about the masked consequences of hegemonic and ‘accelerated globalisation’ that ‘renders human cultural communities not only more interconnected but also more alienated’ and ‘non-western scholars and students intellectually dependent and deprived of cultural identity and voice’ (2015: 1). The author does, finally, call for ‘urgent efforts [that] are required to identify to what extent and in what specific ways Asian, African and Latin American approaches are interrelated and how synergy can be formed and expanded in order to effectively reinvigorate and enrich discourse scholarship, counterbalancing the cultural hegemony and monologue in the field’ (p. 8). This statement indeed urges the peoples that have remained neglected in the creative design of globalisation to stand up and have a say. Such a move can only emerge, among truthful and trustworthy relations, provided that these are intrinsically multilateral, inspired by pluri-dialogic imaginations, supported by globo-ethical positions, that is, by ethical principles that extend across the globe but are radically and mutually checked and negotiated across and within specific contexts. One added condition also is the struggle for social and cognitive justice (Sousa Santos 2018) that claims for openness to epistemological diversity. For this purpose, the reflections above may lead us to consider the role that the critical and decolonial quest for intercultural epistemologies and discourses should play in the transnational and intra-national contexts, both at the global and local levels. Not only should this critical and decolonial quest develop in the course of academic activities but also in a fruitful cooperation between academia and society in building an ecology of knowledge (Sousa Santos 2014) and in bringing about internal and external transformations that promote other types of bottom-up glocal collaborations in counter-hegemonic globalisations.

Furthermore, in order to respond to current local/global demands for social and cognitive justice, the critical and the intercultural are inescapably intertwined. As Young had already unreservedly concluded about Intercultural Communication (1996: 209):

Why Critique Must Be Intercultural … In today’s world, effective critique is necessarily intercultural. In the previous chapters it was agreed that intercultural discourse was necessarily critical … I want to make a stronger point: that intercultural learning is necessary for critique

The remaining questions are: how intercultural must critique be? Or, how do we define critique from intercultural perspectives other than theoretically European based? In sum, how decolonial should critique be? Since critique is understood here, in this text, as the search for underlying motives and the predictability of results within the complexities of specific contexts and for the overall meaning of particularities and their relationality, communication and interaction within relations of power, it would be impossible to disregard the essence of the multicultural, intercultural and transcultural nature of individuals and collectivities. It is therefore from the tenets above that the contents, approaches and intentions of this Special Issue emerge.

The notions of multilateralism (international) and multiculturalism (intra-national) dominated the political scene of the northern hemisphere mainly (Europe, America and, to some extent, also northern Asia), after the World Wars and after decolonisation respectively, throughout the twentieth century. The former, multilateralism, was mainly a concern among world powers led by the United States of America, almost exclusively taking foreign affairs into account, within the context of the emerging transnational organisations such as the United Nations (UN), the International Monetary Foundation (IMF) and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which ‘form the core of multilateralism, as they aim to include all of the world’s states as members’ (Tago 2017: 2). Tago also enhances the view that multilateralism has been mainly devoted to diplomacy, both political and economic, ensuring free trade, attempting to reach and keep peace agreements as well as calling for local public and international aid. Multiculturalism didn’t originally play an important role in multilateral relations, although both had the nation-state at their core, to be more precise, the idea of nation was at the centre of the idea of multiculturalism while the state was at the core of multilateralism. Interestingly enough, issues of multiculturalism were raised mainly in the colonising countries of the northern hemisphere, since they were hosting hordes of immigrants and assimilated citizens from the previous colonies, rather than in the previous colonies themselves, more concerned in building nation-states, e.g. as revealed by the choice of the colonial languages as official ones since they were believed to ensure the necessary unity and homogeneity.

However, no matter how intensive and spread the efforts to bring order into chaos were, difference kept breathing and still is, as stated by Gallois and Liu (2015: 518): ‘Increasing interconnectivity does not mean that cultural differences are being subsumed into one global culture’. Despite the contemporary waves of hegemonic neoliberal colonialism, not only in transnational marketisation but also in every section of society, the multicultural, the intercultural and the transcultural keep peeping … although always being pushed downwards and inwards, that is, considered as socially problematic and/or to be kept away in the private sphere. It is worth noting that these terms have only seldom, recently and thinly been included in dictionaries, for example. Moreover, it would be worth carrying out a comparative study of the inclusion of these terms in dictionaries in different languages, both diachronically and synchronically, that is, comparing the dates they were inserted as well as their definitions. Multicultural and multiculturalism are definitely the most present in English dictionaries in general while intercultural and interculturalism have only recently been included, but their definitions don’t differ much between them. The Cambridge dictionary (https://dictionary.cambridge.org) refers to ‘different cultures, customs and beliefs’, while the Oxford dictionary (https://en.oxforddictionaries.com) refers to ‘cultural and ethnic groups’ in the case multicultural(ism). The Cambridge dictionary team were so kind as to inform, by email, that they were ‘unable to tell … when these words were [first] compiled’ while the Oxford dictionary team did not answer.

However, the Merriam-Webster Associate Editor kindly took some of her time to report, by email, the following: ‘Merriam-Webster first entered ‘intercultural’ in the sense relating to societal culture in the first printing of Webster’s Third New International Dictionary in 1961. The word itself, however, had long been included in our dictionaries in the senses relating to crops and farming. At present [March 2019] we do not enter ‘interculturalism’ or ‘interculturality’ in any of our dictionaries’. And she proceeds with the clarification related to my second question: – ‘We first defined ‘multicultural’ for the first printing of Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary (the eight edition of the Collegiate) in 1973, and then ‘multiculturalism’ was added in Webster’ Ninth Collegiate Dictionary, which was first printed in 1983’. The dates above cannot but remind us of the chronological coincidence with the emergence of the work of two leading figures in the North American academy that became influential about ‘intercultural relations’ (E. T. Hall) and about ‘multicultural education’ (James and Cherry Banks). However, according to the Introduction of Gudykunst’s 2005 posthumously edited book, Hall’s work ‘could be considered a cross-cultural theory of communication, but not an intercultural theory’ (Gudykunst et al. 2005, note 1, p. 26), which had first been attempted by Gudykunst himself in 1983.

In fact, the United States intellectuals and politicians pushed the discussion on intercultural communication and multiculturalism in the mid-twentieth century, the former following the US power in the international arena while the latter was decisively fuelled by the Civil Rights Movement. They were followed by Canada and the United Kingdom, before continental Europe and the terms becoming globalised, which justified the predominance of a bibliographic corpus written in English in the field. It is as much so as that those authors writing in English have universalised their discussions in the global sphere and ignored the inputs in other languages, cultures and worldviews. And, as we shall see later, this has been influential in the selection of terms and their conceptual loading, despite ‘an ongoing failure to provide a clear semantic definition or distinct epistemological foundation’ that Portera (2008: 484) acknowledges with regard to ‘intercultural education’ but that may be extended to the general terminology referring to cultural diversity.

The debate between multiculturalism and interculturalism

The concept of multiculturalism, as it was put forward in the 70s in the United States, had its deep foundations mainly in anthropology and only gradually became object of multidisciplinary approaches, particularly when it expanded to Europe, as claimed by Gumperz and Cook-Gumperz (2012). Concurrently happened the introduction of psychoanalysis, for example by E. T. Hall (Martin et al. 2012), and later on, the development of Intercultural Communication theory in Communication departments (e.g. by Gudykunst and Ting-Toomey) and of multicultural/intercultural education, acknowledged as such and developed in the USA, Canada and Europe before the terminology was exported elsewhere.

Nowadays, multiculturalism and interculturalism have been largely used as synonyms, however, recently the idea of ‘multiculturalism’ has gained negative discourse in the media and in politics and interculturalists have made a point in setting off a different path. Multiculturalists are now being accused of being segregationist for demanding ‘recognition’ in the public arena of societies that have kept them segregated. Post-colonial European societies have reproduced internally their colonial matrixes, with regard to their accommodation of immigrants, even though smoothed by democratic political systems that have nevertheless kept ‘outsiders’ away from equitable representation. Furthermore, the colonial hierarchies have remained and been cherished by the decolonised states, for centuries now, and are reflected in internal colonisations within independent nations throughout the world, none being exempt from guilt. Although every colonial matrix included both hierarchical segregation and miscegenation, across violent relations of power, including racism, poverty, sexual assault, etc., British-dominated colonialism, as well as northern and central European ones, was more segregationist while Spanish and Portuguese colonialism tended, respectively, more to miscegenation, that is, violent machismo-based overall hybridisation. It is worth noting here that the small INTERACT European funded project, on the intercultural dimension of citizenship education (https://www.ces.uc.pt/ces/interact/documents/final_activity_report.pdf) gave evidence that whereas the ‘multicultural’ terminology was familiar to most teachers interviewed, in all the participant countries, two in northwest Europe and two in the southwest, the ‘intercultural’ term was by that time, in the beginning of the twenty-first century already, not widely used yet, or even understood, among the participant teachers in the northwestern countries involved, despite being used in policy documents, while it was found to be rather common in the southwest.

In the meantime, the ‘multicultural’/‘intercultural’ debate has taken the floor in the European academy, mainly in the pre-Brexit England intellectual arena during this last decade (2010–2019). This has been called the Cantle/Modood debate (Antonish 2016, Barrett 2013, Levey 2012). However, the ‘interculturalism’ ‘ideology or belief system’, just ‘like other “-isms”’, as Byram describes it (2012: 86), erupted in the British society in the 2010s as involved in the discussion about the conception of Britishness, following Vertovec’s ‘superdiversity’ argument and transpiring the Brexit issues. Vertovec was describing the ethnic landscape of London and putting forward ‘a multidimensional perspective on diversity’ (2007: 1025) which cannot simply be reduced to ethnicity or country of origin, according to him. Vertovec pointed out the ‘widely differing statuses within groups of the same ethnic or national origin’ (p. 1039) and ‘enhanced transnationalisation’ (p. 1042) of migrants. Therefore, on the one hand, Cantle’s argument revolves around the arguments about superdiversity, globalisation, transnational mobility and international, cosmopolitan identities in contemporary Britain, as well as elsewhere (2012, 2013, 2014, 2016) in order to critique multiculturalism and proclaim a new social narrative that gives way to international identities where the ‘real issue here, however, is one of population, not migration’ (2014: 314). The author nevertheless makes this statement in the context of intensive demographic growth in the UK due to migration and by citing the Guardian newspaper and Migration Watch, each connected with opposite political positions.

On the other hand, in their defense of multiculturalism, Modood et al. (Modood 2014a, 2014b, 2016, 2017; Meer and Modood 2011, 2013; Meer, Modood and Zapata-Barrero 2016) claim that interculturalists seem to assert their identity mainly in opposition to multiculturalism despite invoking the newness of their narrative. Although Modood sees ‘interculturalisms, both the Quebecan and European versions’ as ‘critical friends, not alternatives’ (2016: 487), he points out the main differences between British interculturalism and multiculturalism, concluding that ‘multiculturalism presently surpasses interculturalism as a political orientation … reflected in an ethical conception of citizenship, not just an instrumental one’ (Meer et al. 2016: 48). Nevertheless, Modood et al. do not question the national system – the structure, instead they call for integration, although Modood concludes that ‘it may be the case that all the attempted models of integration, especially national models, are in crisis’ and, in addition, ‘no singular model is likely to be suitable for all groups’ (2014a: 208–9).

In his Introduction to the Council of Europe book on interculturalism and multiculturalism, besides describing their similarities and differences, Barrett pertinently takes into account that each one varies across space and time and provides his readers with their hindrances and shortfalls. To start with, he characterises them as ‘two policy approaches for managing the cultural diversity of contemporary societies’ (2013: 15), which is important to remember as this discussion goes beyond theoretical argumentation to imply critical praxis. This Special Issue gives evidence of different types of praxis, that is, of different conceptual frameworks in articulation with practical implementations in different fields which nonetheless represent one vision of one particular experience in one context, that are indicative of possible perspectives and approaches already proved to be feasible, but not representative of general conclusions.

Interculturality and interculturalidad(e): When do the ‘Epistemologies of the South’ come in?

Most authors consider ‘interculturalism’ and ‘interculturality’ as synonyms, as stated by Cots and Llurdan (2010: 48, note 2), although most don’t openly assume it despite using one or the other indiscriminately. The authors also confirmed that the use of the noun ‘interculturality’ has recently become common but very seldom has it been defined and they quote Fernando Trujillo, from the University of Granada https://cvc.cervantes.es/literatura/cauce/pdf/cauce25/cauce25_07.pdf. In fact, it has been impossible to find a reference to the noun ‘interculturality’ in conventional English dictionaries or Portuguese and, in the literature, the concept is often discussed as a qualifying concept in tight connection with the respective meaning given to the adjective ‘intercultural’ but seldom by itself.

Cantle, mentioned above, refers to the term ‘interculturality’, by accounting it as terminology used in Europe and Canada but not in the UK where ‘there has been little agreement over the term; neither has it been adopted in policy or practice to any great degree’ (2012: 141). I dare say that the word ‘intercultural’ does not have a tradition in British English, let alone ‘interculturality’, and I must confess that my use of the word in English stems from the ‘intercultural translation’ (Sousa Santos 2014), more at the conceptual than at linguistic level, of the Portuguese word ‘interculturalidade’:

The conception of ‘interculturality’ admits the existence of multiple cultures as autonomous entities, although heterogeneous in essence, but focuses on the spaces in-between, that is, on their dialogical interaction, on the elastic nature of cultural identities and on the dynamics of the inter-cultural encounters. (Guilherme 2004: 112)

I must also admit that I then failed to acknowledge that my perception of ‘interculturality/interculturalidade’ relied on a particular mix of local/glocal/global epistemologies, languages and cosmovisions that were permeating my conceptual framework, as I shall attempt to expand later. However, Byram effectively reminds us, once again, that there is a ‘being intercultural’ and an ‘acting interculturally’ and he clarifies: – ‘Being intercultural and the state of “interculturality” may follow from acting interculturally, and is different from being bilingual/bicultural’, to which he adds cautiously: – ‘In short, we might then embrace the notion of “interculturalism”, i.e. a belief in the value of being and acting as an intercultural person’ (2012: 86). Here Byram also refers to the UNESCO’s definition of ‘interculturality’ which ‘Refers to the existence and equitable interaction of diverse cultures and the possibility of generating shared cultural expressions through dialogue and mutual respect’ (2005, art. 4.8 of the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, https://en.unesco.org/creativity/interculturality). It seems worth reminding that the word ‘intercultural’ became common in education, and consequently in politics and media, through the recommendations and reports issued by transnational organisations, such as the UNESCO, the Council of Europe and the European Commission, in different languages, and whose policy recommendations were adopted by various countries and, to some extent, independently from their own traditions and attempting to respond to globalisation and changes in their demography.

From a pragmatic perspective, here represented by scholars based mainly in the northern hemisphere (Japan, UK, USA), ‘“interculturality” of intercultural communication is constituted in and through the actual course of the interaction’ (Nishizaka 1995: 301), to which Zhu adds that ‘interculturality is not only a dynamic process through which participants make aspects of their multiple and shifting identities relevant, but also a process of developing new social and cultural identities’ (2010: 189). In addition, Kecskes clarifies that, according to his sociocognitive approach, ‘interculturality has both relatively normative and emergent components … has both an a priori side and an emergent side that occur and act simultaneously in the communicative process’ (2012: 69) whereas Tinghe singles out both an existential dimension, ‘a fluid process of being and becoming’, as well as a hermeneutic dimension, ‘describing an existing context and situation’ in interculturality (2017: 309). Finally, Collins, on the one hand, critically unveils ‘the paradoxical relationship between neoliberal discourses and the institutionalisation of the intercultural’ which he calls ‘interculturality from above’ and classifies as ‘illusionary’ since ‘it only scratches at the surface of a more complex environment’ (2018: 174-5). On the other hand, ‘interculturality from below’, represented in Collin’s study by university teachers and students, implies ‘the recognition that competing discourses are not equal in terms of power and status’ (p. 180). An ‘interculturality from below’ approach can also be found in the Glocademics project (http://www.ces.uc.pt/projectos/glocademics), a study about plurilingualism and intercultural epistemological exchanges in research groups and activities in Brazil, inspired by Sousa Santos’ theory on the Epistemologies of the South.

Therefore, if we amplify the discussion about the ‘interculturality’ concept nowadays, there are indeed not only other philosophical perspectives to be considered but also other more impactful alternatives at the political and institutional level. It implies what Walsh calls ‘thinking Otherwise’ (2018) or what Sousa Santos proclaims as an ‘alternative thinking’ (2018), that is, a profound transformation at the conceptual, social and political levels that can be summarised into a decolonial, inter-epistemic, intercultural ‘ecology of knowledge’. It also challenges us to ‘reframing our identities as “interculturalities”’ (Nair-Venugopalal 2009: 77), however, beyond the individual level into the national and transnational levels. These ‘interculturalities’ do not necessarily fade away into hybridisation, transculturality or functional cosmopolitism, they indicate predispositions for critical inter-epistemic and decolonial dialogue, recognition of on-going struggles for social and cognitive justice, cosmopolitan insurgency, etc. The ‘Epistemologies of the South’ (Sousa Santos 2014) do not only dwell in the geographical South but, they also metaphorically represent those peoples – their cosmovisions, languages and epistemologies – who have been made invisible and unheard, ‘the sociology of absences’, but are beginning to talk back, ‘the sociology of emergences’, and becoming ‘cosmopolitan insurgents’, demanding for ‘cognitive justice’ and ‘plurinational states’ (Sousa Santos 2018). These peoples are populating the world, globally they are the majority in numbers despite being the minority in power, and we have a lot to learn from each other in order to improve our physical, mental and spiritual existence. Such a challenge requires radical change and an attitudinal move towards ‘interculturality/interculturalidad(e)’, only to mention the word in three languages that were almost sufficient to (dis)cover the world but are, and have been, simply insufficient to describe it (Guilherme 2018, 2019a).

Several Latin-American authors have identified different forms, models and levels of ‘interculturality/interculturalidad(e)’ (Estermann 2010; Viana, Tapia and Walsh 2010) and they coincide in its articulation with ‘the multicultural’ and ‘the transcultural’, since there is no interculturality without the ‘recognition’ of cultures as autonomous entities both at the public and private spheres nor without the assumption that they are dynamic organisms that pollinate each other. This is also the assumption made in this paper while discussing each one of the possible terminologies since none of these terms can conceptually, socially or politically stand alone or provide a dead-end. They also agree that functional interculturalism, or superficial neo-colonial interculturality, does not respond to social or political struggles of communities that have indeed remained segregated or suffered violent mestizaje in any kind of colonialism or post-colonialism. All the Latin American authors above are knowledgeable about the expertise produced in other latitudes about this field, besides their contextual experience which has been much enriched by their work with native Latin-American communities. Likewise Dietz, who also offers an article to this Special Issue, abridges the main positions towards the understanding and implications of interculturality:

In the literature produced in both European and Latin American contexts a tension is increasingly perceivable between, on the one hand, an understanding of interculturality as programmatic, political-educational strategy for smoothing over, softening, or mitigating relations and, on the other hand, a view of interculturality as transformative strategy to unveil, question, and change historically rooted inequalities within society. (2018: 3)

Is the transcultural a way out or an exit?

The transcultural, transculturality or transculturalism has recently been given the preference by scholars mainly, in my understanding, sometimes as a ‘way out’, which means an attempt to describe other aspects which were not adequately or sufficiently contemplated in other terminologies, or an ‘exit’, that is, an effort to shy away from the negative sociopolitical baggage ascribed both to ‘interculturalism’ and ‘multiculturalism’. The Modern Languages Association, for example, issued a report in 2007 entitled ‘Foreign Languages and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changed World’ (https://www.mla.org/Resources/Research/Surveys-Reports-and-Other-Documents/Teaching-Enrollments-and-Programs/Foreign-Languages-and-Higher-Education-New-Structures-for-a-Changed-World), by the MLA Ad Hoc Committee on Foreign Languages, which establishes ‘Translingual and Transcultural Competence’ as the main goal for foreign language education. Among other capacities, ‘the idea of translingual and transcultural competence, … , places value on the ability to operate between languages … Students … are also trained to reflect on the world and themselves through the lens of another language and culture’. However, Portera views the concept of trans-cultural education as risky since it may be inspired in Kant’s universalism, cross-cultural psychology and trans-cultural psychiatry, and ‘could turn out to be a new a new and further form of cultural imperialism’ (2008: 484). In my view, the main risk of this concept stems from the idea of deceitful neutrality or of de-rooted cosmopolitanism. Nevertheless, Estermann believes that ‘transculturality’ takes into account the historical developments of change that each culture undergoes (2010: 30) and Canclini focuses on hybridisation by positioning it in a ‘network of concepts: for example, contradiction, mestizaje, syncretism, transculturation, and creolization’ (1995: xxix). Furthermore, he advocates ‘studying processes of hybridisation by locating these in structural relations of causality – and giving the concept hermeneutical capacity’. Monceri, who is also the author of an article in this Special Issue, has been defending, from a philosophical background strongly based on Nietzsche’s arguments and on the Japanese notion of interdependent selves, the ‘transculturing (not a transcultured) Self’ concept which consists not only on the ‘operation of overcoming one’s own culture’ but also of deconstructing the western binary logic of Self versus Other (2003: 112). Later, Monceri (2009) furthered this position by focusing on the co-construction of selves and concentrating more on the process rather than on the product of transculturation.

The need for criticality: Which criticalities?

Critical interculturality, which has been the goal of my argumentation here, requires inter-epistemic and decolonial criticalities. It does therefore need to be itself intercultural … and metacritical, at its heart. How can ‘critical thinking’ be opened up to different kinds of rationalities, without meaning to be essentialist or relativist, instead intercultural, and ceasing to present Eurocentric critical theory as universal? Catherine Walsh poses the question:

What might it mean to think critical theory from other places – not simply from the West and from modernity, but from what has occurred in its margins or borders, and with a need to shed light on its underside, that is on coloniality? (2007: 225)

It is also impossible to debate critical interculturality without questioning about the geopolitics of knowledge, decoloniality, the epistemologies of the South, multicultural human rights and intercultural ethics. Besides, epistemological de-coloniality is relevant nowadays not only to previous colonies but also, I dare say, to the whole world knowledge and life that are being overridden by neocolonial, neoliberal, hegemonic globalisation and to localities whose traditions are being neglected and recolonised. As Walsh (2007) reminds us, this does not mean to simply neglect European heritage related to critical theory, since the founders of the Frankfurt School also justified the foundation of their critical theory with the struggle for social justice in terrible times of world wars in the global North. Therefore, Eurocentric critical theory never considered the abyssal line, in Sousa Santos’ terms (2014, 2018) between North and South epistemologies, precisely because their theory was contextualised in Europe. Moreover, Habermas developed his theory of communicative action, which was adopted as universal, if not presented as such, ‘by excluding about four-fifths of the world’s population from participating in discourse’ (Sousa Santos 2018: 221). By giving the example of modern constitutions of Ecuador and Bolivia which include words from indigenous languages, standing as central concepts in the framing of the new guiding charters of these plurinational states, officially recognised as such, the author illustrates the possibility to also replace traditional theory of critical reason to a critical praxis of other rationalities, which he calls ‘artisanship’. According to Mignolo and Walsh’s statement, their goal for the new book series ‘On Decoloniality’ with Duke University Press is that ‘interest more broadly is with pluriversal decoloniality and decolonial pluriversality as they are being thought and constructed outside and in the borders and fissures of the North Atlantic World’ (2018: 2). Therefore, interculturality is not an ‘objective’ objective, I would say, but ‘a process and project’, according to the authors above.

In sum, and as a way to conclude, I adopt a definition of the ‘Intercultural’ that is published online in the ALICE dictionary, which accounts for a fundamental and updated archive of different concepts related to inter-epistemic and decolonial interculturality/interculturalidad(e). ‘ALICE – Strange mirrors, unsuspected lessons’ (http://alice.ces.uc.pt/en/index.php/about/?lang = en) was a 5-year advanced research project funded by the European Research Council and coordinated by Boaventura de Sousa Santos which spread over several countries and continents:

The ‘Intercultural’ concept spreads over a broad semantic area that goes from the idea of a ‘melting pot’ – half assimilationist, half segregationist – up to a critical discussion about the practice of an emancipatory and intercultural citizenship, at the local, national and global levels. However, the nature of the intercultural discourse is, at its core, ideological, epistemological and political. … The ‘intercultural’ can simply be defined by the capacity to cope with the unknown. However, identifying a difference of ‘perspective’ is much more complex than it may appear. … In its contemporary theorisation, this concept offers room and potential for recognition, in equity, as well as peer and reciprocal dialogue between cultures and languages and, finally, for the critical construction of plural and radically democratic societies. (Guilherme 2019b, http://alice.ces.uc.pt/en/index.php/about/?lang = en, my translation)

This Special Issue includes some articles which provide us with different philosophical, sociological and pedagogical perceptions, approaches and decisions to deal with the praxis of cultural diversity in education. To start with, Gunther Dietz offers valuable critical reflections about intercultural programmes in higher education in Mexico. He discusses controversial terminologies such as indigenismo, bilingualism and biculturalism and provides us with a diachronical and synchronical examination of the notion of ‘interculturalidad’, within the context of indigenous organisations and movements in Mexico and more broadly in Latin America. Finally, he highlights the core epistemological issues with which such intercultural decolonial universities are dealing and their pioneering approaches to knowledge production. Eunjeong Lee and Suresh Canagarajah introduce the terms ‘translingualism’ and ‘transculturalism’ into the discussion about interculturality. The authors argue that both terms respond more adequately to the increasing diversity, mobility and hybridity both in communication and identity descriptions, however, the articulation between them has not been given sufficient scholarly attention, as if they belonged to different worlds because they have been allocated to different disciplinary fields of study. This article also provides a helpful scholarly and critical examination of the various terminologies used in the field before they make their proposal and illustrate it with an individual experiential example selected out of an ethnographic multiple case-study. This individual case study deals with academic writing and provides us with an example of problematic issues among multilingual students in higher education. Joana Sousa Ribeiro challenges issues of individual international recognition and certification in the national health system in cases of immigration. In doing so, the author addresses and questions inter-epistemic multiculturalism and interculturality, made more complex through the process of internationalisation, across national higher education and healthcare systems. The author brings to the fore the discussion of a decolonial ecology of knowledge, in practical terms, in order to support her claims of inter-subjectivity interaction in the process of inter-recognition. Yvett Guntersdorfer draws a detailed picture of the connotations of the use of the multicultural and intercultural terms in the contemporary academic, public and political discourse in Germany and also addresses the introduction of new terms such as interculturality and transculturality. Among many examples of political, academic and policy initiatives, the author selects the example of an official proposal, put forward by an assembly of the Ministers of Education representing the federal states, that establishes an interdisciplinary space between intercultural education and art education in the curriculum, through which schools should attempt immigrant integration. According to the author, both research on this topic and programme implementation still remain at an introductory stage, therefore we are left with many questions about the implementation of this federal project, namely how art and aesthetics are approached multiculturally, interculturally and transculturally among immigrant and refugee children, to what extent teachers are prepared to respect their cultural background and to what extent critical, inter-epistemic and decolonial approaches to art and the aesthetics are promoted or even allowed. Finally, Flavia Monceri undertakes a philosophical analysis of the ‘multiculturality’, ‘interculturality’ and ‘transculturality’ concepts having the critique of the western concept ‘universality’ as the backdrop for this debate. Furthermore, she attempts a ‘decolonising’ reflection upon the traditional westernised philosophical and anthropological intellectual frameworks previously imposed upon the perception and study of the concepts above. The author finally argues for the use of the term ‘transculturality’, if understood as ‘a process of “going beyond culture”’, and by proposing the idea of ‘transculturing selves for whom it is worth thinking and practicing becoming’.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the JMD Chief Editor, Professor Shi-xu and the contributors of this Special Issue for their enduring support and patience. I must also acknowledge my gratefulness to the European Commission for awarding me a Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant which enabled me to expand my intercultural knowledge and experience as well as to the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, Portugal, which has funded my participation in conferences where I have been able to share and discuss my ideas. I must also express my deep appreciation to the North–South Library staff as well as to some very special colleagues at the Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra, for their academic and heartfelt companionship throughout the hardships and the joys of a long research path.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Manuela Guilherme has been a senior researcher at the Centro de Estudos Sociais, Universidade de Coimbra since 2002. She was awarded a PhD degree in Education by the University of Durham, UK (2000) and completed a 2-year postdoctoral programme at the Universidade de S. Paulo (2016). She has coordinated several international projects funded by the European Commission, from whom she was also awarded a Marie Sklodowska-Curie research fellowship (2014–17).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by European Commission and Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia.