Intercultural education and everyday life: suggestions from Michel de Certeau

ABSTRACT

In recent years, the reflection on intercultural education has focused on the importance of managing everyday situations in intercultural contexts. This focus is generally recognized as fundamental for the shift from the perspective of multiculturalism to a more interculturalist approach. An example of the interculturalist turn can be found in the EU document White Paper on Intercultural Dialogue ‘Living Together As Equals in Dignity’, which promotes the intercultural approach in education. In this article, referring to the later works by Michel de Certeau I will propose a theorization of the concept of everyday life, taken for granted as self-evident by the EU document and by most of the promoters of interculturalism. Furthermore, I will propose some possible deepening of it. Moreover, I will suggest that through the concept of everyday proposed by de Certeau it is possible to think of more creative ways to deal with cultural diversity.

KEYWORDS:

• Intercultural education
• intercultural competences
• everyday life
• Michel de Certeau
• interculturalism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. In the pedagogical field the intercultural perspective has shown itself earlier in its specificity than in the strictly political one. Good examples are the fundamental works of Martine Abdallah-Pretceille (1986, 1989). For a general introduction to the intercultural research in education see Granata (2018).

2. Here, I use the expression, conscious of its ambiguity, to indicate the many forms taken by the processes of cultural affiliation, in order to mark the distinction with the supposed uniformity of ‘one culture’ or ‘one cultural group’. The plural ‘cultural differences’ points here at the many different practices and ways of doing that every person perceives as distinctive of its identity as part of a particular group, not necessary on an ethnic basis (for instance, being part of a youth subculture can mark a difference as strong as an ethnic origin).

3. See Vertovec and Wessendorf (2010).

4. The White Paper was anticipated by some similar documents released in EU member states, which further shows the urgency of the issue. An interesting example is the publication by the Italian Ministry for Public Education La via italiana per la scuola interculturale e l’integrazione degli alunni stranieri (2007).

5. Among others, the italian scholar Giuseppe Burgio, for instance, warns against a use of supposed universal values regarding intercultural education: how can we be sure that those values are truly universal? In addition, it could be pointed as incoherent trying to defend intercultural dialogue by posing some super-cultural values as a starting point. See Burgio (2015).

6. An introduction to the debate can be found in Baiutti (2018).

7. As underlined by Silverstone (1989).

8. I will use in this section somehow imprecisely the expressions ‘everyday life’ and ‘everyday practices’ as synonymous. The meaning of ‘practices’ according to Certeau would worth a specific deepening, impossible here. See Brammer (1992) and Giles (2014).

9. The sixties and seventies in France were characterised by the success of works such as Discipline and punish, Reproduction in education and Deschooling society, among many other on the same topics. For a historical introduction to the period and Certeau’s influences see Giard (2012).

10. See De Certeau (1988, 165–177) and Silverstone (1989).

11. The metaphor of writing is almost omnipresent in Certeau’s works. As both an image of colonialism (the power of the writer on the blank page compared to the power of the colonizer over the new territory) and of resistance (writing as a personal practice of language), is often presented in comparison to speaking or to the structure of language. The use of this metaphor suggests the importance of semiotics and linguistics in Certeau’s formation, also given the success of structuralism at that time. See De Certeau (1992a, 1992b).

12. This expression recalls the famous Freudian formulation the return of the repressed. It is impossible here to explore how deeply Certeau has been influenced by psychoanalysis, particularly in the Lacanian version. We can say in a certain sense that all Certeau’s analyses are attempts to introduce the psychoanalytic tools into historical, sociological and philosophical researches. For a short introduction see (De Certeau 1973; De Certeau 1987; Dosse 2002; Napoli 2016; Lista 2016).

13. According to Certeau, two disciplines that have most contributed to a re-definition of the everyday in a pluralistic way, are rhetoric and psychoanalysis. The first one because by analysing the ‘ways of speaking’ produces central concepts to understand the ‘ways of doing’, the latter because it has re-introduced the multiplicity of common experience in the field of science (the narration of the patient in front of the therapist is nothing but an attempt at understanding his everyday experience). See De Certeau (1987, 1988, 1992a, 1992b) .

14. See De Certeau (1988, 61–77). The chapter entitled The Arts of Theory explores in more details this epistemological question.

15. See De Certeau (1988, XVIII-XX) and Burkitt (2004).

16. See White Paper on Intercultural Dialogue ‘Living Together As Equals in Dignity’ (Council of Europe 2008, 19–24).