{"id":9897,"date":"2017-01-11T12:10:27","date_gmt":"2017-01-11T12:10:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lantern.humanities.manchester.ac.uk\/?p=9897"},"modified":"2017-01-11T12:10:27","modified_gmt":"2017-01-11T12:10:27","slug":"call-for-chapters-interculturality-and-the-political","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lantern.humanities.manchester.ac.uk\/?p=9897","title":{"rendered":"Call for Chapters: Interculturality and the Political"},"content":{"rendered":"
Call for Chapters<\/span><\/u><\/b><\/div>\n
Interculturality and the Political<\/u><\/u><\/span><\/b><\/div>\n
Eds. Ashley Simpson & Fred Dervin, University of Helsinki, Finland<\/u><\/u><\/span><\/div>\n
Deadline for abstracts:\u00a01st<\/sup>\u00a0March 2017<\/u><\/u><\/u><\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Purpose of the book<\/u><\/u><\/span><\/b><\/div>\n
The notion of the \u2018intercultural\u2019 dates back to the 1950s \u2013 although many of the ideas that it discusses have, of course, a much longer history. In over 70 years and in the different fields that have used the notion, as one would expect, the \u2018intercultural\u2019 has witnessed changes in the way it is defined, constructed, researched, practiced. However, it has also retained some of its original flavours (e.g. culturalism, see Abdallah-Pretceille, 1986). Highly ideological, the \u2018intercultural\u2019 is being used in different ways across the globe, and sometimes interchangeably with other notions and concepts such as\u00a0multicultural, transcultural<\/i>\u00a0and even\u00a0global<\/i>. In the 2010s \u2018Western\u2019 voices are still dominant in the ways the \u2018intercultural\u2019 is constructed, although voices from the \u2018peripheries\u2019 are being heard little by little. Institutions like the EU and the Council of Europe have used, abused and misused the notion over the past 30 years, passing onto practitioners and researchers a certain number of biases, stereotypes and uncritically reflexive positions, well beyond the geo-political space that they cover. For the Council of Europe, the \u2018intercultural\u2019 is misused today to support the idea of \u2018our\u2019 (European) democracy while for the EU it is used as a way of promoting, amongst others, some form of imagined (and implicitly superior) European identity and culture.\u00a0<\/u><\/u><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Building on critical work on intercultural education (Piller, 2010; Dervin & Liddicoat, 2013; Dervin, 2016; Dervin & Gross, 2016; Dasli & Diaz, 2017) and intercultural communication (Holliday, 2010, 2013; Clark & Dervin, 2014) from the past decade, this book aims to problematise the \u2018intercultural\u2019 from the perspective of the \u2018hidden\u2019, which is often represented by the \u2018political\u2019. The form of interculturality, suggested here, examines the ideologies behind discourses of cultural and societal differences, encounters but also the forms of bias and manipulation that go with them. The main goal is to dive under the surface of neutrality and objectivity that pollute research and practice (Dervin, 2016). Finally, the volume aims to contribute to drain the marsh of emptiness that the \u2018intercultural\u2019 often experiences.<\/u><\/u><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Here it is important to delineate our take on\u00a0the political<\/i>. By the political we mean\u00a0spaces of power,\u00a0conflict and antagonism\u00a0<\/i>(Mouffe, 2005a). This reading is based on an ontology of \u2018the political\u2019 (Mouffe, 2005a; 2005b; 2013), moving beyond \u2018rationalist\u2019 understandings of the political such as J\u00fcrgen Habermas\u2019 (2015) deliberative approach to democracy. At the heart of an ontology of the political is\u00a0the belief that the political is constituted by a number of simultaneously contradictory, ambiguous and antagonistic forces\u00a0<\/i><\/b>(Mouffe, 2013) (e.g., the constitution and formation of identities, how intersectionalities-come-into-being, the relationship within and between the others-within-the-self). Mouffe argues that \u2018liberal thought\u2019 is \u2018blind\u2019 to \u2018the political\u2019 as it essentialises \u2018being as presence\u2019, thus, engendering politics as an exteriorisation of \u2018us\u2019 versus \u2018them\u2019 (Ibid.). A focus on \u2018the political\u2019 acknowledges the permanent coexistence and irreducibility\u00a0<\/span>of antagonistic forces inherent within societies\u00a0<\/span>(Ibid.). \u00a0<\/u><\/u><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
This understanding of the political runs contra to Eurocentric and Anglophone notions of \u2018democratic values\u2019, which, historically, have focused on the universality and rationality of political concepts and values (including the \u2018intercultural\u2019). In Mouffe\u2019s understanding of \u2018the political\u2019 one must distinguish between\u00a0antagonism\u00a0<\/i>and\u00a0agonism<\/i>\u00a0\u2013 agonism being the re-accentuation of the political towards the possibility of a \u2018democracy\u2019 which does not deny the radical negativity found within subjectivities (Mouffe, 2013).\u00a0An agonistic approach to \u2018democracy\u2019 embraces the plurality of meanings and the possibility of multi and varied forms of \u2018democracy\u2019 depending upon how \u2018democracy\u2019 comes-into-being within a given context<\/i>\u00a0<\/b>(Ibid.). Therefore, the political moves beyond the \u2018Westernisation\u2019 of political thought and encourages its accentuation and reaccentuation through spatial and geographical differentiations, linguistic differentiations, intersectional differentiations, amongst others.\u00a0<\/u><\/u><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
In this book, we aim to problematise the political within the intercultural and the intercultural within the political. The book seeks to engage in a critical dialogue with current practices and discourses across differing spaces and places. The focus on \u2018the political\u2019 offers an alternative trajectory to explore interculturality. The volume will appeal to a number of interdisciplinary fields including educational theory and practice, political theory and practice, sociology, cultural studies, linguistics and language education and, communication studies.<\/u><\/u><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/div>\n
Questions to be addressed:<\/u><\/u><\/span><\/i><\/div>\n