San Marcos, 4/6/2010
1. Introduction
Before addressing the issue I think is important to note that the issue of multiculturalism has not been placed in philosophy on the agenda. All it does is what philosophy is responsible for: left hold, as noted by Heidegger, for what most deserves to think, and what we think is most deserving of that that makes us who we are. And another thing we are not there, people in the world, as is our essence.
Today we are in a world full of diversity. Coexistence, often conflicting, among these differences is what constitutes us as human beings, so this is what most merece que pensemos.
Para abordar el tema me voy a referir, en primer lugar, a la actualidad y su hacerse y, en segundo lugar, a la interculturalidad como perspectiva para gestionar ya no sólo la coexistencia (multiculturalidad) sino la convivencia (interculturalidad) de diversidades.
Debo advertir, finalmente, que mi mirada, aunque crítica, no deja de ser occidental, porque lo único que puedo hacer y lo que realmente me interesa es desocultar y remover los componentes de violencia, que ciertamente no son pocos, de mi propia tradición para poder abrirme al otro, desde mi propia particularidad, y dialogar con él en perspectiva intercultural.
2. Sobre la actualidad
It is now evident that globalization is crossed. I understand globalization here for the consummation or culmination of the history of "civilizational pattern" of the West, which consists of a set of processes that are leading us, everyone tends to be the global frame of reference in each more aspects of individual and collective life, from economics to the construction of subjectivity and providing meaning to human action. This process has accelerated in recent times as a result, as noted by Manuel Castells, the global flows of capital, technology and information flows consisting operations in the planetary scale and in real time. Thus, the space and time, two key variables of human life, have become more abstract, more removed from daily life of each one of us, to overwhelm the margins of nation-states within which we defined our identity.
We say some of that history understood as a set of "moments" or "events" of a "civilizational pattern" to be announced in the Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian, began to be globalized to the "discovery", conquest and colonization was secularized and formalized with the Enlightenment project of modernity is ultimately taken to limit global today. From the beginning, that civilizational pattern is characterized by the interplay of two logics and their discursive expressions, one of domination and another emancipation. These logical acquire different profile throughout history and held between a relationship that, despite being controversial, contributes to the achievement of that civilizational pattern to its consummation as globalization.
The first moment is constituted by the encounter of two traditions, Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian, which is then thought as the beginning of Western civilization. Is important to note that both traditions are carriers, cada una a su manera, del principio universalidad: una, la greco-romana, como racionalidad liberadora frente a los instintos y al mito y como gestión macro territorial de civilización frente a la barbarie, y otra, la judeo-cristiana, como representante elegida y conductora de la historia de la salvación frente a la idolatría y la gentilidad. Este encuentro lleva implícitas, al menos, tres consecuencias de enorme trascendencia histórico-filosófica: i) la centralidad de Europa y su cosmovisión; ii) el autoconvencimiento de que la naciente civilización occidental está llamada (tiene el derecho y la obligación) a extender su cosmovisión al resto del mundo; y iii) la definición a priori del otro as the opposite of what one is. And so, other worlds began to be regarded as subordinate or satellites, their culture declined and its population identified as being barbaric or uncivilized, infidels or Gentile. In this area is shaped and "legitimacy" the conviction of the "civilizing mission, or saving" of the West, which, as we shall see, globalization is the current expression, now secularized and crossed by instrumental rationality.
A second stage of this process is the expansion of Europe through the "discovery", conquest and colonization. The so-called civilizing mission and salvific is now developed, as noted by Anibal Quijano, mainly through the following strategies: i) the maintenance and strengthening of the centrality of Western Europe through the peripheral conversion of the conquered territories (political power), ii ) control and coordination of the various forms of labor (slave, serf, wage) and the appropriation and distribution of its products, allowing lay the foundations of capitalism (economic power), iii) the invention and use of racial codes ethnic identity as a means to allocate and classify individuals and peoples (social power and subjective); iv) operation nature and its resources according to the needs of the metropolis (power over nature), v) is imposed upon the conquered peoples of the European worldview and its canons epistemic, axiological, ethical, religious and symbolic (symbolic power). The use of violence (physical, epistemic, psychological, territorial, fiducial, cultural, etc.) Is, without doubt, the common denominator of these strategies.
The third time of this story is made up of the industrial revolution, the Enlightenment and the creation of nation-states. We are in a period ranging from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, which is formulated explicitly now, and institutionalized the project of modernity. We know this project, which secularized the mission and saving Western civilization, is crossed by a principle, that of rationality, from which are: i) the areas of culture (the sphere of objectivity or the world of science, the sphere of legitimacy and world standards, and the field of symbolic representation or the world of art and language), ii) social subsystems (the school and the academy for learning and knowledge creation, the representative democracy for the management of coexistence, the standing army and the judicial structures for security and legal use violence, the industry for the production of goods and services, the market for exchange, etc..) iii) and everyday life or the life-world (in which identity is defined by the interpellation of individuals as citizens or by location in the professional and the work).
interesting to realize that in this third stage, the West's civilizational pattern is characterized by: a logocentrism that objectifies all other reality making it an object of knowledge or desire, and that, moreover, makes forgotten nonrational dimensions of human being a monologue that is the prominence assigned to the individual subject, a valid assignment illustrated the proposed universal values \u200b\u200brelated to the notions of truth, good and beauty, the episteme, beliefs, forms of legitimation of knowledge and power, social subsystems and even their peculiar ways of constructing subjects and identities.
to articulate coherent and consistently all the components of its civilizational pattern, the West produced or overarching metanarrative discourse: mythical initially after metaphysical-theological, scientific and technical in the era of modernity, and instrumental rationality blatant now globalized. These discourses, in this third time, reduce the individuality subjective identity, think of history as a unilinear process, periodized, Eurocentric, teleological all-inclusive and, understand the nature and object of exploitation, and no further interest in the sacred or reduce the scope of privacy.
The fourth time, now globalized, has weakened the emancipatory side of the project and has appeared in all its nakedness the instrumental side of the rationality of Western civilizational pattern. The telos or purpose as mentioned civilizational pattern ends up proposing and imposing is that what we now call globalization: a set of processes, production and trade, but also political and regulatory as well as epistemic, axiological and symbolic leading us all, first, to have the globe as geography reference required to provide meaning to human action, and second, to take the Western worldview place and the role it has assigned to us and even the subjectivity and identity that has been allocated, and, last but not least, to accept as a guide to thought and action of the instrumental rationality that globalization is making and carrier.
What civilizational pattern that leads to globalization comes from what we know and suffer on a daily basis: creation of suburbs, unequal appropriation of the fruits of work, exclusion and marginalization, racialization of identities and social relations, putting at risk the habitability of the planet, placing the stories of other peoples in the framework of the so-called universal history, underestimates of knowledge, rationalities, alternative discourses, different ways of thinking and constructing subjectivity and coexistence , etc.
3. On intercultural
But now is not exhausted in the twilight of aspects given above account. Also overlook other signs this complex reality auroral bearers of hope.
In western geography itself, populated by multiple and diverse voices thanks to mass migration and the revival of local cultural identities are not Few require a responsible approach to nature or to invite an attentive ear to the other as a precondition to wisely manage coexistence. And what is extremely important for philosophy, Western thought today is setting its sights on the emptying of the self assigned assumed universality for a particular think that is in dialogue with other worldviews particular a source of enrichment. None of this can make Western philosophy without practicing a search operation and get rid of the violence implicit in their objectification philosophical, theological and scientific. Results that are undoing and weakening desuniversalización basic categories of metaphysics, theology and science, and consequently a widespread distrust about the great stories of salvation, humanity and history.
placed
But today is also aware of the presence of other voices, the voices of those places, people and social and cultural groups that were violently subalternized, but not silenced, by the cares of yesterday settlers, which flow payment in today's globalization. Empowered with the processing of its long history of resistance practices, discursive and symbolic to the subalternization, these socio-cultural groups have took the floor in their own languages, on one side, put in the local and global public agenda their legitimate demands for equality and respect for its territorial possessions, linguistic, axiological, normative, organizational and symbolic. And on the other hand, those same voices are carriers of counter-hegemonic discourses, but also epistemic, regulative ideas, symbolic worlds, lifestyles and construction of subjectivity, work experience, relationship with nature and the sacred, etc. ., all of which enrich the human heritage, and taken seriously, we are called to us Westerners, to heal the disease of universalism that has afflicted us since ancient times.
Because of all the items you just mentioned, is now made, despite the control exercised by the dominant pattern of power-a complexity that intersect the twilight and auroral signs in areas increasingly multicultural , intercultural and poliaxiológicos, populated by time, space and heterogeneous languages. I have for me that is no longer politically feasible nor ethically acceptable appropriately for managing this complexity with the theoretical and practical carriers of violence that we have inherited from Western civilizational pattern. This does not mean freedom to ignore the logic of this tradition a logic that globalization has been responsible for cornering or exploited and that, stripped of universalism that has characterized the West calls us to be open to multiculturalism from our own particularity and not from the universality of thought we invested.
In search of new horizons of meaning and discursive practices, the intercultural perspective, which can only be dialogic, is presented as a possibility, first, to uncover and deconstruct the violence implicit in the pattern and Western civilizations its objectification, and second, to explore and imagine other forms of construction of subjectivity, understanding history, management of coexistence, of dealing with nature and openness to the sacred.
We can not here deal with all the dimensions that opens the perspective of multiculturalism. I will concentrate on one, the management of coexistence, because I consider particularly relevant today. To do this, start by referring to the two basic concepts: multiculturalism and interculturalism.
I mean by multiculturalism societal state with two basic features: the coexistence in the same space, now usually nation-states with traditions of peoples, languages \u200b\u200band cultures, and management of this coexistence or through various forms of violence or at best, through tolerance. The use of violence in the service or coercive homogenization of all the people according to the dominant pattern or a joint subalternized other the benefit of the dominant. The transition from violence to tolerance points to a more just and occurs usually when there is a certain balance of power among the various peoples who inhabit those spaces. Tolerate-term toleration from the Latin, meaning bear-equivalent to being forced to endure the diversity of the other not because she is valuable, but it should be tolerated for other reasons. And so what is at stake in the management of living through violence or tolerance is the domain or convenience.
by Intercultural going to understand a way of managing the coexistence in a multicultural environment that is governed by mutual respect and recognition that even ideally aims to value diversity as a source of enrichment and joy. Respect is still about tolerance, because it falls within the scope of asymmetric relations, as revealed by the meanings of that word: reverence, reverence, courtesy, prevention and even fear. Recognition, as we shall see, goes beyond an assessment because it involves the individuality of other people or because they ascribe to a category-for example, the human condition-that he also accepted as common to both. However, if you assigned to a category, such as a child of God, from a belief that he does not share, I do not strictly recognition but crossed identity attribution of violence. In order for intercultural reaches its fullness must not only recognize that other and their culture is as valuable as myself and my culture, but to consider other and their culture as a source of dynamism, enrichment and joy. Looking
this from these concepts, which are actually ways to be of that now could say that today is made of the meeting, usually conflicting, three trends and their discursive practices. The most visible is that, following the pattern dynamics of Western civilizations, including instrumented emancipatory aspect of that tradition and understand both globalization and the making of the word diversity as a means to impose its logic on a global scale with subalternized natural joint sequelae, marginalization and even regardless of other peoples and cultures. A second trend is one that is based in the release of the differences, assuming the crop-and sometimes, the cult-of difference simply as a result of a reaction to and subalternizantes homogenizing powers of national or global. It is not uncommon that this trend will lead to critical local, fragmentary, relativism and fundamentalism to withdraw into themselves and obstruct the way to the possibility of appropriation of human wealth. But there is now a trend that is bringing new hope as the undoing of the violence implicit in the other two, a horizon of meaning and specific environment for the full deployment of human possibility. I mean the commitment to a dignified coexistence of diversities from settling in their own particularity.
Without ignoring the presence of the first two trends and powers that animate the third, the coexistence worthy of diversity, I am the one that calls me to thinking, which I think deserves more because only she, now globalized, facilitates and promotes the full deployment of human possibility.
will propose to do so, some thoughts, rooted in the Western tradition of universalism disease whose cure treatment. Top
by language. Understood instrumentally, language, and I refer here to as speech-language is a set of symbols that allow us to transmit to another or receive other information, feelings, orders or questions. But language not just a communication tool but a heritage steeped in history, a legacy from our ancestors through which we experience the world and the sacred, we perceive themselves as belonging to a historical-linguistic community, we construct our subjectivity and our identity and those with whom or for whom we speak. The language is therefore something we talked about, but something that we talked about. Probably the most important language is to build within its own identity by listening carefully to the messages that come from our ancestors and developing communicative actions with our peers. With each other form a community that is essential to establish ourselves in person. Hence the enormous importance of the recognition of significant others for the full deployment of human possibility.
When we came to the relationship with the other with a monological perspective deprive that other, especially if you belong to a community different from our own history, their own belongings to ascribe an identity by negation of what we are. If we Christians call him gentle, if we consider ourselves "civilized" we call barbaric. If you deprive the other of their language and their beliefs and forced to take over ours, assuming he or she will end up as their own way of being a person subordination that we have ascribed through speech and social practices.
Things change when dialogue which mediates the relationship between people. We know that intracultural dialogue, because the speakers participating in the codes and values, it is easier, especially when it is reduced in the old line of tolerance, a rhetoric for persuasion and consensus building. The difficulty begins when it is no longer just tolerate difference, especially of opinions, but consider other ways and notions of good life and to live happily with them. This difficulty is accentuated when intercultural dialogue is, when speakers not shared horizons of meaning and are known to be exposed to spoken on the other. Is needed in this case, first, recognizing and valuing the diversity of others and their cultural property, which certainly is not little, but he also needs to be willing to be spoken by the other to provide an attentive ear to the image that of myself and the relationship between the other is formed. I think only then, when they get together and mutual recognition and measurement provision (opening) of speakers to be spoken by the other, intercultural dialogue is really because it transcends its old status record to communicate, persuade or reach consensus rationally. To transcend this condition, dialogue reaches its fullness because it contributes to the construction of subjectivity of dialoguing in an environment free of violence, promotes human appropriation of wealth carried by the other and becomes a source of unexpected joy. In the field of intercultural dialogue that what matters is thus more than tolerance, rather than building consensus, rather than the arrival at truth or shared notions of good life, because tolerance mutation in recognition and appreciation for others, coexistence get along with the dissent, the truth is not restricted to matching what it is but that opens when the various notions of good life is enriched to become relevant to others, and subjectivity and identity is formed intersubjectively in language games violence free elective dialogue with their own traditions but are always open to human wealth.
's speech recognition and its relationship to identity, as you noted Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor, we in Western culture is the collapse of social hierarchies based on the honor-something that is privileged and that some others can not have, and the emergence of the dignity that is attributed to all belonging to the human species. This change of honor to dignity is fundamental, first, to recognize the other as an alter ego, as an equal to oneself, and secondly, to building democratic societies, which they attribute equal value to all people and call for participation in decisions, and third for the evaluation of social groups and their belongings cultures. This last step, which gives legitimacy to collective rights, opens the door to intercultural coexistence.
With regard to say that identity is not something that is inherited both as something that is constructed through mainly from the way we are spoken by those who become meaningful to us. A single example. It is not the same as saying to a child "what cute little boy!" To say "how pretty bold!". In the first If you call on assumed as a person, in the second will be challenged to assume his identity from a category, the race that I have invented to classify human beings.
Understanding the culture as a horizon of meaning is central to intercultural dialogue. Which culture is a horizon of meaning means that it is where subjectivity is constructed and deployed in the fullness of human possibility. So if, as claimed earlier Herder, each culture is the measure of itself, few violations are so serious as cultural because they amount to denying even the people of the horizon of meaning, to let it drift literally coercively or link to another culture condition ratings.
The fact that today is the day's agenda the issue of the relationship between identity and culture is the result, first, the processes of globalization and liberation of the differences, on the one hand, and, on the other , the seizure of the word diversity, the latter phenomenon that I understand as a concomitant to the other two and not only as a consequence.
The short trip just to do for some categories of Western thought, exploring the potential that they hold, I think enough to be encouraged to continue the exploration with a focus on intercultural management in view of the coexistence of diversity that currently us together.
In conclusion
In this complex scenario, made conflicting logical and discursive practices, we play all individuals, peoples and cultures, our identity, and we play as well, the ability to organize and manage living together as agreed. Neither the essential cultural cosmopolitans or interested, or extreme nationalism are good advisers to know what to expect in the complexity in which we live today.
My bet-and I am aware that this is a "bet" - is the intercultural coexistence. I believe that living as the utopian horizon of today. But utopian horizon I mean here not an imagined end state to which this is submitted, but a way of walking and make the experience of coexistence, because thinking coexistence in intercultural perspective is tantamount to escape the "iron cage" in which both hegemonic discourses and practices as essential cultural try to keep locked.
This is particularly important in the case of our Latin America, a geography inhabited by ethnic and cultural diversity have not only been able to develop survival strategies and resistance to subalternization but also are engaged in processing their own historical experience and take it from her word to shape discourse and practice their ancestral claims (territorial, linguistic, cultural, equity, etc.), but also to put their cultural wealth accumulated in the field of intercultural dialogue.
order for intercultural coexistence possible between us is necessary, first, to explore and remove the traces of violence included in our own traditions and cultural property, we need, secondly, a responsible exercise of citizenship leading to the end potential of democracy to the full deployment of human possibility, and requires, finally, that we take seriously the ethnic, linguistic, cultural planning and that characterizes us, taking it as a source of enrichment and joy. But taking seriously the diversity is not locked into it or sacrosanct. The difference is made in full when it opens to the living and the living is reduced to the poor condition of univivencia when it disregards the difference.
different crops open to friendly coexistence and building caretakers of the differences is, I think, the utopia of our time, a utopia that pointed to the reunion, now code-dialogical and non-violent, given the three way of being: the historical, natural and sacred. For this reunion in the cultural spaces fruitful is essential that our own particular versions of history, the natural and sacred are divested of the traits of violence that we have covered, because only then can think and build respectful coexistence, enriching and joyful of the diversities that populate the world.
