Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Why Interculturalidad is not Interculturality

2014; Routledge; Volume: 29; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/09502386.2014.899379

1466-4348

Robert Åman,

Legal and cultural studies analysis

AbstractInterculturality is a notion that has come to dominate the debate on cultural diversity among supranational bodies such as the European Union (EU) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in recent years. The EU goes so far as to identify interculturality as a key cultural and linguistic characteristic of a union which, it argues, acts as an inspiration to other parts of the world. At the same time, the very notion of interculturality is a core component of indigenous movements in the Andean region of Latin America in their struggles for decolonization. Every bit as contingent as any other concept, it is apparent that several translations of interculturality are simultaneously in play. Through interviews with students and teachers in a course on interculturality run by indigenous alliances, my aim in this essay is to study how the notion is translated in the sociopolitical context of the Andes. With reference points drawn from the works of Walter Mignolo and the concept of delinking, I will engage in a discussion about the potential for interculturality to break out of the prison-house of colonial vocabulary – modernization, progress and salvation – that lingers on in official memory. Engagement in such an interchange of experiences, memories and significations provides not only recognition of other forms of subjectivity, knowledge systems and visions of the future, but also a possible contribution to an understanding of how any attempt to invoke a universal reach for interculturality, as in the case of the EU and UNESCO, risks echoing the imperial order that the notion in another context attempts to overcome.Keywords: interculturalityindigenous movementsdelinkingmodernitycolonialityEuropean Union AcknowledgementsI would like to thank Andreas Fejes, Stefan Jonsson, Peter McDonald and the anonymous reviewers of Cultural Studies for their valuable comments on previous drafts of this essay.Notes on contributorRobert Aman is a PhD student at Linköping University, Sweden. A former Visiting Fellow with the Program in Literature at Duke University and at the Faculty of English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford, he is currently finalizing his dissertation, provisionally entitled Impossible Interculturality?: Education and the Colonial Difference in a Multicultural World, to be published in spring 2014.Notes1 All translations are mine unless otherwise indicated.2 The term ‘indigenous’ deployed in this essay is indeed problematic as it collectivizes distinctive groups with vastly different experiences under imperialism. Without denying the powerful world views embedded in similar terms such as ‘Native People’, ‘First Nations’, or ‘People of the Land’, I use ‘indigenous’ not only because it in the context of the Andes is a way to include many diverse communities, language groups, and nations, but predominantly due to the fact that it is the term used by the interviewees themselves as a collective marker of identity.3 Although celebrated under different names, the arrival of Columbus on the 12th of October in the Antilles is celebrated as a holiday on the American continent and in Spain. For instance, ‘Columbus Day’ in the USA; ‘Fiesta de la Hispanidad’ in Spain; ‘Día de la Raza’ in Chile.4 In 2004, anticolonialists tore down a Columbus statue in Caracas, Venezuela on what was previously celebrated as ‘Día de la Raza’. Two years earlier, in 2002, under president Hugo Chávez, the day had been renamed ‘Día de la Resistencía Indígena’ (Day of Indigenous Resistance).5 For a comprehensive elaboration of the inauguration, see the Argentinean daily La Nación, 22 January 2006.6 First coined by Egyptian economist Amin (Citation1990) as a way for the Third World to break – delink – from the world market and build its own economy. However, Mignolo's understanding of the notion derives from Quijano (Citation1992), who introduced the concept desprenderse – translated as ‘to delink’ – in his writings in the 1980s. Mignolo (Citation2007) states that for Amin, delinking is emancipation within the rhetoric of modernity and the logic of coloniality. Since Amin's desire to delink is bound up with a Marxist viewpoint, the result becomes an internal critique of modernity since it offers a different content but not a different logic, Mignolo concludes.7 Territorial claims from indigenous peoples are not unique to the Andean region. Aboriginals in Australia, among other areas, have similar longstanding claims as part of their political agenda for the state (Wood Citation2003).8 Cited in Escobar (Citation2010).9 For reasons of anonymity, the universities will not be disclosed. However, they are located in Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru and Sweden. The course is 30 European Credit Transfer System (ECTS), which equals one semester of full-time studies.10 All interviews were conducted in Spanish. Although I am aware of the limitations of such an approach, the reasons for this undertaking are related both to my own linguistic limitations in Quechua and Aymara and to the use of Spanish as the official language of the course. The explanation for this is that, on the one hand, students may carry different languages with them, meaning that Spanish offers a common ground, and on the other hand, that there are those who identify themselves as, for example, Quechua without having training in the language because of the dominance of Spanish throughout the educational system. As Morales lamented in a recent interview, when enrolled in school, he gradually lost his earlier fluency in Aymara (cf. Peñaranda Citation2011). Although contradictory to the course's aims, support can be found in Mignolo's (Citation2005) writings which stress the importance of thinking in and from a language historically disqualified as a tool for thinking, such as Quechua or Aymara, while still writing in an imperial language, in order to subvert the geo-politics of knowledge.11 The ‘West’ does not entail a geographical space, but is instead an expression of modernity, a product of knowledge that was built on categories and concepts rooted in Greek and Latin languages and the modern/imperial unfolding of the West (Mignolo Citation2005).12 The full protocol with verdict (resolution No. 001-068-CEAACES-2013) can be read online at the homepage of the Consejo de evaluación, acreditación y aseguramiento de la calidad de la educación superior: http://www.ceaaces.gob.ec/index.php?option=com_wrapper&view=wrapper&Itemid=33413 Elsewhere I have elaborated on this point in relation to Swedish students of interculturality by placing emphasis on the categories they use in construing otherness (Aman Citation2013).