Der Ort des interkulturellen Denkens als Raum in Bewegung | The place of Intercultural Thinking as Space in Motion

In the field of Cultural Studies ‘space’ has become a very influential category of analysis and is no longer understood as geographically fixed. Instead it is seen as a social construction and thus as mobile, flexible and process-related. In short, space has become a metaphor of cultural dynamics. Accordingly, my focus does not lie so much on concrete geographical cultural places, but on the ‘inter’ as a place of encounter and exchange. I thereby like to put the assumption into question that thinking between bodies, geographies, cultures etc. is a universal thinking. My thesis is rather that thinking in the space-between goes beyond the categories of ‘universal’ and ‘particular’. The expression I suggest here is relational thinking. 

Furthermore, I assume interculturality in a double sense: 1) as encounter and exchange, which is marked by intercultural dialogue, polylogue, and negotiation, and thus, the own perspective needs to be seen as being situated in and emerging from relations. Secondly, I assume interculturality as critique. Here the question arises, whether this critique is formulated from ‘inside’ or ‘outside’ of a socio-cultural context. Here I’d like to suggest that the ‘inter’ allows, to take up a position outside of it, but without being outside of the world affairs. On the contrary: It allows being really inside of them.

A fitting metaphor to denote this kind of space in-between seems to be Peter Sloterdijk’s notion of coming-into-the-world [Zur-Welt-Kommen], formulated first 1988 in his Frankfurt lectures. From an intercultural perspective the coming-into-the-world is a non-static place, or maybe better a non-linear creative process: To create the world as world, by being oneself in the process of becoming, and at the same time being in conversation with becoming others alike. Additionally, I like to consider this inter-space of coming-into-world as a space of hybrid and relational positioning. According to Stuart Hall, positionings are temporal „cuts of identity“ into the différance, and they are essential to act self-confident and to offer resistance. By actively (re-) discovering a place, a located discourse is created that is able to communicate with other located discourses.

Coming-into-world, to position oneself and thus coming-to-language are basic aspects in intercultural thinking. Such a thinking is not universal, because it is not an overviewing thinking ‘from above’, but a relational thinking, that by exchange, dialogue, polylogue and negotiation may detect commons rather ‘from below’. By focusing on coming-into-world and positioning, especially the processual character, the dynamics, creativity and unfinishability of the inter-space as a space of encounter and critical negotiation is stressed. In this sense intercultural thinking opens up a creative space in motion.

Britta Saal hat Philosophie, Germanistik und Modernes Japan an der Universität Düsseldorf studiert und 2012 im Fach Philosophie an der Universität Bremen  promoviert.

Ihre Arbeitsschwerpunkte sind interkulturelle Philosophie, postkoloniale Theorie, moderne Philosophie und Ideenproduktion in Japan, moderne Philosophie und Ideenproduktion in Afrika, Cultural Studies und Gender Studies. Neben ihrer Dissertation (Titel: Kultur, Tradition, Moderne im Spiegel postkolonialer Differenzbewegungen: Eine interkulturelle Kritik der Moderne) sind Aufsätze zur kritischen Reflexion der Protomoderne und zur Möglichkeit einer altermodernen Dekolonialität sowie ein Sammelband zur transkulturellen Genderforschung erschienen.