The EU and the Recycling of Colonialism: Formation of Europeans through intercultural dialogue

Abstract

The present essay focuses on problematizing the European Union's claim that intercultural dialogue constitutes an advocated method of talking through cultural boundaries—inside as well as outside the classroom—based on mutual empathy and non‐domination. More precisely, the aim is to analyze who is being constructed as counterparts of the intercultural dialogue through the discourse produced by the EU in policies on education, culture and intercultural dialogue. Within the Union, Europeans are portrayed as having an a priori historical existence, while the ones excluded from this notion are evoked to demonstrate its difference in comparison to the European one. The results show that subjects not considered as Europeans serve as markers of the multicultural present of the space. Thus, intercultural dialogue seems to consolidate differences between European and Other—the ‘We’ and ‘Them’ in the dialogue—rather than, as in line with its purpose, bringing subjects together.

Why Interculturalidad is not Interculturality

“…The pragmatic identification of the potential conditions for interculturality in the European languages into which subjects in erstwhile colonies continue to be born illustrates a continuing exaltation of the colonial difference. In such a rewritten -or rather, whitewashed -version of the colonial archive, historical tools of oppression are transformed into convenient channels of communication in the present that, paradoxically, enforce continued dependence on Latin in the form of a subtle imperative to mould linguistic apparatuses in accordance with a European frame of reference (Aman, 2012c).…”

Colonial Differences in Intercultural Education: On Interculturality in the Andes and the Decolonization of Intercultural Dialogue

“…Succinctly put, where interculturality in a European context emerged as a response to a shifting demographic makeup (Meer and Modood 2012) and, in the case of the European Union, also as part of forging common ground between member states (Hansen 2000;Aman 2012), the historical backdrop to the emergence of interculturalidad is distinctively different. The term evolved in tandem with indigenous people's emergence as an increasingly powerful force on the political arena in the Andean nations during the 1980s and early 1990s, an event in history that Xavier Albó (1991, 299) has dubbed "el retorno del Indio" ("the return of the Indian").…”

Impossible Interculturality? : Education and the Colonial Difference in a Multicultural World

“…Without dismissing the importance of such contributions, Europe's effect on the course of history might equally be framed in terms of colonialism, fascism and slavery, although this is never mentioned by the Union (Aman, 2012c). In turning itself into a moral agent through a highly selective use of history, the EU stresses that it sees interculturality as a way to safeguard values for the mutual benefit of all humanity.…”