How do you communicate interculturally from a cultural perspective? Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Judith Butler, Homi K.Bhabha, Benita Parry, Karl Jaspers, Hannah Arendt, Albert Camus, Emmanuel Lévinas, John Rawls, Richard Rorty, Jürgen Habermas, Sojourner Truth.

Course description
Is there an overarching point of view from which one can argue interculturally without falling back into one's own cultural perspective? And can marginalized people participate in intercultural communication, something Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak doubts? In such a case, do they have to resort to public forms of protest, as Judith Butler advocates? Or are cultures not closed systems, as Homi K.Bhabha assumes, but rather arise through constant communication and the differences that this opens up. Would this be an opportunity for intercultural communication? Or does colonialism prevent this through its post-colonial after-effects, as Benita Parry assumes?
For Jaspers, one must believe in the effectiveness of communication, which he describes as the all-encompassing, which at the same time implies a religious belief. For Habermas, intercultural and religious communication opens up the universality of reason, which is a product of the European Enlightenment. According to Rawls, one should leave this liberal reason behind, if one wants to reach a point of view that mediates opposites as an overwhelming consensus. In Rorty's sense, one must pragmatically speak different vocabularies, including culturally different ones. For Camus’s Mediterranean thought, this would be possible from a local perspective as it draws connections across the Mediterranean. For Lévinas, the stranger who one will never understand, including the cultural other, calls us to take responsibility for him. Or does the connection between racism and sexism, which was already pointed out by the former slave Sojourner Truth in the 19th century, still prevent responsibility and communication today? For Hannah Arendt, people are different, not the same, differences that can only be overcome through communication. Would that be an easy solution? Is intercultural communication actually not a problem? Or is it simply impossible? An unattainable ideal! Empirically speaking, sometimes yes, but not always!

Learning objectives
The seminar is intended to introduce these approaches and put them up for discussion. The extent to which culturally different answers are given will be exciting.

Teaching Methods
Discourse; statements; lecture of the students taking into account topics from the country of origin; discussions; reading and analyzing texts in the seminar together; possibly intercultural working groups occupied with special themes, presentations or panel discussions; possibly via internet comparisons of television image design in the students' countries of origin: intercultural communication with pictures, paintings.

Evaluation
Presentation, written exam, each 50 %

Last updated: January 30, 2025