(Slightly pessimistic) approach to the intercultural dialogue
The four clauses presented below are meant to define deeply thoughtful and effective foundation that would allow us to begin the search for an answer to the question of how to build intercultural dialogue.
1. Consequences of cancellation
The sense of permanence of the order established in the 1990s began to gradually collapse in the 21st century, as the defenders of this order gradually reduced and excluded the possibility to form guidelines that could become the basis for intercultural dialogue.
A rift between trust and legitimacy commenced, which was intendedly ignored by participants of the consensus. Privileged Europe — the “garden” as Josep Borrell called it, felt safe within its imaginary border and with its division of the world. Nobody paid attention to the fact that over the past four decades its own abandoned inhabitants have begun to appear on its territory as deprived of the voice or recognition as full-fledged subjects, as well as those who were in the world surrounding Europe that Borrell called the “jungle”.
Today, the division into “the West and the rest” has become completely undeniable and conscious. Ratification against polyphony. Forced diversification against plurality of worldviews.
This latent storm that reached our days is bringing to life the very long- acquired pseudo-conceptual idea of the end of history. As opposed to the transition to a post-national and, above all, neoliberal order (deregulated capitalism, formally “open” but at the same time strictly controlled trade, the world as an indisputable entity conforming to the principles of political liberalism), the riftstarted to aggravate.
While, on one hand, scars and experience received as a result of nationalistic policy promoted recovery of rights and dignity of the people having suffered fr om aggression, on the other hand, denial of existing problems led to blocking of these initiatives, which allowed strengthening of that opportunities for military or economic coercion that technological progress, in a broad sense, brought with it for forced expulsion or destruction.
At the same time, the central role as the basis for the above-mentioned actions was plaid by the front of subjective perception. A pretext for extraterritorial actions that represent an increasingly bizarre and incomprehensible construct was “diversification” in its discursive manifestations projected onto real events aimed at the preservation of the accepted order. At the same time, they use the psychological fragmentation of individuals to their advantage, which leads to risk for those who ask questions (nations or individuals), to be declared outlaws and persecuted for actions contradicting the established dogma.
In the transatlantic West (to which my region, Latin America, is also subordinate) this concept gets more and more simplified to the point that this narrative now dominates over various complex motives and interests that existed in the world, which is now increasingly absorbed by the new orthodoxy. And, of course, with detrimental and decisive consequences for relations between people.
This is privatization of meanings in commercial, diplomatic, and even cultural relations.
2. Hypernormalization and its limits
2016 became a decisive year for the West. Brexit and arrival of a figure like Donald Trump to the White House — the milestones that cannot be ignored — caused short circuit in the sense of stability in Europe and the US.
The apparent strength of the basic ideas, on which was based their self-vision as the center of the world, started to face phenomena and forces that acted, and not in the most sophisticated way, against what they perceived as the true spirit of the times.
Probably, a good summarizing example of such shock is the movie demonstrated by BBC iPlayer on October 16 of the same year. Adam Curtis, an iconic author in the English-speaking world, issued Hypernormalization - a documentary feature exploring the origins of time of “great uncertainty and confusion[1].
During almost three hours Curtis weaves together a series of stories that, according to him, describe the origins of the West’s “retreat” to a “simplified and sometimes completely false version of the world”.
He combined multiple interconnected stories with the concept of hypernormalization that Alexey Yurchak used in his memoirs to define phenomenon of the last decades of the stagnant Soviet Union: instructions in the official language that “were not explained and were not understood as having any meaning”[2] but had an impact outside of the closed universe from which they were declared. This paralysis was supposed to be eternal and permanent, until one day it merely ceased to be such and gave the way to a collapse. As well as to betrayal and plunder.
Curtis describes how habitually ignored forces started to puncture the “simplification bubble” that included not only “politicians, financial figures, and technological utopians,” but also “ourselves,” including leftists, artists, and radicals lacking the vision of the future and unable to imagine or formulate alternatives. The fact that the documentary recognizes this as a point of contact between the oblivious ruling classes should be an alarm. However, this alarm was perceived not to improve or change anything, but to concentrate on the attempt to perpetuate the existing configuration.
In such a clear disconnect from reality we enter 2022 and 2023 demonstrating even more dramatic picture. Petrification of thinking, leave alone preconceived moralistic assumptions, did not let one to understand the reasons, for example, behind the special military operation in Ukraine.
Similarly, but in a crueler way, there were no moral grounds to prevent the ruling elites not only from not condemning, but also from taking a position of complicity, connivance, and justification regarding the genocide in Gaza being broadcasted in real time. The most notorious thing in the world is manifestation of zero value of life: systematic disregard for the sacredness of a man in all its manifestations and, in a broad sense, a rude statement that other cultures containing life of the entire people have no value. A bargaining chip.
The time between Trump’s first and second terms is a clear indication of this period of denial, arising of heterogeneous and incomparable forces, as well as those who used the opportunity to seize power. Resistance to change became a destructive factor for the West.
The end of liberal omerta, now replaced by a policy of negotiations and compromise, as opposed to no less dangerous zombie inertia; the slogan “peace through strength” does not reduce the weight of the Orwellian burden.
3. What USAID’s intervention has brought with it
The new US administration’s interference in USAID activities earlier this year created a sharp vacuum that revealed the gigantic scale of this megastructure and its efforts to “promote democracy” and first of all the efforts to create narratives affecting interpretation of events by the society on the periphery and political decision-making in the center. Lives and cultures have been destroyed.
In essence, they demonstrated us the enormous price of this imposition of legalized normality and “objective” need to discipline and regulate the world based on long-standing and permanent strategic interests of the United States, which is not only a country, but an entity that unites forces of corporate deterritorialization.
In other words, it is a schematically designated and continuously operating program being implemented through local agents and actors that is aimed at changing of thinking of the “raw material” to create a certain reality that will finally get legal political form: color-coded violence meant to change the regime that, in case of failure, is declared an outcast in commercial and diplomatic matters, which creates a destructive vicious circle that, in its turn, reinforces the narrative of the target state and leads to pre-calculated enormous suffering.
From this, along with what was discussed above, follows the metaphysics of nihilism via which the West imagined that it has the right to shape the world according to its ideological whims (France, the UK, and Germany among others have their own similar “cooperation and development” agencies).
However, the intervention of the federal government into USAID activity was preceded by failure of several measures and geopolitical adventures, thus, in addition to condemnation of wastefulness, it is necessary to mention ineffective attempts to change regime or arrange reconstruction, which is their actual final goal. Recent examples are Venezuela and Georgia.
Trump administration’s thoughtless celebration of USAID paralysis can bring superficial pleasure in the short run, but at least in the realm of declared and obvious actions (apart from the probable existence of hidden and “public” activities that may take new forms), mechanisms for obstructing and interfering with the sovereignty of other countries in the area of trade and interaction between states still remain efficient.
This combination of all forms of struggle (public, public-private, and multilateral) for the establishment of a one-dimensional and uniform version of human diversity gradually faces increasing creative resistance.
The stubbornness and self-isolation of the part of the world that marked unequal robbery-based civilizational order and is currently unable of reconstruction is bringing benefits for new connections arising in response to its actions: opportunities are opening up for consolidation of dialogue channels around the tragic Atlantic Wall.
4. “Everything that lives is unique”
The quote in the heading belongs to the unnamed train driver entering a German concentration camp in the beginning of Vasily Grossman’s novel “Life and Fate” (1959). This thought comes to him as he sees the monotony of the concentration camp that is so much contrary to the inimitable coloring of all the Russian huts that he remembers. “It is unthinkable”, he says to himself, “the identity of two people, two briar bushes... Life gets extinguished wh ere violence seeks to erase its specifics and peculiarity”[3].
This destructive combination of images seems to resolve the main question, at the root of which one can distinguish a paralyzed worldview and a worldview based on resistance that generates the sense of non-territorial solidarity and unity of destiny strengthened by aggression and abuses of one geographic pole to the detriment of all others.
In fact, it can be detected at any scale and dimension, from macro-vision of the interaction between states in terms of global integration beyond the established (and crisis) version of globalization to manifestations of this worldview in people communicating simultaneously in different geographical locations while retaining the heritage of their land and general life order (is not this the meaning of the concept of tianxia?). An ancient innovation, if such an oxymoron is appropriate here? The positive aspect of recognition of such worldview is the essence of intercultural dialogue capable of making any growth concept viable.
Instead of looking for answers in a constantly changing process, perhaps it is better to ask the following questions:
If culture is a continuous process of decanting, and consolidated archipelago of places around the globe tends towards multipolarity, will the next step towards consolidation of these places be an attempt to create areas of contact that expand their range?
How to harmonize the dual definition of geography promoting both restriction and cooperation as the only mechanism to safe life?
While consensus, the most successful embodiment of which is BRICS, is still emerging irregularly and somewhat fragmentarily, is the belief, (pro)positive propaganda of unification, means to strengthen intercultural dialogue that in the end is the basis and the core from which follow the ways of understanding of everything else?[1] Curtis, Adam. “Hypernormalization”. BBC. October 11, 2016, available via link: https://www.bbc. co.uk/webarchive/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.co.uk%2Fblogs%2Fadamcurtis%2Fentries%2 F02d9ed3c-d71b-4232-ae17-67da423b5df5
[2] Yurchak, Alexei. Everything was Forever Until it Wasn’t. The Last Soviet Generation. Princeton University Press, 2005, p.50
[3] Vasily Grossman. Life and Fate. Galaxia Gutenberg. Translated by Marta Rebon, edition 2007, p.5
