The Significance of Latin American Interculturalism and the Dialogical Utopia

Abstract

The article is based on a distinction between the idea of interculturalism as a fact and as a must. Normative interculturality is an ethical-political project that considers intercultural dialogue a mobilizing utopia. However, as a project it distinguishes between functional and critic interculturalism. In the first one there is an underlying idea of decontextualized dialogue that does not assume non-dialogic conditions in order to create intercultural acknowledgment spaces, both at interpersonal and group levels. On the other hand, there is a critical interculturalism based on a "cultural justice" project, which intends to make visible the relations of power and domination among peoples and cultures, expressed as asymmetry, diglossia, lack of communication, and conflict. Following Manuel Castells and Nancy Fraser, this article analyzes different aspects of this proposal of a dialogic utopia.