Categories of Multicultural Dialogue from the Point of View of Contemporary Communication

Abstract

The perspective of intercultural dialogue seems to be extremely important, especially nowadays, for reflection on culture communication. The paper concerns the changes appearing in understanding of such terms as the Same, the Other, the Different, the Second―which constitute thinking on intercultural communication. It seems that the starting point of the discussion should become the perspective outlined by the outstanding Polish writer Ryszard Kapuścinski in the volume of his essays “This Other”. The proposition of the interpretation described in the paper is on one hand connected with the perspective of the philosophy of dialogue, especially with the reflection of Emanuel Levinas and of Polish philosopher and priest Jozef Tischner, and on the other―with transformations of intercultural dialogue implicated by new media, especially by the networked perspective of Internet. The paper describes reevaluations appearing on the Internet and concerning categories important for this kind of communication. The Network emerges as the place of opening for “the Second” and simultaneously as the space of rejection and exclusion. The analysis of the phenomenon of inter culturally leads to the conclusion that the so-far understanding of categories constituting the intercultural discourse needs to undergo the fundamental transformations and reevaluations. On the place of so-far oppositions there appear new ones, formed i.e. by new technologies. One of them may be the necessity of dialogue between “young” and “old”, where only the first group seems to be completely competent participants of networked life, when the second group become “the Others” of cyber-world. DOI: 10.5901/ajis.2013.v2n8p88