Ethnocinema and the impossibility of culture

Abstract

The emerging methodology of ethnocinema fuses techniques from its ethnographic origins with its co-constitutive methods, and invites collaborators to creatively come together for mutual education and cultural transformation. Education as a site of the enactment and “politics of identity construction” continues to confront notions of authenticity/fallacy, hybridity/purity and a media-driven “fictive unity” in the ways we enact and teach culture (Souter, in Hall). Collaborative methods in educational practice, like ethnocinema, suggest that as notions of culture are changing so too must educational practices, both in classrooms and in research contexts. As global mobilities muddy the waters of articulable cultural values and identities, educational practices present an urgent imperative to engage in more dialogic teaching and learning – and more collaboratively generated research – to reduce alienation, generalisation and increase pedagogical border crossing. This article addresses the im/possibility and implications of moving beyond cultural identities in intercultural co-educational dialogue.