Unravelling intercultural communication education in the periphery: critical examination of interculturality university-level courses

Abstract

Critical discourses in intercultural communication (IC) scholarship continue to foreground the postcolonial malaise of Southern spaces. Intercultural communication education (ICE) may encounter some pedagogical challenges in its endeavour to reflect the complexity and depth of the discipline and its recent critical turn. This paper seeks to unravel the transformations and the emerging discourses accompanying the ‘critical turn’ in ICE. The rationale is (a) to engage more deeply with the realisations of this critical turn against a background of unequal power relations and its implications and contextualisations within the Global South and (b) to clarify the possibilities of ICE in disrupting ideological polarities and promoting social justice. The aims are, therefore, (a) to probe into the interrogating and resisting potentials of ICE in the periphery and (b) to discuss the complexities associated with teaching IC from a critical perspective in contexts situated within the lower spectrum of power asymmetries.