Interculturalidade: Por uma genealogia da discriminação

Abstract

Interculturality cannot be examined without referring to the struggles for identity and recognition of rights. Today, after the fall of the Berlin wall, and the gabber of the end of ideologies and, more recently, since 9/11, the world has witnessed an increase of these struggles through ethnical and religious discourses. Associated to this is the increasing migratory flow of people towards the developed countries triggered, according to many, by phenomena such as globalization, ethnic conflicts and endemic poverty caused by neo-liberalism. We believe that all these factors are tied together and that they make up today's social reality, with its toll of exclusion and discrimination to be paid by the newcomers. This article focuses on diversity and multicultural cohabitation and tries to grasp, genealogically, the meanings and effects of discrimination today. It uses Foucault's interviews and texts between 1978-79 about his direct involvement with Khomeini's Iranian Revolution. This material, together with many contemporary examples extracted from the author's subjectivity as an emigrant in Europe, serves as an inaugural vehicle to discuss ethnical, cultural and religious intolerance, in the background of the so called "clash of civilizations".