Discourse as Cultural Struggle

3. Agendas for Multicultural Discourse Research

3 Agendas for Multicultural Discourse Research Aydan Gülerce It may be useful, right at the outset, to point at the deliberate choice of the words in the title of this chapter and what they are expected to signify. Let us attend to each word briefly, in order to spell out the multiple goals and the ultimate aim of the chapter, set the scene for the discussion and engage in the main argument itself that they co-constitute. Alternative to what? Despite the variability of the definitions of the concept of “discourse,” there can be no disagreement on the notion of “cultural struggle,” in any reading/ writing, that the term always has a symbiotic reference. In this volume, $ISCOURSE AS #ULTURAL 3TR UGGLE, that implicit referant is the hegemonistic Anglo-American First World, and research traditions outside the dominant cultures are especially invited to this dialogue. Both the intellectual discursive world and the culture of scientism, however, have no actual geographical or disciplinary borders. They have been so pervasively disseminated already in our academic world, let alone the very fact that many texts, including this one, need to be in the English language. If there is any one particular discourse to exit from, or a knowledge position to step outside of, so to speak, that ought to be the hegemonic discourse of Western modernism. In order to confront the universalizing and impoverishing tendencies of our times, and to genuinely move towards possibilities for world peace and equality, I find an action in this direction as a first crucial step. Since it is on this evaluation that I base the current discussion, let us make the answer to the subheading explicit: alternative to the knowledge/ practice of universalist and absolutist modernism. The very same self-centric discourse of modernism, however, defines only two possible doors to exit from itself: premodernism and postmodernism. One 30 Aydan Gülerce may postulate that there is no other alternative than, on the one hand, fundamentalism as in the Dark Ages of the pre-Enlightenment, and on the other, further disintegration and nihilism. Again, it is the very same Cartesian dichotomic thinking and its habitual either/or reasoning that create a paradox for today’s intellectuals. Both possibilities absolutely suggest further regression, definitely not progress, by the normative epigenetic discourse of modernism. Yet, it is possible, of course, not to “enter” at all into this paradoxical “Catch22 ” or “damn if you do, damn if you don’t” situation in the first place. That is not only a possibility for the future generation of scholars but also for the current scholarship that might be already caught up in it. It would be much easier, indeed, especially for those who belong to both intellectual worlds of the West and the Rest, to find an appropriate forum in the readership in the present volume. Having altered Russell’s (1903) theory of logical types, Bateson (1956) had developed the double-bind theory (or known as the communication theory of schizophrenia) together with his colleagues, in which the “exit” from such paradoxical situations comes through meta-communication; that is, communication about communication. I would therefore suggest that we first interpret the current intellectual entrapment which is associated with the postmodern condition (Lyotard) and its critique as a communication about modernism. The reason is that, as much as this proposed knowledge/practice (e.g, Gülerce 1991; 1997) joins the postmodernist critique in most places with its transformational epistemology, transdisciplinary ontology, transcultural aesthetics, translational praxis, and transcendental ethics, its reading of (post)modernity has not been a (post)modernist one. Hence, the descriptive comment about our narrative continues: it is alternative to foundationalist, essentialist, and equally binary postmodernism. Indeed, modernism leaves postmodernism as a philosophy of thought outside, and talks about it from the exterior without necessarily understanding its language. What defines postmodernism, and always in a counter-dependent, comparative, or reactive fashion to itself, is nothing but the Cartesian dichotomic, foundationalist, and essentialist mentality of Western modernism. Thus, its self-referential and self-centric grammar helps only with the continuous reproduction of the modernist discourse. The language of postmodernism is not only linguistic, semiotic, semantic, and interpretive but also, though not yet, transcendental. Thus, postmodernism can read and understand the reductionistic language of modernism and contains modernism within itself as a “special condition,” so to speak, yet it is “speechless” before modernism. Since this is no place for silence, a few more words may be in order here on an alternative...