The Ethics of Intercultural Dialogue

Intercultural communication aims to educate people towards open positions of dialogue with others from different spaces within the supranational public sphere. This paper addresses three issues arising from this: the possibility of an emancipatory transformational consciousness; the existence of a transcendental moral signified against which ethical judgements can be measured; and in the absence of this, the consequent projection of intercultural dialogue towards cultural relativism. We argue (after Levinas and Derrida) it is through responsibility that ‘non-normative’ ethical judgements become possible. This entails determining whether putting a particular discourse or set of discourses into practice might lead to a silencing of open alternatives. These enable intercultural communication to locate itself in opposition to practices of closure and intolerance, while simultaneously exercising reflexive support for more open alternatives