The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication 2nd edition 9781119745396, 9781119745433, 9781119745419

Citation preview

The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication

Handbooks in Communication and Media This series provides theoretically ambitious but accessible volumes devoted to the major fields and subfields within communication and media studies. Each volume provides experienced scholars and teachers with a convenient and comprehensive overview of the latest trends and critical directions, while grounding and orientating students with a broad range of specially commissioned chapters. Published The Handbook of Applied Communication Research, edited by H. Dan O’Hair and Mary John O’Hair The Handbook of European Communication History, edited by Klaus Arnold, Paschal Preston, and Susanne Kinnebrock The Handbook of Magazine Studies, edited by Miglena Sternadori and Tim Holmes The Handbook of Rhetoric and Organizations, edited by Øyvind Ihlen and Robert L. Heath The Handbook of Communication Engagement, edited by Kim A. Johnston and Maureen Taylor The Handbook of Financial Communication and Investor Relations, edited by Alexander V. Laskin The Handbook of Global Media Research, edited by Ingrid Volkmer The Handbook of Global Online Journalism, edited by Eugenia Siapera and Andreas Veglis The Handbook of Media and Mass Communication Theory, edited by Robert S. Fortner and P. Mark Fackler The Handbook of Psychology of Communication Technology, edited by S. Shyam Sundar The Handbook of International Crisis Communication Research, edited by Andreas Schwarz, Matthew W. Seeger, and Claudia Auer The Handbook of Listening, edited by Deborah Worthington and Graham Bodie The Handbook of Peer Production, edited by Mathieu O’Neil, Christian Pentzold, and Sophie Toupin The Handbook of Strategic Communication, edited by Carl H. Botan The Handbook of Communication Rights, Law, and Ethics, edited by Loreto Corredoira, Ignacio Bel Mallen, Rodrigo Cetina Preusel The Handbook of Public Sector Communication, edited by Vilma Luoma‐aho and Maria-Jose Canel The Handbook of Crisis Communication, Second Edition, edited by W. Timothy Coombs and Sherry J. Holladay The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication, edited by Thomas K. Nakayama and Rona Tamiko Halualani

The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication

Second Edition

Edited by Thomas K. Nakayama Rona Tamiko Halualani

This second edition first published 2024 © 2024 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Edition History Blackwell Publishing Ltd (1e, 2010) All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by law. Advice on how to obtain permission to reuse material from this title is available at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions. The right of Thomas K. Nakayama and Rona Tamiko Halualani to be identified as the authors of the editorial material in this work has been asserted in accordance with law. Registered Offices John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, USA John Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK For details of our global editorial offices, customer services, and more information about Wiley products visit us at www.wiley.com. Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats and by print-­on-­demand. Some content that appears in standard print versions of this book may not be available in other formats. Trademarks: Wiley and the Wiley logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/ or its affiliates in the United States and other countries and may not be used without written permission. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty While the publisher and authors have used their best efforts in preparing this work, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this work and specifically disclaim all warranties, including without limitation any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives, written sales materials or promotional statements for this work. This work is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a specialist where appropriate. The fact that an organization, website, or product is referred to in this work as a citation and/or potential source of further information does not mean that the publisher and authors endorse the information or services the organization, website, or product may provide or recommendations it may make. Further, readers should be aware that websites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read. Neither the publisher nor authors shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages. Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data Names: Nakayama, Thomas K., editor. | Halualani, Rona Tamiko, editor. |   Wiley-Blackwell, publisher. Title: The handbook of critical intercultural communication / edited by Thomas K.   Nakayama, Rona Tamiko Halualani. Description: Second edition. | Hoboken, NJ : Wiley-Blackwell, 2024. |   Series: Handbooks in Communication and Media | Identifiers: LCCN 2023027582 (print) | LCCN 2023027583 (ebook) |   ISBN 9781119745396 (cloth) | ISBN 9781119745433 (adobe pdf) |   ISBN 9781119745419 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Intercultural communication–Handbooks, manuals, etc. Classification: LCC HM1211.H34 2024 (print) | LCC HM1211 (ebook) | DDC  303.48/2–dc23/eng/20230628 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023027582 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023027583 Cover Design: Wiley Cover Image: © Orbon Alija/Getty Images Set in size of 10/12pt ITC Galliard Std by Straive, Pondicherry, India

Dedication

For those who continually fight injustice, strive for transformation in the world, over and over again

Contents

Notes on Contributors

xi

Acknowledgmentsxix   1. Critical Intercultural Communication Studies: Formation: From Crossroads to Trajectories and Urgencies on Shifting Terrain Rona Tamiko Halualani and Thomas K. Nakayama Part I Critical Junctures and Reflections in Critical Intercultural Communication Studies: Revisiting and Retracing

1

29

  2. Writing the Intellectual History of Intercultural Communication Wendy Leeds-­Hurwitz

31

  3. Intercultural Communication and Dialectics Revisited Thomas K. Nakayama and Judith N. Martin

41

  4. Critical Reflections on Culture and Critical Intercultural Communication Dreama G. Moon

57

  5. Reflections on “Problematizing ‘Nation’ in Intercultural Communication Research”73 Kent A. Ono   6. “A Transdisciplinary Turn in Critical Intercultural Communication” Ako Inuzuka

85

  7. “Other Bodies” in Interaction: Queer Relationalities and Intercultural Communication95 Gust A. Yep 8. Theorizing at the End of the World: Transforming Critical Intercultural Communication109 S. Lily Mendoza

viii Contents Part II Critical Theoretical Dimensions in Critical Intercultural Communication Studies

9. Culture as Text and Culture as Theory: Asiacentricity and Its Raison D’être in Intercultural Communication Research Yoshitaka Miike 10. Fabricating Difference: Interculturality and the Politics of Language Crispin Thurlow

127

129 151

11. Livin’ la Vida Marimacha: Post Borderlands and Queerness in Starz’s Vida Bernadette Marie Calafell and Nivea Castaneda Acrey

167

12. The Hegemony of English and the Rise of Anti-­globalism: Problems, Ideologies, and Solutions Yukio Tsuda

177

13. On Terra Nullius and Texts: Settler Colonialism, Native Disappearance, and the Introductory Cultural Studies Reader Aimee Carrillo Rowe

197

14. Studying AsiaPacifiQueer Communication: An Autoethnographic Critique of Japanese Queer Reimagining(s) of Hawai’i Shinsuke Eguchi

211

15. Re-­imagining Intercultural Communication Amid Multiple Pandemics Kathryn Sorrells 16. Therapeutic Media Representations: Recreating and Contesting the  Past in Poland Jolanta A. Drzewiecka 17. A Call for Transformative Cultural Collaboration: Jewish Identity, the Race-­religion Constellation, and Fighting Back Against White Nationalism Miriam Shoshana Sobre

227

249

263

18. Decolonizing Theory and Research: Asiacentric Womanism as an Emancipatory Paradigm for Intercultural Communication Studies Jing Yin

277

19. Why Do Citizens with Guns Fear Immigrants with Flags? Flag-­waving and Differential Adaptation Theory Antonio Tomas De La Garza and Kent A. Ono

299

Part III Critical Inquiry Practices in Critical Intercultural Communication Studies

20. Methodological Reexaminations: Decolonizing Autoethnography and New Pathways in Critical Intercultural Communication Ahmet Atay

315

317

Contents

ix

21. Embracing the Rigor of Critical Intercultural Communication Methods of Inquiry: Reflections on Seeing, Knowing, and Doing Mark P. Orbe

327

22. A Sense of Healing: A Relational Meditation in Queer (and Trans) of Color Communism Lore/tta LeMaster and Michael Tristano, Jr.

337

23. Doing Critical Intercultural Communication Work as Political Commitment: Lessons Learned from Ethnographic Methods Gloria Nziba Pindi

351

24. Configuring a Post-­and Decolonial Pedagogy: The Theory-­method Conundrum365 Devika Chawla 25. Critical Embodiment: Reflections on the Imperative of Praxis in the Four Seasons of Ethnography Sarah Amira de la Garza

375

26. The Depths of the Coatlicue State: Mitos, Religious Poetics, and the Politics of Soul Murder in Queer of Color Critique Robert Gutierrez-­Perez

383

27. Culture Counts: Quantitative Approaches to Critical Intercultural Communication395 Srividya Ramasubramanian, Julius Matthew Riles, and Omotayo O. Banjo 28. Culture-­centered Method for Decolonization: Community Organizing to Dismantle Capitalist-­colonial Organizing Mohan Dutta Part IV  Critical Topics in Critical Intercultural Communication Studies

407 419

29. Homophobic Ghana? A Critical Intercultural Communication Intervention421 Godfried Asante 30. Discussions of Race and Racism in Asian North American Pacific Islander’s YouTube Videos: A Content Analysis Kristin L. Drogos and Vincent N. Pham

429

31. Critical Intercultural Communication Pedagogy at a Crossroads: Espousing Commitments as Pedagogical Praxis Yea-­Wen Chen and Brandi Lawless

441

32. What’s Cooking? Caste as the (Not So) Secret Ingredient of  Indian American Identity Santhosh Chandrashekar

451

33. The Aftermath of the Las Vegas Shooting: Engaging in Critical Intercultural Communication Pedagogy 459 Richie Neil Hao

x Contents 34. Bridgerton: A Case Study in Critical Cultural Approaches to Racial Representations in Popular Culture Tina M. Harris and Meghan S. Sanders

465

35. Unsettling Intercultural Communication: Settler Militarism and  Indigenous Resistance from Oceania Tiara R. Na’puti and Riley I. Taitingfong

473

36. Recovering the Dots of Social Injustice and Ecological Violence: A Case for Critical Intercultural Communication Etsuko Kinefuchi

483

37. Navigating Undocumented Activism: Narratives, Positionality, and Immigration Politics493 Josue David Cisneros and Ana Lisa Eberline 38. A Critical Intercultural View of War on Terror Militarism: The Case of the Production of Knowledge About Afghan Women in North America and  Western Europe Isra Ali 39. Reading a Letter for Black Lives Matter: A Cultural Studies Approach to Asian American Intercultural Communication LeiLani Nishime and Elizabeth S. Parks

503

509

40. Interstitials: Post-­pandemic Reflections on the Matrix of Access, Inclusion and Privilege517 Priya Raman and Deanna L. Fassett 41. Sensing Race in the Time of COVID-­19 Sachi Sekimoto

527

42. Intersectional Delights: White South African Diaspora in the US Melissa Steyn and Cuthbeth Tagwirei

535

Part V  Critical Intercultural Communication Futures

551

43. Returning to (Neo)Normal:  A Case Study in Critical Intercultural Health Communication Kristen L. Cole, Leandra Hinojosa Hernández, and Sarah De Los Santos Upton

553

44. The Intercultural Questions at the Center of a Critical Reclamation of the University Kathleen F. McConnell

569

45. The Challenge of the “More-­than-­human World”:  Toward an Ecological Turn in Intercultural Communication S. Lily Mendoza and Etsuko Kinefuchi

577

46. Conclusion: Dynamic Challenges of Critical Intercultural Communication Studies Thomas K. Nakayama and Rona Tamiko Halualani

595

Index

599

Notes on Contributors

Nivea Castaneda Acrey is a first-­generation Chicana and daughter of immigrants from Jalisco, Mexico. She serves as director of Impact and Systems’ Change at Caminar Latino – Latinos United For Peace and as a therapist at her private practice. Dr. Castaneda Acrey works on projects that center different forms of generational trauma that Latinx families survive. Her research and modes of therapy draw on Indigenous storytelling methods and ways of knowing. Isra Ali is a feminist scholar teaching in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New  York University. Her work focuses on questions related to citizenship, primarily in relationship to feminism and the production of cultural knowledge about militarism. Godfried Asante is an associate professor of communication, culture, and difference in the School of Communication Studies at San Diego State University. He was born in Ghana and was raised there until moving to the United States for higher education. His research focuses on queer intercultural communication, transnational sexual politics, and postcolonial studies. Ahmet Atay is a professor of Global Media and Communication at the College of Wooster. His research focuses on diasporic experiences and cultural identity formations; political and social complexities of city life, such as immigrant and queer experiences; the usage of new media technologies in different settings; and the notion of home; representation of gender, sexuality, and ethnicity in media; queer and immigrant experiences in cyberspace, and critical communication pedagogies. Omotayo O. Banjo is a professor of communication in the School of Communication, Film, and Media Studies at the University of Cincinnati. She is a second-­ generation Nigerian American whose work focuses on the relationship between identity and media. Namely, film, television, and music produced by Black and African diasporic storytellers. Bernadette Marie Calafell is the inaugural chair and professor of critical race and ethnic studies at Gonzaga University. She has co-­edited four books and authored Latina/o Communication Studies: Theorizing Performance and Monstrosity, Performance, and Race in Contemporary Culture.

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Notes on Contributors

Santhosh Chandrashekar is an assistant professor in the Communication Studies Department at the University of Denver, which is located on unceded lands of the Cheyenne and Arapahoe people. His work examines how caste intersects with race and other axes of social stratification in India and in the Indian diaspora in ways that are not always legible when examined through US-­centric framework. His work has appeared in the Journal of International and Intercultural Communication and Cultural Studies – Critical Methodologies, among others, and in edited anthologies. Devika Chawla is the Stocker Professor of Interpersonal Communication in Ohio University. She teaches and writes on matters of migration, home and family life, material culture, and affect in the context of contemporary urban north India. She is the author of Home, Uprooted: Oral Histories of India’s Partition published by Fordham University Press. Yea-­Wen Chen is a professor in the School of Communication at San Diego State University. She is a US-­based immigrant mother-­scholar born and raised in Taiwan. Her research agenda focuses on communicating cultural identities from the margins in the contexts of immigrant women faculty in US academia, pan-­Asian organizing, and critical intercultural communication pedagogy. Josue David Cisneros is an associate professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-­Champaign. His research and teaching focus on critical rhetoric and critical intercultural communication, especially issues of immigration, Latinx and Latin American politics, race/ethnicity, and social movements. Kristen L. Cole is an associate professor of Critical Health Communication in the Department of Communication Studies at San José State University. Her research investigates rhetorics of identity, agency, and pathology, particularly as they intersect with discourses of gender, race, sexuality, and disability. Antonio Tomas De La Garza is an associate professor of Rhetoric at California State University San Marcos. He a culture worker, advocate, and organizer who specializes in decolonial peace building initiatives. He is a Kroc Border Fellow and the Co-­Founder of The University Without Borders. He is currently serving as the Ricardo Flores Magón Scholar in Residence for the Contra Viento y Marea Comedor and the Escuela Libre in Tijuana, Mexico, where he designs and implements curricula to build resilience and support for refugees and unhoused people in Tijuana. Sarah De Los Santos Upton is an associate professor of communication in the Department of Communication at the University of Texas at El Paso. She is a mixed-­race Chicana born, raised, and currently living and teaching in the Mexico-­U.S. borderlands. She works on projects related to Latina/o/x communication studies and critical intercultural health communication. Kristin L. Drogos is a research investigator in the Research Center for Group Dynamics at the Institute of Social Research at the University of Michigan. She is a media psychologist whose research focuses on the role of media in the socialization of youth, including adolescent development of self and identity, mediated representation of identity and stereotypes, and social cognition processes. Jolanta A. Drzewiecka is an associate professor of intercultural communication in the Faculty of Communication, Culture, and Society at Università dell Svizzera italiana in Lugano, Switzerland. She was born in Poland and has lived most of her life in the United States, but now lives in Switzerland. Her work focuses on discourses of public memories and various questions related to migration.



Notes on Contributors

xiii

Mohan Dutta is dean’s chair professor of communication. He is the director of the Center for Culture-­Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE), developing culturally centered, community-­based projects of social change, advocacy, and activism that articulate health as a human right. Mohan Dutta’s research examines the role of advocacy and activism in challenging marginalizing structures, the relationship between poverty and health, political economy of global health policies, the mobilization of cultural tropes for the justification of colonial health development projects, and the ways in which participatory culture-­ neo-­ centered processes and strategies of radical democracy serve as axes of global social change. Shinsuke Eguchi is a professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at the University of New Mexico. Their research interests focus on global and transcultural studies, queer of color critique, intersectionality and racialized gender politics, Asian/American studies, and performance studies. They are author of Asians Loving Asians: Sticky Rice Homoeroticism and Queer Politics (Peter Lang, 2022). Their recent solo-­authored and co-­authored work has appeared for publication in Communication, Culture, and Critique, Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, Review of Communication, Western Journal of Communication, Women’s Studies in Communication, and Journal of Homosexuality. They are co-­editor of Intercultural Communication in Japan (2017, Routledge), co-­editor of Queer Intercultural Communication (2020, Rowman & Littlefield), and co-­editor of De-­Whitening Intersectionality (2020, Lexington Press). Deanna L. Fassett is Professor of Communication Pedagogy at San José State University, where she served as Assistant Vice Provost for Faculty Development from 2019–2023. In addition to co-authoring or co-editing books on critical communication pedagogy, her work concerns equitable and inclusive faculty and student success. Sarah Amira De la Garza is the inaugural Southwest Borderlands scholar at Arizona State University. She is a Chicana whose life work across the areas of study of communication and culture celebrates the revolutionary spirit of her ancestors: Basque, Lipan, Rarámuri, Sephardic, from the lands now called Texas, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Castilla y León, and Euskadi. Her work promotes decolonizing praxis through embodied Indigenous inquiry and critical cultural methodologies of resistance as Mindful Heresy. Robert Gutierrez-­Perez is an assistant professor of critical/cultural studies in communication at California State University, San Marcos. His research interests includes critical intercultural communication, performance studies, LGBTQ and Jotería studies, queer spirituality, and decolonial theory and methodology. Rona Tamiko Halualani is a professor of intercultural communication in the Department of Communication Studies at San José State University. She is a diasporic Native Hawaiian born and raised on the continent and specifically, on Ramaytush and Ohlone Native land. She works on projects related to critical intercultural communication studies, critical indigenous studies, Pacific cultural studies, and diasporic memories of be/longing. She is a former editor of the Journal of International and Intercultural Communication. Richie Neil Hao is an associate professor and chair in the Department of Communication Studies at Antelope Valley College. He has published in the areas of critical intercultural, pedagogical, and performance studies. Tina M. Harris is the inaugural Douglas Manship-­Dori I. Maynard Endowed chair of Race, Media, and Cultural Literacy in the Manship School of Mass Communication at Louisiana State University. She is a leading scholar of interracial communication, with specific foci on

xiv

Notes on Contributors

critical communication pedagogy, race and identity, diversity and media representations, racial social justice, mentoring, and racial reconciliation, among others. Dr. Harris is a 2022 National Communication Association Distinguished Scholar because of her career-­long contributions to the field. Leandra Hinojosa Hernández is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Utah. She utilizes Chicana feminist, borderlands, and qualitative approaches to explore topics at the intersections of media ethics, journalism, and health communication. Her current research explores news framing representations of g ­ endered violence, femicides, and reproductive justice in Latina/o/x/e and Latin American contexts. Ako Inuzuka is an associate professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown. Originally from Japan, she conducts research related to international/intercultural communication and collective memory studies. She is the author of Non-­ Western Colonization, Orientalism, and the Comfort Women: The Collective Memory of Sexual Slavery under the Japanese Imperial Military (Lexington Books). Etsuko Kinefuchi is a professor of communication studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. A native of Niigata, Japan, she currently lives in the Triad region of North Carolina, the traditional lands of the Catawba, Keyauwee, and Saura Nations. Her scholarly interests include the study of the intersections of environmental and intercultural concerns and the role of communication in creating ecologically sound and just relationships, communities, and policies. Brandi Lawless is a professor in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of San Francisco. Her work on critical intercultural communication pedagogy helps to explore intersectional identities in a variety of contexts. Parkside, Wendy Leeds-­Hurwitz is a professor emerita at the University of Wisconsin-­ Director of the Center for Intercultural Dialogue, and associate faculty at Royal Roads University (Canada). She has held a variety of visiting positions in Paris and Lyon (France), Coimbra (Portugal), Beijing, and Macau (China). Her research spans intercultural communication and disciplinary history, as in this volume, but has also included social interaction, social construction theory, semiotic theory, and ethnography of communication. Lore/tta LeMaster (she/they) lives, loves, and creates on stolen Akimel O’otham and Piipaash land currently called Arizona. There, she serves as assistant professor of Critical/ Cultural Communication Studies in the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at Arizona State University. Her scholarship engages the intersectional constitution of cultural difference with particular focus on queer and trans of color life, art, and embodiment. She is a worldmaker and avid eater of donuts and tacos. Judith N. Martin is professor emerita of Intercultural Communication at Arizona State University. She has authored and co-­authored many research publications on the topics of cultural adaptation and sojourner communication, intercultural communication competence, ethnic/racial identification and white social identity, as well as interactive media and interculauthored) include Intercultural Communication in tural communication. Her books (co-­ Contexts, Readings in Intercultural Communication: Experiences and Contexts, Whiteness: The Communication of Social Identity, Intercultural Communication and New Media, and Students Abroad, Strangers at Home.



Notes on Contributors

xv

Kathleen F. McConnell is a professor of rhetorical studies in the Department of Communication Studies at San José State University. An initial interest in experimental schools led to her ongoing hope that academia can be unmade and reimagined. Her ­current work explores how critical cultural studies might serve as the basis for new forms of trades education. S. Lily Mendoza is a professor of culture and communication in the Department of Communication, Journalism and Public Relations at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. She is a Kapampangan-­born Filipina currently residing in Waawiyaatanong (aka Detroit), home of the Anishinaabe peoples, Wyandot Huron, Fox, Miami, and Sauk. Her work centers around questions of identity and subjectivity; cultural politics in national, post-­ and trans-­ national contexts; discourses of indigenization, race, and ethnicity; and, more recently, climate change, ecology, and critique of modernity particularly within the Philippine diasporic and homeland context. Yoshitaka Miike is a professor of Intercultural Communication at the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo, where he has been on the faculty since 2004 and chaired the Department of Communication from 2013 to 2015. He is also a senior fellow at the Molefi Kete Asante Institute for Afrocentric Studies in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is best known as the founding theorist of Asiacentricity in the communication discipline. His original essays have been translated into Chinese and Korean. He co-­edited The Handbook of Global Interventions in Communication Theory (Routledge, 2022) and The Global Intercultural Communication Reader (Routledge, 2014). He served as chair (2013–2014) of the International and Intercultural Communication Division of the National Communication Association (USA) and as Review Article Editor (2011–2016) of the Journal of Multicultural Discourses. His research interests include the history of the field of Asian communication theory, non-­Western traditions of communication ethics, and aspects of Japanese culture and communication. Dreama G. Moon is a professor in the Department of Communication. For over twenty-­five years, she has been a steadfast advocate for anti-­racism and equity and this commitment manifests in her teaching, research, and service. For example, for the past five years, she has served as a faculty fellow in the Office of Inclusive Excellence. She is the founding member of the CSUSM white accountability groups and founded the Annual Whiteness Forum in which students host a critical campus conversation about white supremacy. She teaches courses in the areas of intercultural communication, gender, and whiteness. Her research focuses on the communicative processes by which relations of domination are constructed, disrupted, reproduced, and resisted with special focus on white supremacy. Thomas K. Nakayama is a professor of communication studies at Northeastern University. He works in the areas of critical intercultural communication, whiteness, and critical sexualities. He is co-­editor of QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking. He has been named a Distinguished Scholar by the National Communication Association. He was the founding editor of the Journal of International and Intercultural Communication. Tiara R. Na’puti is an associate professor of Global and International Studies at the University of California, Irvine. A Chamoru scholar (Guåhan/Guam), her research addresses Indigenous rhetoric and resistance in or of Oceania, focusing on issues of militarism, environmental justice, and colonialism.

xvi

Notes on Contributors

LeiLani Nishime is a professor of communication at the University of Washington. Her research areas are Asian American media, gender and technology, environmental communication, and critical mixed race studies. She is the author of Undercover Asian: Multiracial Asian Americans in Visual Culture and her articles have appeared in journals such as Critical Studies in Media Communication, Journal of Asian American Studies, Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, and Quarterly Journal of Speech. Gloria Nziba Pindi is an associate professor of communication studies at California, State University San Marcos (CSUSM). Her research interests focus on critical intercultural communication, Black/Transnational feminism, performance studies, and auto/ethnographic methods. She attempts to examine various parameters that impact the performance of the self in transnational contexts around issues of globalization, migration, and identity negotiation with a critical approach to social justice. Kent A. Ono is a professor of communication in the Department of Communication at the University of Utah. He is the author or co-­author of three books and editor or ­co-­editor of four more. His research focuses on rhetoric; media and film; and ethnic and cultural studies. Mark P. Orbe is a professor of communication and diversity in the School of Communication at Western Michigan University where he also serves as faculty fellow in the Office of Institutional Equity and Faculty Lead for the Kalamazoo Promise Scholars Program in the Office of Multicultural Affairs for Students. The grandson of an undocumented immigrant and the first in his family to graduate from high school, his research, teaching, and service engages various aspects of culture, communication, and power. Ana Lisa Eberline is a doctoral candidate and Latina scholar in the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. Her research examines intercultural communication and identity across predominately white spaces in the United States. Elizabeth S. Parks is an associate dean of Academic and Student Services at Colorado Mountain College and affiliate faculty with the Colorado School of Public Health-­Colorado State University in the Department of Community and Behavioral Health. Author of the book The Ethics of Listening: Creating Space for Sustainable Dialogue, her scholarship blends mixed method social scientific approaches and inquiry grounded in the humanities to better understand how we can improve listening across diversity and difference in the pursuit of community and individual well-­being. Vincent N. Pham is an associate professor and department chair of Department of Civic Communication and Media at Willamette University and affiliate faculty in the American Ethnic Studies program. He co-­authored Asian Americans and the Media (Polity Press, 2009); co-­edited the Routledge Companion to Asian American Media (2017); and writes about Asian American civic media practices, citizenship and belonging, and emerging media discourses of Asian Americans. Srividya Ramasubramanian is a newhouse professor and endowed chair at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communication at Syracuse University. She was born and raised in South India and her native tongue is Tamil, one of the oldest living languages in the world. She works on projects relating to data equity, social justice, critical media literacy, antiracism, DEI interventions, and difficult dialogues.



Notes on Contributors

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Julius Matthew Riles is an associate professor of mediated communication in the department of communication at the University of Missouri. He researches the interplay between media use and social relationships, including how exposure to social group portrayals can influence social perceptions and inclinations pertaining to those groups, the mechanisms by which social relationships influence media use, and the experience of parasocial relationships with figures in the media. Priya Raman is an associate professor of Media Effects and Intergroup Communication in the Department of Communication Studies at San José State University. She has served the university community in various roles including Associate Research Director, Survey Policy Research Institute (SPRI), Chair of the Institutional Review Board (IRB), and SJSU’s Director of Assessment. She enjoys working on issues of student and faculty success, as well as institutional change management. Aimee Carrillo Rowe is a feminist theorist, culture critic, and memoirist. She is professor and chair of communication studies at California State University, Northridge, and the author of Power Lines: On the Subject of Feminist Alliances (Duke University Press, 2008), Answer the Call: Virtual Migration in Indian Call Centers (University of Minnesota Press, 2013), and a study of healing, sovereignty, and indigeneity in performance communities, entitled Queer Xicana: Performing the Sacred (in progress). Aimee also earned an MFA from University of California Riverside, Palm Desert, and is completing a book entitled, The Third Point: A Queer Family Memoir. Meghan S. Sanders is a professor of media psychology and associate dean for graduate studies in the Manship School of Mass Communication at Louisiana State University. Her research on popular culture explores the underlying cognitive and affective processing and mechanisms associated with media entertainment experiences. Sachi Sekimoto is a professor and chair in the Department of Communication Studies at Minnesota State University, Mankato. She is a native of Tokyo, Japan. She engages in scholarly meditations on the phenomenology of cultural embodiment, racialization, and the senses. Miriam Shoshana Sobre is an assistant professor of intercultural communication at the University of Texas at San Antonio, which is also where she is from and has happily returned to. She has recently published a book on Jewish American identity and has conducted research on critical intercultural communication, critical pedagogy, religious identity and culture, and is currently working on a project to advocate for academic freedom and critical intercultural issues in red state universities. Kathryn Sorrells is Professor Emeritus of communication studies at California State University. Her diverse research interests include globalization and intercultural communication, commodification of culture, intercultural conflict, social justice, and global movements for justice founder of the Civil Discourse and Social Change (CDSC) at and peace. Kathryn is co-­ California State University, Northridge, an initiative that seeks to engender critical consciousness, academic engagement, and advocacy to create a more equitable and social just campus, community, and world. Melissa Steyn, a Fulbright alumna, holds the South African National Research chair in Critical Diversity Studies. Melissa’s work engages with intersecting hegemonic social formations, but she is best known for her publications on whiteness in post-­apartheid South Africa. Her book, Whiteness Just Isn’t What It Used to Be: White Identity in a Changing South Africa (2001, SUNY Press,) won the 2002 Outstanding Scholarship Award in International and Intercultural Communication from the National Communication Association. Melissa was featured as one of Routledge’s Sociology Super Authors for 2013. She is the founding editor-­in-­chief of the International Journal of Critical Diversity Studies, published by Pluto Journals.

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Cuthbeth Tagwirei holds a PhD from Stellenbosch University, South Africa. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Wits Centre for Diversity Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, for four years. He is currently an Apartheid Studies scholar and a Marie Curie fellow for the Institute for Media and Creative Industries. Riley I. Taitingfong (Chamoru) is a postdoctoral researcher at the Native Nations Institute at the University of Arizona. Her work focuses on Indigenous governance of data and emerging technologies. Her interdisciplinary training spans communication studies, Native and Pacific cultural studies, critical Indigenous studies, and feminist science studies. Crispin Thurlow is a professor of language and communication, based in the Department of English at the University of Bern, Switzerland. His books include Elite Discourse (Routledge, 2018), The Business of Words (Routledge, 2020), and Visualizing Digital Discourse (De Gruyter, 2020). For more information please see: www.crispinthurlow.net. Michael Tristano, Jr. (he/him) is assistant professor and director of the Cultural Studies at Towson University which sits on the unceded ancestral homelands of the Piscataway and Susquehannock peoples. His writing privileges the material conditions of queer and trans people of color and the means by which queer and trans communities of color engage in worldmaking practices and perform survival and joy in light of oppressive conditions. Yukio Tsuda is a professor emeritus at the University of Tsukuba, Japan. He received his PhD in speech communication at Southern Illinois University in 1985 and was a former Fulbright research fellow at the East-­West Center in 1998–1999 as well as a Fulbright scholar in residence at the College of San Mateo, California, in 2007. His current research focuses on the promotion of the Japanese language as the language of peace and harmony, and also as the alternative lingua franca for intercultural and international communication. Gust A. Yep is a professor of communication studies, core faculty of sexuality studies, and faculty in the EdD Program in Educational Leadership at San Francisco State University. His research examines communication at the intersections of culture, race, class, gender, sexuality, and the body with a focus on queer and trans people of color. In addition to authoring more than 100 articles and book chapters in (inter)disciplinary journals and anthologies, he co-­ edited four special issues for the Journal of Homosexuality: Queer Theory and Communication (2003), Tensions between Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Studies and Queer Theory (2006), Sexualities and Gender in an Age of Neoliberalism (2012), and Queer Relationalities in Communication and Beyond (2023). Jing Yin is a professor and chair of the Department of Communication at the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo and fellow at the Molefi Kete Asante Institute for Afrocentric Studies. Her research interests include non-­Western cultural identity, Asiacentric womanism, and media representation. She is the co-­editor of The Handbook of Global Interventions in Communication Theory (International Communication Association Handbook Series) (Routledge, 2022) and The Global Intercultural Communication Reader (Routledge, 2008 and 2014). She is also the guest-­editor of a special section of China Media Research on “Cultural Traditions and Ethical Concerns in the Age of Global Communication” (Vol. 9, No. 2, 2013). She served on the editorial boards of the Journal of International and Intercultural Communication and Human Communication: A Journal of the Pacific and Asian Communication Association.

Acknowledgments

This handbook  – a second iteration of a collection that focuses on critical intercultural communication studies, 13 years after the first one – developed over the course of three years during the global pandemic and amid several political upheavals around the world. Thus, the support, tenacity, and steadfastness of all involved in this project were critical in bringing this project to fruition. We proudly recognize all of the scholars who paved the way (and continue to do so) for critical intercultural communication studies – in publications, at conferences, in departments, and in classrooms. Every conversation, question, and urging – in public and private – for a focus on culture in relation to legacies, systems, structures, and dynamics of power in intercultural relations, brought us to this moment. Today, there continues to be a growing and vibrant critical mass of scholars – many of whom are contributors to this handbook – who are deeply vested in the interrogation of culture, interculturalities, and intercultural communication through tropes and modes of power, positionality, structures and legacies, historical memories, context, and agency and committed to transforming the conditions in which we live, especially for those who are neglected, marginalized, oppressed, and forgotten. Our sincerest thanks go to all of the handbook contributors who provided outstanding and thought-­provoking chapters that are destined to push critical intercultural communication studies further into new trajectories and roads not yet taken. These contributors also displayed great patience and kindness during the long and drawn-­out process of creating this edited ­collection. We cannot express our gratitude enough. We also recognize the support of our colleagues at San José State University and Northeastern University for their encouragement and advice. Our loved ones (for Rona – Kung, Kea, and Keli’i; for Tom – David) bestowed unwavering support and patience during the long tenure of this project. This handbook iteration had been on our minds after the first handbook, but it took the guidance of Todd Green, Pascal Raj Francois, Nicole Allen, Edward Robinson and a­ ssociates at Wiley Publishing to make it a reality. Rona Tamiko Halualani and Thomas K. Nakayama

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Critical Intercultural Communication Studies: Formation: From Crossroads to Trajectories and Urgencies on Shifting Terrain Rona Tamiko Halualani1 and Thomas K. Nakayama2 1 2

San José State University Northeastern University

Formation: Giving shape, making space, excavating and filling gaps, reflecting, pushing, questioning, moving … Critical intercultural communication studies has been taking dynamic form over the last 20 years – carving a path as a significant formation of the power-­embedded worldmaking for the field of intercultural communication and the communication discipline. In 2010, the first iteration of the Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication proffered a comprehensive focus on the burgeoning and vital area of study, inquiry, and praxis known as critical intercultural communication studies. That handbook traced the historical formation of critical intercultural communication studies (via its impetuses and catalysts) while also delineating key theorizings and significant projects that see, understand, and know the integral role of power in constituting culture and framing intercultural relations. Now that over a decade has passed since the publication of the first critical intercultural communication handbook, we present the next iteration of this handbook and the critical projects and work that have been taken up since. These projects reflect significant commitments, trajectories, and urgencies that have been invoked and pursued by critical intercultural communication scholars over the last 13 years. Here, in this introduction, we revisit the crossroads from which this handbook was born in 2010 as well as elucidate the trajectories and urgencies that have further built up and advanced critical intercultural communication studies over the past 13 years. In so doing, we take notice of the current moment  – a time in which a more vigorous critical intercultural communication area, now stands – one that is even more engaged, interrogative, and relentless in its pursuit of examining the power dimensions that pervade culture and intercultural communication.

The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication, Second Edition. Edited by Thomas K. Nakayama and Rona Tamiko Halualani. © 2024 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2024 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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Peering Back at the Crossroads It is important to peer back at the crossroads of critical intercultural communication from 2010 and reflect on the “lingering questions” that lay before us at that time. We also pause in order to see the extent to which those questions have been approached, confronted, and even challenged, leading to the formation of different, more specific, and/ or nuanced queries for critical intercultural communication studies. This “peer back” view will also shine a light on questions that we have not fully engaged and or that we continue to grapple with because these stem from complex systems, legacies, and contexts of power and or shifting power dynamics (for e.g. the normative power order [the center] itself rebrands as the “margin” or “persecuted”). In turn, by peering back, the trajectories that scholars have carved out over the last 13 years in critical intercultural communication studies, rise to the surface, highlighting incisive insights in response to power urgencies of the past, present, and the delineated future. For us, a trajectory refers to a pathway that a critical scholar sets out to engage, fill up, and plot with a specific power relation in mind (legacies of power – systems and structures of power – ideologies and normative hegemonies – communities and groups – individuals – memories and experiences  – agentic forms and possibilities) and through a situated context or project of focus. Such pathways are constituted by projects with theoretical concepts, historical contexts, situated power dynamics, and modes of inquiry. In critical intercultural fashion, trajectories are created and etched in relation to urgencies, or the ongoing and sudden power struggles, moves, threats, and clashes that come with an ever shifting and moving sociopolitical terrain.

Critical Intercultural Communication Studies So many have dared to take the difficult roads and routes – where others steer clear or find insignificant and irrelevant: across and through the junctures and ruptures of historical authority, legacies of power, formidable structures, and systems of control, colonial regimes, and power forces that touch our encounters, relationships, and everyday lives; inside the fragmentations and displacements of cultural groups and identities – ours and those of others for whom we care; in and around the contours of our intersecting positionalities in relation to surrounding ideologies and hegemonies of society, and deep within the struggles over power among cultural groups, members, and dominant structures and forms. We have traversed these trajectories in the overlap among corollary areas such as rhetorical, critical/cultural studies, critical and feminist studies, critical communication pedagogy, organizational communication, media studies, performance studies, interpersonal and family communication, health communication, social action, justice, and activism communication, and intercultural communication studies, critical race and ethnic studies, decolonial scholarship, critical area studies, queer studies, transgender studies, and cultural studies areas, among more in emergence, with a wonderful diversity in approach and theoretical position and a unified, steadfast focus on culture, communication, and power. Such important work has emerged and converged into a vibrant and burgeoning body of scholarship and political engagements that we refer to as “critical intercultural communication studies.” Critical intercultural communication studies represents a vigorous, productive, and rapidly growing area of inquiry within the field of intercultural communication in the larger communication discipline and one that connects with and joins other situated critically framed subfields and areas in communication (for example, performance studies, critical rhetorical studies, critical/cultural studies, feminist studies, queer communication, transgender communication, critical race communication, critical communication pedagogy, and critical pedagogies across the discipline, critical organizational communication, critical media studies, critical interpersonal and family communication, critical health communication, social action, justice, and activism communication and more). This area, critical intercultural communication, foregrounds issues of power, context, socioeconomic relations and historical/structural forces



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as constituting and shaping culture and intercultural communication encounters, relationships, and contexts (Collier et  al.  2001; Martin and Nakayama  1999; Halualani, Drzewiecka, and Mendoza 2003; Mendoza, Halualani, and Drzewiecka, 2002; Starosta and Chen 2001, 2003). According to Martin and Nakayama (1999), a critical perspective is defined as one that addresses issues of macro contexts (historical, social, and political levels), power, relevance, and the hidden and destabilizing aspects of culture. These scholars explain that the critical perspective seeks to “understand the role of power and contextual constraints on communication in order ultimately to achieve a more equitable society” (p. 8). Additionally, Halualani (2022) defines a critical intercultural communication perspective as one that “explores and views intercultural communication encounters through a specific focus on power and how cultural groups are positioned in different ways through larger, unseen sociopolitical structures, histories, and conditions” (p. 10). Moreover, a critical perspective in intercultural communication requires that we “understand how relationships emerge in historical contexts, within institutional and political forces and social norms thatoften are invisible to some groups” and how intercultural communication relations are “constrained and enabled by institutions, ideologies, and histories” (Collier 2002, pp. 1–2; see Lee et al. 1995). Although to some extent, prior to 2010, scholars in the field courageously began to imagine and envision what critical intercultural communication studies could be (see e.g. Collier et  al.  2001; Martin and Nakayama  1997,  1999; Moon  1996; Ono  1998; Starosta and Chen 2001), there was still more to be done in terms of fully engaging and exploring such imaginings in terms of a wider range of theoretical strands and foci, the unifying points of convergence, and the stakes involved that constituted critical intercultural communication studies. The 2010 Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication, therefore, stood as the “crossroads” moment for critical intercultural communication studies to reflect back on the what it took to come into being, take stock of where we were at that time, and where we still needed to go.

Looking Back: The History of Critical Intercultural Communication Studies (1970s–Early 2000s) As we did in our first Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication, we look back, reflect, and honor the works that paved the way for critical intercultural communication studies. In reflecting back, several junctures paved the way for the emergence of an area of study generally termed as “critical intercultural communication studies.” In their genealogy, Halualani, Mendoza, and Drzewiecka (2009) traced the significant junctures and moves that set critical intercultural communication studies into motion. They discussed the importance of scholars’ calls (Asante  1980; González and Peterson  1993; Lee et  al.  1995; Mendoza  2005; Moon  1996; Prosser 1970; Smith 1979) for closer attention to historical specificity and contextual grounding in intercultural studies. Overlapping this stretch of time was a period in which several critiques of the predominant theoretical construct of culture as nation circulated (see e.g. Altman and Nakayama  1992; Asante  1980; González and Peterson  1993; Moon  1996; Ono  1998; Smith  1981). Yet another juncture that occurred was the rise of works that argued for the retheorizing of culture as “sites of struggle” based on power relations and ideologies (Collier et al. 2001; Cooks 2001; Martin and Nakayama 1999; Moon 1996; Starosta and Chen 2001). These junctures gradually opened up and stretched the boundaries of intercultural communication inquiry and research and ignited new, complex questions about culture and communication. These historical moves should also be contextualized in terms of the prevailing tide of knowledge formation in the field of intercultural communication in the areas of scholarly research (in the field’s journals and monographs) and textbook materials. We contend that through this body of knowledge, intercultural communication was proscribed in a very specific way: as a privatized, interpersonal (one on one), equalized and neutral encounter/transaction between comparable national group members (and in some cases, racial/ethnic group members

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within a nation) and as such, in terms of individual (interpersonal) skill development to bridge equalized differences among cultures regardless of the context, setting, or historical/political moment. Likewise, past intercultural communication research has led to the romanticized and exoticized framing of cultures as “fascinating strangers” with hard-­wired cultural behaviors. For instance, from the 1980s to the mid-­1990s, academic journal articles dedicated to a focus on intercultural communication as well as scholarly monographs and books, primarily framed culture as nation and relied on postpositivist (cultural measurement) approaches (as argued by González and Peterson  1993; Martin and Nakayama  1999; Moon  1996). There was also a steady rise of intercultural communication textbooks and readers written for lower division undergraduate students that focused on a survey of intercultural communication concepts. The majority of these successful and multi-­editioned textbooks focused on an interpersonal approach to intercultural communication, emphasizing individual and group-­ centered attitudes and communication skills. While useful and important in its own right, such an approach has glossed over the larger macro-­micro process of intercultural communication, or the ways in which larger structures of power (governmental, institutional, legal, economic, and mediated forces) intermingle with microacts and encounters among/within cultural actors and groups. In response, there were several academic critiques of the intercultural communication field and the theoretical and methodological shortcomings of the traditional social scientific and interpretive paradigms that have dominated the field historically. Among these, were works that raised overlooked questions about the relationship between and among culture, communication, and politics, in terms of situated power interests, historical contextualization, global shifts, and economic conditions, different politicized identities in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, region, socioeconomic class, generation, and diasporic positions (e.g. Collier  1998; Drzewiecka  1999; González et  al.  1994; González and Peterson  1993; Hall  1992; Halualani  1998,  2000; Lee et  al.  1995; Martin and Nakayama  1999; Martin et  al.  1998; Mendoza  2000; Moon  1996; Ono  1998; Smith  1981). According to these critiques, a power-­based perspective not only filled a void but also met the demands of many scholars, instructors, and students who were intrigued with larger macro processes that inform intercultural relations. Likewise, in the field at the time, scholars had been calling for a perspective  – known as “critical intercultural communication studies” on intercultural communication (“the fifth moment”) – through a power-­based lens especially from the late 1990s and early 2000s (see e.g. Collier 1998; Collier et al. 2001; González and Peterson 1993; Lee et al. 1995; Martin and Nakayama 1999; Moon 1996; Ono 1998; Smith 1981; Starosta and Chen 2001). What followed suit from these critiques were numerous identifications of gaps in knowledge, calls to fill voids in research, and the explicit need to approach intercultural communication in a dramatically different way. Most notably, in terms of highlighting the need to include and incorporate important areas of study and pay attention to what these reveal about power, a massively shameful omission from the critical intercultural communication arena and even from our 2010 Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication [as well as from Halualani, Mendoza and Drzewieckas (2009) review of critical intercultural communication studies] was in NOT highlighting the importance of queer critical intercultural communication, transgender critical intercultural communication, performance critical intercultural communication, and intersectional critical intercultural communication (as pointed out by Chávez  2009,  2013a,  b; LeMaster  2016; Calafell 2020; see Aiello et al. 2013; Snorton 2013; McMickens et al. 2021; Morrissey 2013; Snorton  2013; Yep  2013; Yep et  al.  2019,  2020). These areas have indeed stood out as theoretically robust, methodologically rigorous, conceptually complex about power and its layered collisions of experience, subjectivity, in/visibility, violence, and agentic possibilities. Likewise, there has been an extremely strong record of outstanding scholarship (and a vast one with illustrative examples identified here) in queer critical intercultural communication (for e.g. Chávez 2009, 2013a, b; Abdi and Van Gilder 2016; Atay 2017, 2019, 2021a, b; Calafell



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and Nakayama 2019; Eguchi 2015, 2021a, b; Eguchi and Asante 2016; the excellent Eguchi and Calafell  2019 collection; Eguchi and Kimura  2021; Hanchey  2021; Huang  2021; McMickens et al. 2021; Yep 2010, 2013; Yep et al. 2019; Ulla 2022; Zhang and Chen 2022), transgender critical intercultural communication (for e.g. Eguchi 2021a, b; Hanchey 2021; LeMaster  2016,  2018; Johnson  2013; Yep et  al.  2020), performance critical intercultural communication (for e.g. Calafell 2020; Gutierrez-­Perez 2020; De La Garza 2020; Hao 2020; McIntosh and Eguchi 2020; Oh 2020; Pindi 2020; Prasad 2020; Toyosaki 2020; Yep 2020), and intersectional critical intercultural communication (for example Johnson and LeMaster  2020; Eguchi and Kimura  2021) in and beyond intercultural communication venues. It should be noted that such scholarship is not unitary or singular focused in nature; on the absolute contrary, queer critical intercultural communication, transgender critical intercultural communication, and performance critical intercultural communication powerfully showcase the inner workings of intersectionality theory across various contexts and politics: migration, transnationalities, colonialism and empires, environmental justice, geopolitics, economic classing, caste oppression, indigeneity and land struggles, cisgendering of land, water, and nature, settler colonialism, citizenship, and much more. To this point, Chávez (2013a) argued, “There has been an explosion of queer and trans scholarship outside of the discipline related to themes that should be of interest to intercultural and international communication scholars, including: nationalism, imperialism, international conflict, identity politics, transnational public spheres, militarism and militarization, biopolitics and necropolitics, globalization, social media, representation, and dialogue” (p. 84). Johnson (2013) also insightfully highlighted how transgender studies work (identified as “TS” in the quote below) contributes to critical intercultural communication studies: TS can enhance IC research because of its focus on the material and representational practices of trans* subjects (Stryker 2006). TS addresses IC topics including the cultural construction of gender identity categories (Hale 2006), the performance of gender identity in everyday life (Namaste 2000), and the importance of intersectionality (Juang 2006). Furthermore, TS attends to the ways cultural dominance is exercised to surveil and/or constrain non-­normative gendering as well as to the relational and personal dynamics through which institutional power manifests and is resisted*foci integral to critical intercultural scholarship (Nakayama and Halualani 2010) (p. 137).

Similarly, in highlighting a key of focus for critical intercultural communication studies, Calafell (2020) underscores the significance of the critical performative turn for intercultural communication and critical intercultural communication studies: “The critical edge performance studies bring to intercultural communication through the re-­centring of the (Othered) body and critical performative reflexivity is necessary if intercultural communication as a field is going to move beyond histories of Otherizing, exclusion, and speaking for the Other. The performative turn additionally allows us to understand identities more intersectionally, challenging dominant approaches to identity in intercultural communication” (p.  410). Thus, there are no bounds to what such exemplary intersectional and empirically and theoretically layered work of queer critical intercultural communication, transgender critical intercultural communication, and performance critical intercultural communication can do to garner key insights for critical intercultural communication scholarship and to work toward intercultural justice in the world. It is imperative then for critical intercultural communication studies to trace the elaborate illustrations of power across queer, transgender, performative, disability, and intersectional (and often all in combination) identities, communities, spaces, and contexts so as to not miss out on their tremendous gifts of insight, analytical depth, intersectional complexities, and theories for navigating ideologies, structures, and legacies of oppression. For critical intercultural communication studies, our failures in NOT recognizing key subjectivities and political

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projects as well as our limited scope, should be brought to light and in turn, utilized to reflect on what the larger scope of critical intercultural work should be (what is included and neglected) and that many foci, positionalities, sets of identity politics, and political projects ultimately make us critically intercultural at the very best. Our analytical and methodological purview of what we explore in critical intercultural communication should be expansive and always in motion and critical reflection.

Trajectories Pursued and Urgencies Confronted (2010–Early 2023) Over the last 13  years (2010–2023), scholars have greatly contributed to the further development of critical intercultural communication studies by putting forth work that opened up new trajectories and continued lines of study beyond entry points. This is evident from our “mapping” of critical intercultural communication publications (as scholarly journal articles, book chapters, scholarly book monographs) from 2010 through the beginning of 2023. Such work was pulled through a search for publications that invoked a critical intercultural perspective and or a critical perspective on culture-­ related, intercultural communication-­ related or intercultural-­related topics, issues, or domains during the designated time period across all academic databases. This mapping inquiry began with an initial search on publications that directly referenced or spoke to “critical intercultural communication” but then followed the trails of critical/cultural work that connected to and branched from these initial publications. This inquiry led us to identify excellent work that sought to build out critical intercultural communication studies and/or extend it by filling a significant gap or overlooked area and push the boundaries of what we mean by critical intercultural communication projects. This mapping reveals the following “brush strokes” or the larger attributes about the nature of knowledge construction in critical intercultural communication scholarship. We share a few overview highlights from this mapping here with the larger comprehensive mapping analysis still forthcoming for other venues. When numbers are used in this mapping, it is important to note that these numbers are not credibility counts (or ones that we need in order to legitimize critical intercultural communication studies) but rather signify pattern characteristics for this area of study and signal the power relations that surround that work in the larger field of intercultural communication in the communication discipline (Kocher 2022). (Note that we focused on “critical intercultural communication studies” work in the communication discipline and not on “critical intercultural studies,” which highlights skills and literacy in intercultural education, study abroad, and language education curricula.) This undertaken mapping reveals and highlights the “exciting possibilities” and the “different views” that we encouraged in the 2010 handbook. And, in extraordinary fashion, critical scholars indeed responded with impressive contributions for critical intercultural communication studies. Following the publication of the first iteration of our handbook and specifically, from 2010 to early 2023, 129 critical intercultural communication works and projects were published. Specifically, 67% (86) of these were refereed academic journal articles, 18% (23) as scholarly book monographs, 13% (17) as scholarly book chapters, and 2% (2) as encyclopedia essays. It should be noted that 53% (36) of the refereed academic journal articles were featured in the National Communication Association’s Journal of International and Intercultural Communication (JIIC) while 38% (26) were published in World Communication Association’s Journal of Intercultural Communication Research (JICR). The two primary intercultural communication-­focused academic journals have, therefore, served as forums for critical intercultural communication work. Additional journals that housed critical intercultural communication articles were Departures, Intercultural Education, Howard Journal of Communications, and the Western Journal of Communication. A dedicated book series on critical intercultural communication (one created in 2003) by Peter Lang Publishing, as led by



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Drs. Thomas K. Nakayama and Bernadette Calafell, has also published outstanding critical intercultural work on a riveting range of topics (including but not limited to): hybrid identity and intersectional performances, intersectional identities, queer politics, migration and difference, critical performance studies, performative and narrative autoethnographies and theories of resistance, intercultural memories, identity and transnationalism, global dialetics, global marriages, postcolonial theories, intercultural praxis, and new media. This published corpus of critical intercultural work from 2010 through early 2023  has grown steadily [18% (23) from 2010 to 2015, 77% (98) from 2016 to 2021, 5% (7) from 2022 to early 2023], with publication surges occurring in 2016 through 2018 and 2020 through 2022, with no end in sight. Critical intercultural communication studies has continued to proffer crucial and influential work and propel the importance of interrogating cultural formations in relation to power. Such work has also delved into a multitude of rich and layered theoretical and conceptual areas as evident in Table 1.1 below, with the most traversed domains being critical intercultural communication pedagogy (CICP), queer intersectionalities, and performance, identity, intersectionalities, and power. Table 1.1  Theoretical foci and research methodologies in critical intercultural communication studies publications, 2010–early 2023. Theoretical/conceptual focus engaged

Research methodologies or modes of inquiry employed

Adaptation, Power Applied Critical IC Communication Casteism, Racism Critical Intercultural Communication for Cross-Cultural Management Research Critical Intercultural Communication for Health Professionals; Health Disparities and Inequalities Critical Intercultural Communication Mentoring Critical Intercultural Communication Pedagogy (CICP) Critical Intercultural Communication Pedagogy (CICP) as connected to Critical Communication Pedagogy (CCP) Colonialism Colonialism, Ableism, Marginalized Languages, Postcolonial and Disability Studies, Communities, Identity Critical Health Intersections, Hospitals, Healthcare Critical Intercultural Comm Critical Intercultural Comm; Macro Analysis of Political and Economic Structures Critical Intercultural Relations Critical Methodologies Deaf Queer World-­Making; Intersectionalities, Decolonial Communication Decolonizing the Curriculum Differential Adaptation CIC Theory; Immigrant Women Faculty in the US academy Ecological Turn of Critical Intercultural Communication Global Critical Intercultural Communication Glocalism, Critical Intercultural Communication Strategies Historical Memory Intercultural Health Communication; Critical Intersections Identities, Difference, Intersectionalities, Racial Ideology

Action Research Black Feminist Intersectional Approach Case Studies Critical Intercultural Communication Pedagogy (CICP) Inquiry Critical Intercultural Performance Frameworks Country-­Country Relations Mappings, Macro Policies and Interactions Critical Autoethnography Critical Cultural Rhetorical Methods Critical Discourse Analysis Critical Race Theories as Modes of Inquiry Curricular Analyses Economic and Governmental Policy Analysis Essay Analysis Ethnography Historiography, Historical Memory Analysis Ideological Analysis In-­Depth Critical Interviews Intersectional Autoethnography Intersectional Discourse Analysis Intersectional Oral Histories Legal Case Analysis Media Analysis Narrative Analysis Performative Critical Intercultural Communication (Continued)

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Table 1.1  (Continued) Theoretical/conceptual focus engaged

Research methodologies or modes of inquiry employed

Identities, Differences Identities, Transnationalism, Intersectionalities Identity, Difference, New Media Identity, Difference, Social Movements Indigenous Ethnography Indigenous Peoples, Agency, Subaltern Agency Intercultural Alliances, Faith-­Based Community Organizations Intercultural Alliances, Non-­Profit Organizations Intercultural Alliances, Non-­Profit Organizations, Immigrants, Refugees, Identities Intercultural Communication Course; Critical Intercultural Communication Pedagogy Intersectionalities Intersectionalities, Migrant Activism and Discourses Intersectionalities; Religion, College Campuses, Race, Sexuality, Immigrant Jewish American Identity Performance, Identity, Intersectionalities, Power Postcolonialism in Film, Identities, Intersectionalities Postcolonialism, Neoliberalism, Skin Ideologies and Discourses Queer Critical Intercultural Communication Pedagogy Queer Intercultural Communication Queer Intersectionalities Queer Intersectionalities, Disabilities, Gender, Race, Empire Queer Intersectionalities; Colonialism Queer Intersectionalities; Digital Spaces Queer Intersectionalities; Transgender Intercultural Communication Race and Intersectionality Race, Racism, Critical Intercultural Communication Racial Histories, Racial Inequalities, Whiteness, Film Racial Ideologies and Discourses, Whiteness, White Privilege, US College Students Racial Incorporation; Whiteness, Asian Indian Immigrants Racism, Racial Tensions, Social Justice, Policing, Community Racism, Social Media, Antiracism Relational Pedagogy, Critical Labor Resistance, Art Social Justice, Critical Intercultural Communication Pedagogy (CICP), Intercultural Communication Classroom Social Justice, Critical Intercultural Communication Pedagogy (CICP), Online Pedagogy South Asia, Identities, Contexts Transgender Intercultural Communication Transnational Critical Intercultural Communication Pedagogy (CICP) US Dominant Ideologies, Film Whiteness Pedagogy; Critical Intercultural Communication Pedagogy (CICP); Intercultural Communication Course

Performative Authoethnography Photovoice, Interviews Qualitative-­Critical Content Analysis Queer Intersectional Critical Intercultural Approach Thick Intersectionality Approach Transgender Critical Approach



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Also delineated in Table 1.1, critical intercultural scholars have utilized not only a diverse range of methodologies (30 specific methods and or inquiry tools/forms) over the past 13 years but also ones that are powerfully rich in insight such as autoethnography, performative autoethnography, intersectional methods (queer, transgender, CRT, critical disability, thick intersectional interviews, ethnographies, authoethnographies, narratives), performance frameworks, historiography and oral histories, legal case analysis, economic and governmental policy analysis, curricular analyses, and critical cultural discourse analyses. In terms of methods and modes of inquiry for critical intercultural communication studies, Willink et al. (2014) encouraged “more scholarship on methodology that speaks to CIC, specifically within the constellation of critical/rhetorical sensibilities and cultures, to further flesh out this expedition … we invite various perspectives to engage this dialogue as we try to find our way among those embracing the critical turn in intercultural communication research, its methodological breadth, and the opportunities for transformation therein” (p. 309). The specific settings and cultures examined through critical intercultural communication approaches are also wide-­ranging and gap-­filling as displayed in Table 1.2. Notably, critical intercultural communication scholarship over the last 13 years has unpacked the intersectionalities that constitute our identities and communities in terms of and across race, ethnicity, gender identities and expressions, transgender identities, sexualities, disabilities, regionalities, national framings, socioeconomic status, religious affiliations, educational level, indigeneity, diasporic identities, local-­regional-­national-­global identities, cultural and social capital, and more. We see a concerted focus made by these studies in unpacking the intersectional nature of power in terms of the interlocking oppressions and constraints that multiplicities of identities bring as well as the performative, narrative, and memory re-­workings of those constraints in those very intersections. This does not entail a singular focus on the multiplicity of identity but rather on the collisional, contradictory, and amplified nature of multiple oppressions and legacies of power that cut across and through our held and ascribed identities. That is, a critical intercultural focus allows for a closer view of the multiplicity of power and the burdens that come with it as well as its agentic spaces, energies, and widdled out possibilities. Table 1.2  Settings/contexts and cultures of focus, 2010–early 2023. Settings/contexts and cultures of focus Academy, Neoliberal Universities African Representations, Western Ideologies African Students African, Black, Latinx Communities Asia Asian American Gay Men Asian Americans, Violence, Intersections Asian, Black, Gay Black, Feminist Collective Memory Communities, Conflict Critical Intercultural Praxis Critical Intercultural; Nations, Regions Decolonial Scholarship, Black Africans First Generation Students; Families Gender, Race, Queer, Region, Class Ghana Global Cultures Global Race Configurations Global Work, Migration (Continued)

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Table 1.2  (Continued) Settings/contexts and cultures of focus Hawaiian Language Settings Identities, Difference Immigrants Incarcerated Student Identities India Indigenous International Students on US Campuses Iranian American women Iranian Americans Japan Japan; Gender, Sexuality, Bodies Japaneseness Jewish Americans Everyday Performances, Counter-­Dominant Narratives Kenya Latina/o/x Mexico Middle Eastern and North African, Arabs, Arab Americans, Iranians, Iranian Americans Migration, Immigration Policy Neoliberalism Neoliberalism, Universities Nigeria Postcolonial Contexts Prison Classroom Queer and Trans Africanfuturism Queer Asian-­Black Relationalities, Desire Race, Ethnicity, Gender, Sexuality, Chinese Queerness Religion Resistance in the Intercultural Classroom Russia, United States, Mexico Russia, Ukraine Sexual Non-­Normativity Teaching Race Transnational Hybridity in Identity Spaces Transnational Queer Studies in Private and Public Spaces Transnational, Asian Americans Transnational, Global US-­Japan Macro Relations to Micro Encounters; Power

Here there is also a shift of reengaging neglected or objectified parts of the world of past traditional intercultural communication research such as Africa, Asia, Central and Latin America, and Middle Eastern and North African countries but through different lenses via critical race intersectionalities, queer intersectionalities, performative critical intersectionalities, transgender studies, intersectional feminist studies, decolonial theories, settler colonialism and indigeneity, diasporic politics, and macro aspects such as governmental policy, economics, the law, global markets, commerce, and the military. Moreover, the settings that have been analyzed through the past decade of critical intercultural communication scholarship represent spaces of learning, identity formation and relationship negotiation, and community such as the academy, the intercultural communication course/classroom, dating platforms, and community spaces and organizations. How we shape and give voice to our identities and experiences



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as intercultural/cultural teachers, scholars, and intersectional members inside/outside of the academy for ourselves and our students absolutely constitutes an important topic of study for critical intercultural communication studies as demonstrated by critical intercultural work since 2010. Again, CICP as an area of study, has created such a vibrant space for us to be reflexive about who we are as teacher-­scholars and the role of power in shaping our roles and our students’ relationships to reflecting on and making sense of their identities and the educational apparatus’ framing of such identities and agentic pathways (see Atay and Chen 2021; Atay and Toyosaki 2017; Atay and Trebing 2017; Calafell and Gutierrez-­Perez 2018; Chen and Lawless  2019; Lawless and Chen  2019,  2020; Sobre  2017). Our roles as intercultural teachers and cultural members is therefore not only germane to education-­focused areas (­communication education, intercultural education) but also to critical intercultural communication studies especially as our instructional-­life roles are constituted by a larger field of power forces and intersectional histories and oppressions. In so doing, the area of CICP also has a robust alliance with critical pedagogies like critical communication pedagogy. The last 13 years, 2010–early 2023, have been an exuberantly significant period for critical intercultural communication studies to take further form, question its gaps, realize its ­possibilities, and create trajectories of work that have deeply and powerfully elucidated the power intricacies, interwebs, collisions, ruptures, overloads and nuances that constitute and frame our cultural meanings, subjectivities, identities, experiences, everyday movements and performances, memories, relations and encounters, and world-­making. The last 13 years have opened up the trajectories for critical intercultural communication studies to move and develop further amid today’s persistent and ongoing urgencies. Today, we stand at the cusp of an even more enthralling time but with questions that linger and those that arise with newly surfaced problematics.

Still Lingering and Extended Questions amid Unrelenting Problematics As we continue to “take stock” of critical intercultural communication studies in this introduction, we harken back to the “taking stock” phase from the late 1990s to the early 2000s, which productively elucidated significant questions that had yet to be fully engaged. These questions formed the road ahead at the time or the “forks” in the road that needed to be confronted in 2010. Our 2010  handbook identified several questions that emerged and lingered at that juncture. Since that time, with the proliferation of impressive critical intercultural communication work, these “lingering questions” have been broached, responded to, and extended with even more meaningful queries. We highlight these “lingering questions” from the 2010 “crossroads” juncture and what these mean for us now 13 years later in light of the critical intercultural communication works and projects that have transpired since. In order for critical intercultural communication studies as an area of study to continue to grow, develop, and stay attuned to the larger historical, sociopolitical, global, and economic folds of the world, we need to continually gauge where we are in relation to several lingering questions regarding the nature, key assumptions, lines of work and collaboration with other schools/areas of thought/inquiry, and challenges for the future of critical intercultural communication.

What does it mean to do critical intercultural work in communication?

The aforementioned critiques of the field underscored the need for a critically infused approach to culture and communication but did not fully articulate what this meant in terms of larger goals and the role of a critical intercultural communication scholar. Indeed, many initial summaries of a critical perspective described the larger goal of a critical intercultural communication approach as “making change,” “to push against the grain of the status quo,”

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and to “interrogate dominant power relations and structures” (Martin and Nakayama 1997, 1999; Moon  1996). But what does this mean for us as scholars in terms of framing and conducting our research? How do you begin to engage power when the stakes involve the larger goals of liberation, justice, voice and the power to name, the dismantling of legacies of colonial oppression, and creating conditions for a culture’s self-­determination? And with what larger objective in mind: as an intellectual project only or one that progresses into a form of advocacy, activism, and or action effort? Scholars, with their critical intercultural work, are still working out the contours of these questions and time will tell as we struggle to fulfill the promise of a critical spirit in line with intercultural justice. It is still important to designate what our work is aspiring to be and do and our unique role as academics, scholars, educators, intellectuals, activists, and practitioners. How can our critical intercultural work transform legacies and structures of power and create real social change for those impacted the most? We must always remember Stuart Hall’s (1996) reading of Gramsci’s concept of the “organic intellectual” who must “work on two fronts at one and the same time”: On the one hand, we had to be at the very forefront of intellectual theoretical work because, as Gramsci says, it is the job of the organic intellectual to know more than the traditional intellectuals do: really know, not just pretend to know, not just to have the facility of knowledge, but to know deeply and profoundly … the second aspect is just as crucial: that the organic intellectual cannot absolve himself or herself from the responsibility of transmitting those ideas, that knowledge, through the intellectual function, to those who do not belong, professionally, in the intellectual class. And unless those two fronts are operating at the same time, or at least unless those two ambitions are part of the project of cultural studies, you can get enormous theoretical advance without any engagement at the level of the political project (Hall 1996, p. 268).

As “organic intellectuals” and critical intercultural communication scholars, teachers, advocates, activists, and practitioners in our communities, we must continue to navigate through and stay true to the highest quality of analyzing power and paving the way to transgress and break down that with which we interrogate. Furthermore, might we also hold close from critical areas such as critical race and ethnic studies, critical and cultural studies, performance studies, queer studies, transgender studies, critical indigenous studies, critical disability studies, intersectional feminist studies, and cultural studies areas – the reconceptualization of culture and intercultural contexts, discourses, and cases as political projects that require intense contextualization, historicization, reflexivity about one’s interests and location, and careful consideration of the dynamic and rigid relations between structure and agency in specific sociopolitical moments? That is, our engagements of culture, power, and intercultural communication represent projects with urgencies and much at stake for real people and with real consequences. Political projects also connote a continuous line of work, change, and commitment to them; these are not fixed, one-­time dalliances with a topic. Instead, these projects are sustained works that are continually pursued, worked on, and traced. In this way, critical intercultural scholars can better craft timely responses and strategies for how to interrupt dominant conditions and constructions of power in specific settings and moments and over a longer period of time as problematics and urgencies continue, adapt, and newly re-­form. How we approach this question requires not only more dialogue among scholars but also more attempts to make visible (in published, online, performative forms and demos, creative expressions and arts, multimedia installments, social media, oral histories, curricula for all ages, exhibitions, games and simulations) the full cycle of critical intercultural communication work as political projects (from inquiry to analysis to reflection to praxis). To this point, in light of the 2022 scrutiny in Florida, Texas, South Carolina, Oklahoma, and Kansas on anything that resembles a “critical” thought or observation about the presence or pervasiveness of societal and structural inequalities in the USA, we need to seriously consider how to take our work beyond academia and our classrooms and into our



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communities and public agencies, councils, governmental structures, and school systems. Critical intercultural praxis will continue to be a major focus as we move ahead and will help to take critical intercultural communication to the pinnacle of what it means to do critical intercultural communication work – in spirit, commitment, and action. What is the unique role that only critical intercultural communication scholarship is meant to take up and the area that a critical perspective is uniquely designed and equipped to shed light on? And what are the larger assumptions and tenets of such work?

Looking for the uniqueness and distinction of critical intercultural communication and its value for intercultural communication and other fields, continues to be an important endeavor. Critical intercultural communication studies is best suited to pay close attention to and follow how macro conditions, colonial systems and structures of power (the authority of History and Empire, whiteness, settler colonialism, heteronormative and cisgender patriarchy, capitalism, economic and market conditions, formal political spheres, institutional arenas, oppression in the name of religion and dominant ideologies, to name several) play into and share microacts/ processes of communication between/among cultural groups/members. Critical perspectives have always been finely attuned to revealing great insight on the larger, hidden (beneath-­the-­ surface) and visible (what we see but take-­for-­granted given its naturalized appearance) aspects of power that constitute intercultural communication encounters and relations. Such a view has been obscured through the field’s still chronically singular focus on interpersonal acts between intercultural interactants and two-­group culture-­specific comparisons along scales that are presumed to be culturally shared and equivalent. A critical perspective’s penchant for tracing the historical specificity, globalized systemic oppressions, and macro governmental, legal, and economic conditions surrounding and constituting intercultural contexts is especially useful given that dominant history, governmentality, law, economics, and power have always positioned cultural group members and their identities disproportionately to one another within and across contexts. There is likely much more by way of dimensions, layers, and intersections of power (and aspects that we have yet to fully recognize and understand) that can be revealed and unpacked through a critical perspective. Thus, there are limitless possibilities for what critical intercultural communication studies can shed light on in terms of the operations and manifestations of power on intersectionally embedded identities and differences as well as in constituting relations between macro structures and personal (micro) experiences, power as situated within a cultural group and across multiple dimensions of who one is, and across, through and within all of the intersectional aspects of a life. Given the aforementioned mapping of critical intercultural work over the past 13 years, the full potential of this perspective has never looked brighter and vibrant, opening up a ton of possibilities for deep engagements of culture, power, intersectionalities, identities, and the situated cultural politics at bay. Moreover, through such a view, critical intercultural communication studies has recast (albeit loosely) what we assume about culture, communication, and interculturality in relation to power.

Culture

First, as Halualani, Drzewiecka, and Mendoza et al. (2003) argue, a critical intercultural perspective retheorizes culture as an ideological struggle between and among competing vested interests, a move that requires us to go beyond empiricist explanations to account for the constitution of intercultural interactions within the constraints of historic power relations. In other words, there needs to be a move away from an unproblematized description and characterization of culture as given, or as an essential (natural/internal) set of traits or characteristics or psychological tendencies possessed by a group of individuals merely by virtue of their

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­geographically “belonging together” (Halualani, Drzewiecka, and Mendoza et  al.  2003). Several scholars have previously argued that it is important instead to turn to conceptualizing culture through power and “contest the notion of ‘culture’ as unproblematically shared” (Moon 1996, p. 75). In their dialectical explication of intercultural communication, Martin and Nakayama (1999) explain that “culture … is not just a variable, nor benignly socially constructed but a site of struggle where various communication meanings are constructed …” (p. 8). In other words, they argue that cultures are differentially positioned in relationship to one another within societal structures, material conditions, power relations and as such, culture becomes a field of forces where competing interests vie for dominance and control (Halualani et al. 2003). There is a necessary theoretical move, then from “culture” to “ideology,” or from understanding culture as a neutral, innocent place to one always and already implicated in power relations where differently positioned subjects and social entities (e.g. the nation-­state) compete for advantage and control of the process of meaning production (Halualani et al. 2003). This also entails analyzing cultural meanings and practices in the context of particular subjects’ interests and positionings vis-­à-­vis the ideological operation of power within a specific given social formation. Culture is therefore an assemblage of meanings and representations that are vested with or are reified and spoken via different power interests, most notably by dominant structures (nation-­state and its arms, law and governance, institutions, the economy, and the media) and cultural groups themselves (Hall 1985). Thus, to say that culture is “a site of struggle” is to point to the process whereby competing interests (dominant structures and cultural communities) shape different representations of culture from different positionalities of power (Hall 1980, 1985). The view then of culture as a set of socially created/shared meanings and practices must always go hand-­in-­hand with attention to the structures of power (government, law and court system, economy and modes of production, education, and the media) that attended its constitution (Halualani, Drzewiecka, and Mendoza 2003). This reconceptualization of culture does not mean that individuals are then merely passive consumers of culture; rather, in their quotidian performance of it, they participate in actively creating and recreating meanings that are made available to them by competing ideologies. However, culture as ideology or as a site of struggle may no longer suffice for extending the analytical might of critical intercultural communication. There needs to be a variety of ways to frame and theorize culture. In her compelling call for a critical performative turn in critical intercultural communication, Calafell (2020) underscores the performative constitution of culture in terms of “performative perspectives to the study of culture to productively nuance everyday experiences as a means to use the personal narrative to reverberate with or speak alongside or against the master narrative socially, culturally, politically, and culturally” (p. 412). Thus, through a critical performance intercultural communication view, culture is not static, fixed, or dominantly framed but rather performed and analyzed in the performing of such meanings and experiences from reflexive, situated, and intersectional positionalities, thereby making space for silenced and neglected voices, vantage points, and communities. Culture as intersectional and the notion of multiple and conflicting lived oppressions also stand as a theoretically rich realm from which to understand culture and intercultural relations as living across, within, against, and in response to multiple frames of oppression (and the structural and social consequences of those). We must continue to explore multiple trajectories around the relationship between culture and power and across various forms and contexts.

Communication

The earlier notion of culture as a site of struggle imbues “communication” not as some equalizing, neutral channel of expression that is widely reproduced in the field of communication studies; communication is not just a way of speaking, a set of utterances. Communication



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involves the creation, constitution, and intertwining of situated meanings, social practices, structures, discourses, and the nondiscursive. Culture is therefore a larger social formation constituted by communicative meaning-­making practices (or dialectical exchanges among meanings, practices, and structures). Communication, then, encompasses the processes and practices of articulation. For example, Hall (1980) in his well-­cited and very important essay, suggests a different way of conceptualizing communication via a four-­part theory of communication (different from content analysis), particularly for mass communication research and media studies. He complicates and retheorizes the process of communication as in mass communication(s) research in which there is a circulation circuit or loop with a linear set-­up between the sender, message, and receiver. Rather than being a linear, equivalent process, he argues for a structured conception of the different moments as a “complex structure of relation” (During 1993, p. 91). As described by Slack (2006), the process of communication had been theorized as the mechanism whereby correspondence between meanings is encoded (the what) and the effects that meaning generates is guaranteed. Hall challenged this, arguing that there are no intrinsic identities in a neutralizing, de-­historizing process. Instead, the components of the process (e.g. sender, receiver, message, meaning) are themselves articulations, without necessarily essential meanings – thus, we are compelled to rethink communication as largely a process not of correspondence but of articulation – that there is more within communication than a reliable model of encoding/decoding (as Hall demonstrates and Morley (1980) with television news as well). So, what happens is that if every component or meaning in the process of communication is itself an articulation, then they are relatively autonomous moments, in which no one moment can fully guarantee the next with which it is articulated (Hall 1980, p. 129) – so autonomy is somewhat relative (much like Althusserian structuralism) and breaks articulation from a necessary noncorrespondence risk, thereby demonstrating that some articulations are located differently (in particular specific locations) and thus vested with different degrees of power and privilege. Through communication as articulation, we should analyze how particular meanings, practices, discourses (systems of meanings, messages, and symbols as well as practices of speaking) institutions, and relations – are all somewhat autonomous but organized into unities that are effective, which may be relatively disempowering and enabling (and with these practices as lines of tendential force). Theorizing communication in this way offers some interesting methodological detours and strategic paths. In this way, the specificity of communication allows for examining how these forces at a certain moment, yield intelligible meanings, enter the circuits of culture – the field of cultural practices  – that shape the understandings and conceptions of the world of men and women in their  ordinary everyday social calculations, construct them as potential social subjects and have the  effect of organizing the ways in which they come to or form consciousness of the world. (Hall 1989, p. 49)

Studying/participating in communication in terms of a struggle to mean and to connect meanings, involves a process of rearticulating contexts, that is of “examining and intervening in the changing ensemble of forces” (or articulations that create and maintain identities that have real concrete effects). “Understanding a practice involves theoretically and historically (re)-­constructing its context” (Grossberg 1992, p. 55; Grossberg 2014). The goal is not to situate a phenomenon in a context, but to map a context, mapping the very identity that brings the context into focus – context is not something out there “within which practices occur or which influence the development of practices. Rather identities, practices, and effects generally, constitute the very context within which they are practices, identities, or effects” (Grossberg 1992, p. 125; Grossberg 2014). The reconceptualization of communication continues to distinguish a critical intercultural perspective from a traditional intercultural one. The critical performative turn also helps to stretch out our notion of communication in terms of an

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assemblage of lived and enacted meanings that through the performative act of expression (of communication) of a culture – those very meanings could reveal the situatedness of a cultural group member’s perspective (allowing an under-­the surface view of the unknown or silenced), loosen up the tighthold of dominant structures, and uncover resistive remakings of cultural experiences and roles. Critical intercultural communication scholars will need to continually stretch what we mean by “communication” to allow for incisive examinations of power and its operations (the motions, wide strokes, nuances, and details).

Interculturality

The notion of “intercultural” continues to be overly reminiscent of a traditional view of an equal line or exchange between cultural groups – a notion that the critical perspective quickly challenges and de-­mystifies and will need to do so for the foreseeable future. Instead, a critical perspective reconceptualizes the terms “intercultural” and “intracultural” as broad spatial metaphors through which to analyze more fully the relationship between culture, identity, and power. Such a broadening transforms the notion of “inter” from connoting actual interaction between culturally different “dialogue partners” to the intersecting layers of cultural, discursive, and signifying practices that constitute power relations within and around groups. Instead, “‘inter’ and ‘intra’ could symbolize temporarily useful spatial metaphors for re-­thinking how culture involves contested sites of identification as opposed to others and the resulting political consequences” (Halualani et al. 2009, p. 17). Interculturality as a metaphor and movement of power represents a form of articulation and communication that sutures into place as a homology the seemingly natural linkages between a place, group, and subjectivity (Lavie and Swedenburg 1996). This notion could be productively deployed to examine the different relations of power within and across contexts. It could also conceptually and theoretically link up with the notion of intersectionality and provide a means to examine within and across layers and forces of oppression and power multiplicity effects. We must keep in mind that the assumptions above are mediated by and read through the different histories, conjectures, discourses, and theoretical positions held within a context or surrounding a group/community and the specifics of a structural-­cultural project. There is a diversity of history, politics, stakes, and power interests involved across critical intercultural projects but with a loosely shared connection to these aforementioned presuppositions. Critical intercultural communication studies scholarship could further engage this notion of interculturality and how it may shed further light on the operations and constellations of power within, across, around, and through (and back around) culture and intercultural relations. How does a critical framing of intercultural scholarship change the nature of theorizing and methodological practice?

As a result of the macro-­micro focus of critical intercultural communication, the roles of theory and method become complicated. How do we “build” or identify theory with such moving contexts and factors such as history, structures, and economics? Rather than the pasting of theoretical molds onto different contexts, embracing the notion of “theorizing” could prove useful. Similar to critical cultural studies work, a critical scholar looks into a setting with a particular philosophical lens to examine culture and power, and this “context,” or the combination of metacontext and analyzed setting then informs a theoretical formation about the setting. As another movement, the theoretical framework bears meaning upon the analyzed setting. With their own philosophical assumptions, the researcher would delve into such a context and analyze its specific material conditions and history. From this critical exploration, the scholar can propose a type of theoretical framework based on examined specificities (e.g. histories, experiences, economics, social relations) about the field of forces in that context. As one example close to our hearts, the scholar would look to the



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context surrounding a Native Hawaiian woman’s fight to attain Hawaiian homestead land (and this specific struggle) in terms of the larger historical legacy of British and American colonialism, the long reach of settler colonialism from dominant US forces, white business interests, and Locals (or various immigrant groups brought into Hawai’i to work the land for a capitalist system), the hyper-­heteronomative patriarchical hold over Native Hawaiian land and culture, and the theoretical dimensions that emanate from such a context. This theoretical framework and resulting critical analysis would then seep back into and inform the analyzed setting by uncovering its underlying cultural practices in terms of Native Hawaiian culture, land struggles, and intercultural relations based on power, profit, and Native dispossession. As a result, critical work recognizes that there is no theory in advance and no social process of culture without some theoretical sensemaking; it travels through a trajectory of theory from and toward context (e.g. metacontext and the studied setting) (Grossberg 1993). Critical intercultural communication studies understands that theory emanates from the sociopolitical, cultural, and historical context of study and from the situated experiences and identities that are being engaged. However, critical intercultural work and even parts of the 2010 handbook collection has relied on Western theories of power and agency (British cultural studies, Marxist critical theory, European critical theories and framings of discourse). Miike (2006, 2007) and Asante and Miike (2013) remind us that critical intercultural communication studies ought to seek out and rely on situated theories  – localized, indigenous theorizing and or meaningful frames  – of the cultures that we are engaging and not in a Western mold or Western comparative requirement. How do we employ theories, theorizings, or forms of knowledge that derive from the cultures and communities of focus? And how might we also uncover the politics of knowledge and representation around that culture in doing so and the attacks on seemingly essentialist or romanticized cultural theories? There is a way for critical intercultural communication studies to ferret out and contest the politics of knowledge construction and citational politics of authority by establishing different and more significant cultural theoretical frameworks that are embedded in cultural contexts. (We can also lay claim to the influences of Western theories and colonizer frameworks while also disrupting those frames to rethink intercultural problematics.) As brilliantly illuminated through queer critical intercultural communication, transgender critical intercultural communication, performance critical intercultural communication, and intersectional critical intercultural communication, theories live and move in the “flesh,” in and around our “bodies,” through our enacted meanings, routines, and stories, and in our everyday, private, and public lives and experiences. Critical intercultural scholars need to amplify different and untapped trajectories of theory; theories that highlight culture in relation to power and experience, performance and narrative, historical memory, knowledge and representation, identity intersections, collisions, and collaborations. We also need to examine the state of knowledge in critical intercultural communication not just in terms of what it tells us about culture and intercultural communication but also about power and what our specific critical intercultural work reveals about the inner workings and configurations of power across cultural contexts and groups. What do our critical intercultural projects and their embedded theorizings tell the world about the ways legacies, systems, structures, and ideologies of power work through cultures, identities, and intersectionalities? To what extent, does power move more surreptitiously and unnoticed (or blatantly in plain view) through the guise and front of “culture,” “tradition,” “cultural practices,” “community,” and “rituals” (“this is the way”)? Methodologically speaking, examining macro to micro dimensions requires novel and multidimensional tools and processes in order to fully unpack the myriad and complex connections between culture and power. Methodologies and modes of inquiry represent a thriving area with excellent examples from extant critical intercultural communication work,

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especially from 2010 to 2023. For instance, Willink et al. (2014) showcase three methodological “pathways” for critical intercultural communication studies: Critical Race Theory and Decolonizing and Indigenous Methodologies; Activist/Engaged Methodologies; and Performative Methodologies. In so doing, these scholars call for more scholarship that explores various methodological tools of inquiry into culture and tools that are open, dialogic, interdisciplinary in nature, reflexive, and interactive and allow for deeper insights into cultural voice, intersectional differences and identities, power dimensions, and experience as a “mirror” of structural and personal markings of power. Willink et al. (2014) also remind critical intercultural communication studies to seek out and enact methodologies for the insights they bring to issues of power but also for what they do as forms of knowledge production that actively work to increase marginalized voices, agency, and participation and bring about societal change (and undo the silencing and conceptual/theoretical subjugation of cultures, nations, places, and identities). In exciting fashion, there are so many useful and illuminating modes of inquiry for critical intercultural communication studies to employ in the pursuit of engaged intersectional analysis of culture and power such as: intersectional methods (queer, transgender, CRT, critical disability, thick intersectional interviews, ethnographies, authoethnographies, narratives), critical autoethnography, performative authoethnography, ethnohistoriography, critical discourse analysis, articulation, decolonizing methodologies, legal case analysis with an intersectional critical lens, policy analysis with an intersectional critical lens, oral histories or private memory interviews, critical intersectional analysis, political economy with an intersectional lens, critical quantitative methods that focus on inequities and power from critical education studies; and critical case studies (to counter the “critical moments” curricula of objectifying traditional intercultural, international education, and intercultural communication pedagogies). The expansive array of theorizings and methods suitable for critical intercultural communication analyses, may seem too wide and vast of a plane to build out an area of study. But we need to remind ourselves that the goal for critical intercultural communication studies is to not merely build or propagate research that is fully unified and conversant for its own sake but rather to yield multiple insights over time that can be shared and discussed in degree in terms of specific historical moments, sociopolitical urgencies, and problematics within, through, and across political projects. What are some key dimensions or foci of critical intercultural research and what does such a perspective yield in terms of insight, inquiry, and analysis of culture and intercultural communication?

Since the first 2010 handbook collection, there have been numerous studies that have shed light on a varied range of significant topics, cultures, and settings as identified in Table 1.2. We applaud this work and the entirety of critical intercultural communication to fulfill the goal of interrogating and dismantling legacies, systems, and structures of power in relation to culture and intercultural relations. From this, our pursuit to uncover the major macro aspects that can be looked at through a critical intercultural communication perspective and what can still be learned about specific cultural and intercultural communication phenomena and contexts should continue its momentum and propel forward into terrain that has not been looked at before and or areas that require new or uncovered angles. More specifically, there are topics that can be engaged for key insights not yet fully unpacked in the field of intercultural communications, topics such as intersections across critical diversity and equity studies, critical race and ethnic studies, colonialisms and empires; digital inequalities, biopolitics, platform capitalism, algorithmic oppression, neoliberal university and educational sites, technological colonialism, cultural histories and genealogies of cultural notions, cultural displacements and cultural dispossession, regulation and surveillance of bodies across difference migration, transnationalities, environmental justice, geopolitics, economic classing, caste oppression, indigeneity and



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land struggles, cisgendering of land, water, and nature, settler colonialism, citizenship, and much more. In their bold essay, “Two stories, one vision: A plea for an ecological turn in intercultural communication,” Mendoza and Kinefuchi (2016) brilliantly push critical intercultural communication studies to pursue a radical turn in engaging climate change, ecosystems, indigenous constructions of land, nature, and the environment and what this reveals about culture, intercultural communication, and power. Indeed, our delimited range of what we should and could study through a critical intercultural communication perspective proves to be expansive and far-­reaching. And why not? The reach of intercultural power is boundless and for that, we need to continually re-­envision our scope and be open to the idea that our area of study may not have fully drawn lines and boundaries as other fields of study nor should we aspire to privilege traditional knowledge construction and parameters. By continuing to explore and extend this area of critical intercultural communication studies, our conclusions and theorizings about culture and intercultural communication can be carved out in robust and exhilarating ways. How do we take the larger collection of critical intercultural communication research, informed by multiple theoretical and perspectival traditions and spread across various fields of communication scholarship and outside disciplines, and engage these works in meaningful and productive dialogue around insights, conclusions, and question-­probing and provide these with a deeper, integrated focus to have important metacritical conversations that characterize the continual development of perspectives and forms of scholarship (as even in the case of critical theory, cultural studies work, postcolonial perspectives, feminist studies, among others)?

The idea is to not contain, “police,” or “discipline” the boundaries of critical intercultural communication studies or create some grand narrative but to stake out some positions and meeting points, if any, to build a diverse community with webs of connection, convergence, and vested stakes. With rich critical intercultural work spread out across disciplines, areas of study, communities, regions, countries, institutions, conferences, and publication/sharing outlets (by graduate students, beginning-­staged faculty, and advanced stage faculty, faculty instructors, practitioners, trainers, public sector professionals), how we as a larger community amass together the collected insights and political projects and create a vehicle through which we share, communicate, converse, and push each other on our projects, can help stretch our analyses and interventions toward our aims for justice, recognition, reclamation, freedom and liberation, and meaningful, transformative change. However, we ought not seek out a unified body of work to satisfy some academic self-­aggrandizing gesture as our biggest gains live in the disconnections and the breakage points across projects through which intersectionalities and power dimensions take different forms. Critical intercultural communication studies is as much about connection, joinings, and ties as it is about disconnection, fractures, and cracks. We learn what our critical intercultural projects share about culture and power and what they do not. This helps to propel and refine our knowledge construction process, theoretical and topical trajectories, and methodologies and revisit or pursue new questions and problematics from different angles. The connection-­disconnection attribute is what ultimately makes us tied to what we study: the messiness and (often) incompleteness of culture, power, and political projects. How do we not let our academic need to trace, name, identify, and record critical scholarship and its varied nature smother or undermine a necessary and key focus on historical specificity, contextualization, situated power dynamics, and fluid theorizings in critical work?

We understand the academic obsession for boundary delineation and identification of positions (especially in the United States). However, it is still important for us to consider how such a need to name, identify, and solidify may, in fact, suffocate that with which we critique

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in terms of the larger contextualizations and situated power dynamics that constitute such phenomena. Reconciling these often-­conflicting aspects of critical work merits more attention and careful movement so that the political projects (and the larger aims of these) always take priority. How does such work link up to, contrast and interact with intercultural scholarship from other paradigmatic perspectives? Or does it and does it even have to?

Martin and Nakayama (1999) pushed for a dialogic approach in the field of intercultural communication among paradigmatic schools of thought so as to stretch the collective knowledge in the field. Indeed, linkages among the postpositivist, interpretive, and critical approaches can magnify great insight on culture and intercultural communication especially in terms of multilayered contexts that involve privatized experience, perception, and behavior and larger structures, conditions, and histories. But we must also ask ourselves about the areas in which these approaches depart and collide. There is no denying that there are fundamental differences in assumptions about culture and communication and the goals of intellectual work. To constantly feel the pressure of folding in to and accommodating (or dialoguing with) other perspectives may inadvertently weaken the potency of critical analyses and engagements and risk defusing and domesticating politically charged projects. We should at least ask what the risks are to our own work as critical scholars with political projects when we do this. Some may have tangled with the question of how to dialogue with a perspective that has historically reproduced and reified colonialist myths and images of a cultural group and ones that she/he/they is trying to dismantle in their work. Can we align with dominant arms of Science and Governmental Classifications and Authority that have so persistently punished a group, a people, or a land for whom/which we are advocating? The question may actually be not whether or not to link up or dialogue but when it is appropriate and useful to the contexts and groups with which/whom we work and focus on. Ultimately, critical scholars must face head-­on the tricky issue of interacting and collaborating with other colliding perspectives and at what cost. What are the future directions of critical intercultural communication work and pathways that need to be continually revisited and others that have been sorely neglected?

By peering back at the crossroads delineated in 2010 and the movement and pathways that have been carved out since, critical intercultural communication studies has proven to be an even more engaged and vibrant space of work and political projects that highlights both power constraints and agentic possibilities and navigational actions. And with this, even more questions about what the future holds for the area and for the engaged political projects rise to the surface. These include (but are not limited to) the following: • How do we identify and pinpoint a critical intercultural communication work? Does the work need to directly reference “critical intercultural communication” or does it just need engage culture and power critically? What are the implications of this for scholars and students? Is the naming of what we do even important and for whom? • How can we create theoretical and justice alliances with critical subareas in communication and critical fields beyond the communication discipline? • Have we focused enough on agentic possibilities of resistance, negotiation, and action? • To what extent are we uncovering aspects of domination and or agency and or the dynamic interchange between the two? • What aspects of power are we engaging? And at which levels? • How do we maximize the use-­value of our critical intercultural communication projects beyond the academy?



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If the amassed critical intercultural communication work from over the last 13 years is any indication, the future for critical intercultural communication studies looks even brighter and more magnificent than at the 2010 crossroads in the first handbook iteration. This current handbook, then, takes up from the crossroads and the blazing energy from the 2010–2023 critical intercultural communication work (with its calls for important and new conceptualizations and filling in the gaps, reflections, project analyses, and new trajectories, theorizings, and methods) and strives to push that momentum and energy even further by creating yet another space for continued inquiry and insight, reflection, deep engagement, confrontation, and path-­charting for critical intercultural communication studies of today and tomorrow.

This Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication Over the last 13 years, critical intercultural communication studies has flourished with a robust record of scholarship and the creation of a new generation of scholars dedicated to advancing critical intercultural communication work. Since 2010, the Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication stands as one of the first collections that feature all works and projects through the critical intercultural communication studies perspective in communication studies. With this second iteration of the handbook, the focus has moved from the questions “Why do we need critical intercultural communication studies?” and “What constitutes critical intercultural communication?” to “What more can critical intercultural communication studies do?” and “What aspects of culture, power, and intercultural relations still need to be interrogated, revisited, and or named?” As the need and imperative for a critical view of intercultural communication has already been established by the first handbook as well as critical intercultural work from 2010 through 2023, we now see the research in this area seeking ways to “move the dial” and chart out needed theoretical, analytical, methodological, and practical pathways for critical intercultural communication studies even further. This very Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication aims to provide a space and form for such pathmaking and in directions that we have not gone before or through particular angles. This Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication continues to stand as a consolidated resource of essays that highlight critical intercultural communication studies, its historical inception, logics, terms, and possibilities as well as theoretical, methodological, and applied exemplars. In addition, it will also serve as a valuable tool to help graduate students, scholars, and faculty members showcase, articulate, and imagine what kinds of work can constitute and speak to the area of critical intercultural communication studies. Our handbook continues to sketch out the intellectual terrain of critical intercultural communication studies in terms of the following: (i) revisiting and reengaging important scholars and their key works (which have been updated and recast for today) that enabled such a course of study and (ii) presenting works that demonstrate the new and vibrant possibilities of engaging culture and intercultural relations and contexts in a “critical” way. It is our hope that once again, this Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication will help scholars revisit, assess, and reflect on the formation and vigorous development of critical intercultural communication studies and where it still needs to go in terms of theorizing, knowledge production, and social justice engagement. Our handbook will also highlight the contemporary issues and debates that are shaping the area of critical intercultural communication studies. The handbook is organized in terms of five main sections: (i) critical junctures and reflections in critical intercultural communication studies: a revisiting, (ii) critical theoretical dimensions in critical intercultural communication studies, (iii) critical inquiry practices in critical intercultural communication studies, (iv) critical topics in critical intercultural communication studies, and (v) critical intercultural futures in critical intercultural communication studies. In addition to this opening introduction and a visioning conclusion, there are

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section interludes that punctuate the handbook with specified contexts for each of these main portions. Moreover, these essays are bound together in a book structure that scaffolds up from foundation to application and allows for reflection and connection amongst sections and pieces. The first part of the handbook will highlight the formative critical moments and “junctures” through which a critical perspective first emerged and “took flight” within intercultural communication. In unique fashion, this part includes current reflections and insights of influential intercultural communication scholars such as Wendy Leeds-­Hurwitz, Thomas K. Nakayama and Judith N. Martin, Dreama G. Moon, Kent A. Ono, Ako Inuzuka, Gust A.  Yep, and S. Lily Mendoza, who wrote original essays that created the impetus for and helped to shape a critical line of inquiry. As opposed to merely including the reprints of these essays, these scholars have contributed original, present-­day reflections and updated insights on those essays and their thoughts in the current moment about the critical turn in intercultural communication studies in terms of the following questions: What does it mean to do critical intercultural communication work? In what historical and representation contexts is  critical intercultural communication studies situated? What is the unique role that only critical intercultural communication scholarship is meant to take up? And what are the larger assumptions and commitments of such work? This section serves the purpose of referring back to several key works that historically shaped and set a critical intercultural communication course while at the same time adding a new spin to these works through the contemporary/post-­reflections of the authors. The second part of the handbook highlights the role of critically framed theories and theorizings in constituting and driving critical intercultural communication studies. By way of examining specific contexts and legacies of power, identities, communities, popular cultural forms and discourses, and public memories, these featured theories are drawn from various critical areas of study within and beyond the communication discipline and powerfully demonstrate the role of situated, embodied, intersectional, reflexive, and multivocal attuned theorizings to uncovering key insights about the relationship between culture and power. These expositions of power-­attuned theories are contributed by such excellent scholars as Yoshitaka Miike, Crispin Thurlow, Bernadette Calafell and Nivea Castaneda Acrey, Yukio Tsuda, Aimee Carrillo Rowe, Shinsuke Eguchi, Kathryn Sorrells, Jolanta A. Drzewiecka, Miriam Shoshana Sobre, Jing Yin, and Antonio Tomas De La Garza and Kent A. Ono. As a new section for this handbook, the third part provides a stage to share, delineate, and reflect upon methodologies and modes of inquiry for critical intercultural communication work. The most common and shortsighted critiques of critical intercultural communication studies is that it lacks the rigorous use of a method, has no real “data,” and that a predetermined focus on power does “not count” as a viable mode of inquiry As demonstrated by extant critical intercultural communication research and this very section, such flimsy critiques are upended and obliterated by the stellar methodological-­focused essays from Ahmet Atay, Mark P. Orbe, Lore/tta LeMaster and Michael Tristano, Jr., Gloria Nziba Pindi, Devika Chawla, Sarah Amira de la Garza, Srividya Ramasubramanian, Julius Riles, and Omotayo O. Banjo, Robert Gutierrez-­Perez, and Mohan J. Dutta. An eclectic set of methods is featured – from decolonizing methods to ethnographies and authoethnographies, quantitative approaches, racialized queerness and transness performative modes, performative praxis, and culture-­centered approaches in line with community organizing. Next, the handbook proudly showcases current critical intercultural communication projects on a wide range of significant, timely, and urgent topics. Indeed, these works represent actual critical case studies and specific political projects that focus on different cultural groups, communities, identities, and contexts from a critical intercultural perspective. Such work collectively demonstrates the dynamic and interrogative nature of the critical intercultural communication studies perspective on the movements, machinations, and dynamics of power, legacies of



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oppression, and tributaries of agency and action in relation to culture and intercultural communication encounters and relations. These essays – from Godfried Asante, Kristin L. Drogos and Vincent N. Pham, Yea-Wen Chen and Brandi Lawless, Santhosh Chandrashekar, Richie Neil Hao, Tina M. Harris and Meghan S. Sanders, Tiara R. Na’puti and Riley I. Taitingfong, Etsuko Kinefuchi, Josue David Cisneros and Ana Lisa Eberline, Isra Ali, LeiLani Nishime and Elizabeth Parks, Priya Raman and Deanna Fassett, Sachi Sekimoto, and Melissa Steyn and Cuthbeth Tagwirei – represent critically incisive analyses of culture and power as well as illustrations of the complexities of theorizing and researching issues of cultural politics and communication. Topics presented in this section [anti-­LGBT violence in the context of Ghana; ANAPI YouTubers’ articulations of race intersectionalities; commitments of CICP; mediatized representation of Indianness; CICP and the aftermath of the Las Vegas shooting; racial representations in popular culture (Bridgerton); nuclear colonialism and militarism in Oceania; ecological violence and racism and speciesism; undocumented activism and stories; a Letter for Black Lives Matter and critically engaging Asian American intercultural communication; access, bodies, inclusion, and modality; bodily senses in the formation of race in the time of COVID-­19; whiteness, privilege, and the White South African diaspora in the United States] all represent ongoing, contemporary concerns of critical intercultural communication scholars. In the fifth section of this handbook, we delineate what is forming and what could be by featuring pathways for critical intercultural futures in terms of alliances with critical subareas in the discipline (critical health communication, as elucidated by Kristen L. Cole, Leandra Hinojosa Hernández, and Sarah De Los Santos Upton) and beyond (critical university studies and the “critical reclamation of the university,” as illustrated by Kathleen F. McConnell). Another pathway in motion powerfully focuses on critical intercultural communication and the ecological turn in engaging the “more than human world” with S. Lily Mendoza and Etsuko Kinefuchi’s riveting chapter. These essays present the exciting possibilities of critical alliances, intersections, and collaborations as well as bold ventures into new terrain (literally, epistemologically, physically) of ecosystems, earth and nature, and a scope beyond (but constitutive of) the human world. Finally, we, as editors of this collection, conclude the handbook with a delineation of what is next for critical intercultural communication studies – our possible next trajectories, pathways, and or moves in the face of new and resurfacing challenges. It is our hope to envision, imagine, and aspire for what critical intercultural communication studies can continue to become and do for the world and create a critical intercultural future and world-­remaking.

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Lavie, S. and Swedenburg, T. (eds.) (1996). Displacement, Diaspora, and Geographies of Identity. Duke University Press. Lawless, B. and Chen, Y.W. (2019). "You have to cry before you teach this class": emotion with work and resistance in teaching intercultural communication. Journal of Communication Pedagogy 2: 63–75. Lawless, B. and Chen, Y.W. (2020). Still a “sensitive” subject? Unpacking strengths and struggles of intercultural communication pedagogies. Howard Journal of Communications 31 (2): 171–186. Lee, W.S., Wang, J., Chung, J., and Hertel, E. (1995). A sociohistorical approach to intercultural communication. Howard Journal of Communications 6 (4): 262–291. LeMaster, B. (2016). Queer intersectionality: queering the limits of identity studies in critical intercultural communication research. Doctoral dissertation. Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Carbondale, IL. LeMaster, B. (2018). Pedagogies of failure. In: Critical Intercultural Communication Pedagogy (eds. A. Atay and S. Toyosaki), 81–96. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Martin, J.N. and Nakayama, T.K. (1997). Intercultural Communication in Contexts. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield. Martin, J.N. and Nakayama, T.K. (1999). Thinking about culture dialectically. Communication Theory 9 (1): 1–25. Martin, J.N., Nakayama, T.K., and Flores, L.A. (1998). A dialectical approach to intercultural communication. In: Readings in Cultural Contexts, 5–14. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield. McIntosh, D.M.D. and Eguchi, S. (2020). The troubled past, present disjuncture, and possible futures: intercultural performance communication. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research 49 (5): 395–409. McMickens, T., Olzman, M.D., and Calafell, B.M. (2021). Queer Intercultural Communication: Sexuality and Intercultural Communication. New  York: Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication, Oxford University Press. Mendoza, S.L. (2000). Between the homeland and the diaspora: The politics of theorizing Filipino and Filipino American identities. Doctoral dissertation. Arizona State University. Mendoza, S.L. (2005). Tears in the archive: creating memory to survive and contest empire. In: Among US: Essays on Identity, Belonging, and Intercultural Competence (eds. R. Lustig and J. Koester), 233–245. Boston, MA: Pearson. Mendoza, S.L. and Kinefuchi, E. (2016). Two stories, one vision: a plea for an ecological turn in intercultural communication. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 9 (4): 275–294. Mendoza, S.L., Halualani, R.T., and Drzewiecka, J.A. (2002). Moving the discourse on identities in intercultural communication: structure, culture, and resignifications. Communication Quarterly 50 (3–4): 312–327. Miike, Y. (2006). Non-­western theory in western research? An Asiacentric agenda for Asian communication studies. The Review of Communication 6 (1–2): 4–31. Miike, Y. (2007). An Asiacentric reflection on Eurocentric bias in communication theory. Communication Monographs 74 (2): 272–278. Moon, D.G. (1996). Concepts of “culture”: implications for intercultural communication research. Communication Quarterly 44 (1): 70–84. Morley, D. (1980). The “Nationwide” Audience: Structure and Decoding. London: BFI. Morrissey, M.E. (2013). A DREAM disrupted: undocumented migrant youth disidentifications with US citizenship. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 6 (2): 145–162. Nakayama, T.K. and Halualani, R.T. (eds.) (2010). The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Namaste, V.K. (2000). Invisible Lives: The Erasure of Transsexual and Transgendered People. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Oh, C. (2020). Identity passing in intercultural performance of K-­ pop cover dance. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research 49 (5): 472–483. Ono, K.A. (1998). Problematizing “nation” in intercultural communication research. In: Communication and Identity Across Cultures (eds. D.V. Tanno and A. González), 193–202. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.



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Pindi, G.N. (2020). Speaking back to academic colonial gatekeeping: the significance of intercultural performance studies works in promoting marginalized knowledges and identities. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research 49 (5): 442–457. Prasad, P. (2020). A spectral genealogy of performance in intercultural communication studies. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research 49 (5): 416–424. Prosser, M.H. (ed.) (1970). Sow the Wind, Reap the Whirlwind: Heads of State Address the United Nations, vol. 1. New York: Morrow. Slack, J.D. (2006). The theory and method of articulation in cultural studies. In: Stuart Hall, 124–140. Routledge. Smith, A.L. (1979). Rhetoric of Black Power. Westport, CT: Greenwood. Smith, A.G. (1981). Content decisions in intercultural communication. Southern Speech Communication Journal 47: 252–262. Snorton, C.R. (2013). Marriage mimesis. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 6 (2): 127–134. Sobre, M.S. (2017). Developing the critical intercultural class-­space: theoretical implications and pragmatic applications of critical intercultural communication pedagogy. Intercultural Education 28 (1): 39–59. Starosta, W.J. and Chen, G.-­M. (2001). A fifth moment in intercultural communication?: a dialogue. Paper presented at the meeting of the National Communication Association, Atlanta, GA. Starosta, W.J. and Chen, G.-­M. (2003). Ferment in the Intercultural Field: Axiology/Value/Praxis  – International and Intercultural Communication Annual, vol. 26. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Stryker, S. (2006). (De)subjugated knowledges: an introduction to transgender studies. In: The Transgender Studies Reader (eds. S. Stryker and S. Whittle), 1–17. New York: Routledge. Toyosaki, S. (2020). Performative remembering of Hiroshima’s and my Father’s silence. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research 49 (5): 458–471. Ulla, M.B. (2022). Queer intercultural communication in migration: perspectives and future directions. Frontiers in Communication 7 (4): 1–9. Willink, K.G., Gutierrez-­Perez, R., Shukri, S., and Stein, L. (2014). Navigating with the stars: critical qualitative methodological constellations for critical intercultural communication research. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 7 (4): 289–316. Yep, G.A. (2010). Toward the de-­subjugation of racially marked knowledges in communication. Southern Communication Journal 75 (2): 171–175. Yep, G.A. (2013). Queering/quaring/kauering/crippin’/transing “other bodies” in intercultural communication. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 6 (2): 118–126. Yep, G.A. (2020). Towards a performative turn in intercultural communication. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research 49 (5): 484–493. Yep, G.A., Lescure, R.M., and Russo, S.E. (2019). Queer intercultural communication. In: Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication. New York: Oxford University Press. Yep, G.A., Russo, S.E., and Allen, J. (2020). Pushing boundaries: toward the development of a model for transing communication in (inter) cultural contexts. In: The Routledge Handbook of Gender and Communication (eds. M.N. Goins, J.F. McAlister, et al.), 639–664. Abingdon: Routledge. Zhang, D. and Chen, Y.W. (2022). “There is not just one way of doing it”: a queer intercultural analysis of same-­sex adoptive parents’(dis-­) identifications with family-­making. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication  1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/17513057.2022.2157037.

Part I

Critical Junctures and Reflections in Critical Intercultural Communication Studies Revisiting and Retracing

Introduction to Part I A critical intercultural perspective is committed to retracing its steps with a doting reflexivity on the larger forces and reasons for taking specific turns. This historical reflexivity is not in vain or to flex but rather to never forget the urgencies and the stakes that brought us here to this point. This section serves such a purpose: the featured chapters revisit and or speak to a specific juncture in the formation and development of critical intercultural communication studies – junctures that predated the onset of critical intercultural communication (Wendy Leeds-­ Hurwitz) and others that brought this area into being (Dreama Moon, Thomas K. Nakayama and Judith N. Martin, Kent Ono). Three essays (Ako Inuzaka, S. Lily Mendoza, Gust A. Yep) engage junctures that have been in motion since the first handbook iteration. Revisiting one’s work in forming and stretching critical intercultural communication allows for the sharing of additional insight and the reasons for writing that piece in that specific political moment. This also provides a space to highlight how the work can be understood and engaged in the current moment and in relation to the prevailing power forces. This next section grants us the opportunity to gain from such retracings and to peer back at the larger intellectual genealogy of critical intercultural communication studies. We invite you to probe the following questions that emerge from this section’s chapters: • Which historical, cultural, and intellectual moments spurred on the formation of critical intercultural communication studies? • What types of knowledge construction were created through these moments and junctures? • Which problematics around culture and power garnered the most attention and which did not? What effects did this have on what we study and how we study culture and power in critical intercultural communication studies? • How are we formed not just by our historical moves but also by our non-­moves (the roads we did not take) (the symbolic absences) and the effort to speak to those?

2

Writing the Intellectual History of Intercultural Communication Wendy Leeds-­Hurwitz University of Wisconsin–Parkside

Critical intercultural communication, like most theoretical approaches, means different things to different people. At its heart, a critical perspective addresses issues of macro contexts, one implication being that we must study the contexts of our own research efforts.1 It is naïve to think that the best ideas magically float to the top to become accepted practice; there are always more concrete explanations for why specific ideas seemed relevant or useful at a specific moment in time.2 All critical approaches, including critical intercultural communication, are about questioning the status quo. It is worth the effort to learn the history of our own assumptions in order to consider when it is time to change them. My own research is more appropriately described as interpretive than critical, but there are at least some shared assumptions.3 1 Reality is socially constructed, and people are active interpreters of their social environment. 2 Selves and relationships are dynamic, emergent concepts, maintained or changed through communication in multiple social situations. 3 Cultures result from the negotiated creation and shared use of symbols and meanings. 4 Intercultural communication occurs when individuals using different cultural symbols and meanings interact; thus intercultural communication often involves a mismatch of codes. Some years ago I published an article entitled “Notes in the History of Intercultural Communication: The Foreign Service Institute and the mandate for intercultural training” (Leeds-­Hurwitz  1990). This was never intended to be a complete or definitive history of intercultural communication; rather, my intention was to write several related “Notes” on the history of intercultural communication which, when taken together, would tell the whole story of how this part of the discipline of communication developed. As often happens, I got side-­tracked into other projects, and did not return to this one. To move a little further along that path, I would like now to document some of the other strands that should be considered when writing the history of intercultural communication. Intellectual history is inherently critical because it questions why we do what we do. Disciplinary history in particular asks: why do we study what we study (and not something else) in the ways in we study it (and not other ways)? In the history documented here, three more ­specific questions are at issue.

The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication, Second Edition. Edited by Thomas K. Nakayama and Rona Tamiko Halualani. © 2024 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2024 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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1 Why do intercultural scholars so often assume that each culture has a set of characteristics shared by all members equally (even though much research has demonstrated that cultures are not typically homogeneous)? 2 Why do intercultural scholars so often focus only on psychological characteristics (even though there are many other aspects of culture that could be the emphasis of study)? 3 Why do intercultural scholars so often assume that it is adequate to interview members of a culture living outside their culture as typical representatives of that culture (even though typical members of a culture stay within it, and do not choose to live elsewhere)? These questions will be answered in the remainder of this chapter. The short answer to all three is that a study of the anthropological precursors to intercultural communication research, especially the research traditions known as national character, culture and personality, and culture at a distance studies, have led to a set of assumptions many current researchers take for granted, rather than questioning how they came to appear to be so obvious, and whether they are the best assumptions for us now. These approaches were historically necessary in the 1930s and 1940s, but 90 years later, it is certainly time to question their appropriateness for the current international context. In what follows, I will provide an overview of people and organizations which have been important in the history of intercultural communication, but which are generally ignored by current scholars. One obvious question is why these people and organizations have been so thoroughly forgotten by communication scholars, when they helped to establish the direction of our work today. I will return to that question after introducing them. In these pages, Edward Hall, and the Foreign Service Institute in the late 1940s–early 1950s, will not be a concern, since that part of the story was previously published (Leeds-­ Hurwitz 1990). Instead, the focus here will be on the period immediately preceding that part of the story, the late-­1930s and 1940s, describing a strand of research that did not lead directly to intercultural communication, but that still shared basic concerns and assumptions with it. The 1930s and 1940s are important because the first application of anthropological concepts, such as culture, to real modern-­day problems of interaction between members of different cultures occurred then. It is worth talking about this bit of history today because most people in communication do not know much, if anything, about this work, despite its influence on our practices today.

Anthropology in the 1930s and 1940s By World War II, anthropology as a unique discipline had become an accepted part of the university core; the department at Columbia University in New York, under the direction of Franz Boas, was the central hub (Darnell  2001; Leeds-­ Hurwitz  2004a; Murray  1994). Anthropologists used ethnography as one of their main methods, traveling the globe to ­document a wide variety of cultures (Leeds-­Hurwitz  2004b). During war time, however, anthropologists unable to engage in the traditional fieldwork that would have taken them outside the United States had to develop new ways to examine cultures (Cassidy 1982). Of the 300 anthropologists in the country at the time “all but a half dozen were involved in some aspect of the war effort” (Mead 1968, p. 90). Margaret Mead is the best-­known and most influential of this group. As she herself explained, “I am sometimes introduced to audiences as a pioneer in the application of cultural anthropology to the conduct of international affairs” (1968, p. 89). While not stated in the vocabulary of intercultural communication as studied today, her central concern, understanding cultural differences and the impact these have on the interactions between members of different cultures, was obviously quite similar. In addition to Mead, a core group of anthropologists including Ruth Benedict, Gregory Bateson, Geoffrey Gorer, Douglas Haring, Clyde Kluckhohn, David Mandelbaum,



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and Rhoda Metraux participated during the war years in an overlapping series of organizations, ­committees, institutes, and conferences that permitted them to spend time on the projects they considered significant. These attracted an overlapping group of anthropologists and ­psychologists, together with sociologists, philosophers, and others. Eliot Chapple has suggested that Mead’s strength “was in the building of networks, cliques and systems” (quoted in Howard 1984, p. 231), and she used this ability to ensure that scholars first found ways to contribute to the war effort, and then after the war ended to continue the research they had begun. While it has been suggested that Bateson specifically desired “a patchwork of institutional ties” (Howard 1984, p. 220), for most scholars it was then, as now, more typical to join a single university and conduct research under their auspices. So my investigations reveal not only connection of the content to intercultural communication, but also serve as a case study in how to design and conduct large-­scale research investigations over a long period of time and by a group of scholars rather than a single individual. Lawrence Frank, a psychologist and close friend and long-­time collaborator of Mead’s, seems to have been at the nexus of these various efforts, generally in cooperation with Mead; further investigation will have to document his training and interests, his institutional affiliation with the Rockefeller Foundation, and his ­substantial interest in multidisciplinary, problem-­oriented research in greater detail than is possible here. A provocative comment characterizing one of the organizations to be described here ­suggests that “It didn’t end up as a bureaucracy. It ended in a point of view” (Howard 1984, p. 233; describing the Committee on Food Habits). In other words, the goal was never to establish a single organization that would continue indefinitely, but rather to use various organizations for short time periods as vehicles to pursue various research agendas. This was uncommon in the 1930s as it is today. For reasons of national security, many of the research projects listed in this chapter were not discussed publicly at length and did not result in formal publications. When working for the OSS (Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor organization to the CIA), presentation of research results to outsiders was not particularly encouraged. For these reasons, it is difficult to completely unravel the tight network of structures invented by this cohort of scholars, and this task will take far more time than I have yet spent. At this time, my goal is only to outline the major strands. Three theoretical concepts were integral to all of this research: “culture and personality,” “national character,” and “culture at a distance” studies. “Culture and personality” refers to a combination of anthropological and psychological insights, developed in the 1920s, largely under the direction of Edward Sapir, leading later to what was termed “psychological anthropology” (Bock 1980). “National character” studies combined a background of culture and personality research with immediate wartime needs. As explained by Mead: “The term ‘national character’ was traditionally applied rather loosely to the body of writing that sought to interpret the people of a nation as distinguished from their history, literature, arts, or philosophy” (1961a, p. 15; see also Gorer 1950). The people within national boundaries were viewed as essentially homogeneous in this model; the assumption of a “national character” implied that everyone in a particular nation shares certain core characteristics (clearly no longer a typical assumption in today’s multicultural world). The national character studies then spawned the “culture at a distance” projects, involving different individuals at different points in time, but primarily Mead, Benedict, Bateson, Metraux, Gorer, and Haring again, as well as Martha Wolfenstein, Natalie Joffe, Nicholas Calas, Jane Belo (Cassidy 1982, p. 45; Mead 1951, p. 75), and later, Kluckhohn and Weston LaBarre (Mead 1961a, p. 16). Culture at a distance refers to the effort to learn about members of particular cultures (again, viewed at that time as synonymous with countries) without actually traveling to them. Instead, former residents of a country were questioned, and media products were examined, for what they could tell about the assumptions of the nation’s residents.

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Having identified the central players and some of the basic concepts, I will now sort out the major organizations, the portfolio each one took, when each was active, and who were the significant members in each. The story as told here will actually start with one key organization, because it was the most influential, and longest lived, then move on to earlier and later smaller organizations. In 1940, over an informal meal after a session of the American Anthropological Association, Mead and Rhoda Metraux, together with a few others, invented the Council on Intercultural Relations (Howard 1984, p. 224); it was formally established in 1941, and included Frank, Bateson, Benedict, Gorer, Alfred Metraux, Philip Moseley, Harold Wolff, Lyman Bryson, and Edwin Embree (Mead 1959, p. 351; 1961b, p. 136; Howard 1984, p. 225). The Council “gradually emerged as an independent entity with various linkages in the Washington years,” overseeing multiple clusters of scholars (Howard 1984, p. 225). It later was formally incorporated under the name Institute for Intercultural Studies (Mead 1953b, p. 97). The Institute’s goal was “to combine a policy orientation with national character research” (Lipset 1982, p. 170). Scholars at the Institute attempted “to develop a series of systematic understandings of the great contemporary cultures so that the special ­values of each might be maintained and enhanced in the postwar world” (Mead 1959, p. 562). They used recent immigrants, refugees, war prisoners, literature, films, newspapers, travelers’ accounts, and government propaganda as resources in producing studies of “culture at a ­distance.” These were widely circulated, first in mimeograph form, listing the Institute for Intercultural Studies as publisher, and then, as publications in an eclectic series of venues. These studies documented typical norms of interaction and values within a single culture (interpreted as meaning a single country) at a time. The “national character” studies had impact on later research within intercultural communication, which often began with the assumption that documenting standard behavior and assumptions for members of a single culture at a time was the first (sometimes the only) goal in the study of intercultural ­interaction. Occasionally these studies investigated actual intercultural encounters, that is, the behavior of individuals from different cultural backgrounds when thrown together. As Benedict stated: “I believed that by serious study of learned cultural behavior we could achieve a better international understanding and make fewer mistakes in international communication” (quoted in Modell, p. 298). A later goal of the Institute’s research was to describe “areas of agreement which can be used as a background for the acceptance of differences” (Mead 1948, p. 210), more directly foreshadowing research into intercultural encounters. Mead’s (1948) description of the interactions between US soldiers and British civilians served as a prototypical case study, and was presented to students in the early days of intercultural communication as an example of the sort of applied focus this area of study encouraged. In fact, it became something of an apocryphal tale: I remember hearing the story in graduate school from Ray Birdwhistell (in the 1970s at the University of Pennsylvania), long before I actually read a published version. Let me present a brief summary of this research, as written by Mead a few years later, for those who have never heard about it, since it is the perfect example of what the national character studies could lead to in terms of intercultural investigation. Mead begins by describing the problem of the relations of US soldiers to British women in Britain in wartime, when most of the British men were overseas. Enormous misunderstanding and mutual ill-­feeling resulted from the contrast in the ways of rearing British and US adolescents for dealing with sexual advances. In the United States, the man is permitted great initiative, but the woman is trained to be able to exercise such a strong veto upon his importunities that he can trust her to impose an external check upon them. In Britain, on the other hand, the woman is reared to a certain protective shyness but has an expectation of yielding to the determined advances of a man, who will discipline his impulses in appropriate ways. The combination in wartime Britain of large numbers of US young men, accustomed to ask for a great many more favors than they



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expected to receive, and a group of women trained to say yes when asked did not necessarily result in a greater number of illegitimate children than is usual when troops are quartered in any community; yet it produced substantial friction between British and Americans (Mead 1951, p. 83; the full story is told in Mead 1944). The fact that Mead, an American, was married to Bateson, who was British, may well have helped bring the issue to her attention. Birdwhistell, who worked closely with Mead in the 1950s, never published but often described for students his own follow-­up research on comparable differences between courtship patterns displayed by northerners and southerners in the United States. Again, the fact that he was raised in the south but spent much of his career in the north could only have helped him to notice the differences in assumptions between these cultural groups. Notice, however, that his story was different from Mead’s in one significant way: he was looking at differences within a country, rather than between countries, demonstrating that he viewed countries as heterogeneous rather than homogeneous. The Institute for Intercultural Studies was important because it was one of the longest lasting of the organizations discussed here (it only disbanded in 2009). Even so, it was only one of a surprisingly large set of organizations created by anthropologists as tools in their investigation of issues related to intercultural communication. Brief descriptions of the others follow. The Bureau for Intercultural Education had as its stated goal “to promote cultural diversity through the schools of America” (Modell 1983), and Benedict worked with others through the late 1930s in this effort. They emphasized the process of integrating new immigrants into mainstream American culture, using the insights of anthropology. The Committee for National Morale was organized by Arthur Upham Pope in 1939 in an attempt “to mobilize what would now be called the ‘behavioral sciences’ for the war effort” (Mead 1959, p. 557). By 1939, Mead, Bateson, Frank, Chapple, Erik Erickson and Lockhardt were among those who worked with the Committee (Bock 1980, p. 108; Cassidy 1982, p. 42; Mead 1961a, p. 17). Bateson tried to devise ways for members to “use their scientific and intellectual professional skills, as distinguished from spy-­skills, cross-­culturally” (as quoted in Howard 1984, p. 223). The Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in their Relation to the Democratic Way of Life “stressed an interdisciplinary approach to ethical problems” (Mead 1959, p. 558). This was established in 1939 by Lewis Finkelstein and Lyman Bryson. By their second conference in 1940, they attracted not only Boas, but also Paul Tillich, Albert Einstein, and other stars (Howard  1984, p.  220), so this group moved far beyond the core group of anthropologists. Once World War II became a reality, the anthropologists became more directly involved, and many went to Washington to formally join the Office of War Information. This group included Mead, Gorer, Bateson, Benedict, Kluckhohn, and Dorothy Leighton (Mead 1961a, p. 17). An overlapping group ended up working for the Office of Strategic Services, including Bateson, Levy, Murray, and Kurt Lewin (Mead 1961a, p. 18). OSS was, as previously noted, the precursor to the CIA. The Committee for the Study of Food Habits also called the Committee on Food Habits, attached to the National Research Council, documented differences in assumptions as to what were appropriate foods across racial and ethnic groups within the United States, and helped set the stage for how to manage in case severe food shortages occurred during wartime. Mead was the Executive Secretary from 1942 to 1945, taking a formal leave of absence from her usual institutional home at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, to move to Washington, DC, for the duration of the war (Howard  1984, pp.  227–228; Mead 1953b, p. 98). Research in Contemporary Cultures was the term for the series of culture at a distance projects, begun under Benedict’s direction at Columbia University in 1947, as an outgrowth of the war efforts (Cassidy 1982, p. 45). Benedict managed the project from 1947 to 1948, and

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Mead took it over from 1948 to 1949 (Mead 1951, p. 77). The initial research was paid for by a grant from the Office of Naval Research (Mead and Metraux 1953, p. v; for details of the project, see Mead 1953b), and then continued in a series of successor projects. Studies in Soviet Culture, conducted at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), was funded by the Rand Corporation, 1948–1950, and directed by Mead (Mead 1951, p. 77; Mead and Metraux 1953, p. v). Studies in Contemporary Culture was an overlapping project at AMNH, funded by not only the Rand Corporation but also the Office of Naval Research, under the auspices of the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Mead 1961b, p. 136; Mead and Metraux 1953, p. v). The major players in RCC and the successor groups, in addition to Benedict and Mead, were Metraux, Gorer, Wolfenstein, Ruth Bunzel, and Nathan Leites (Mead 1953a, p. 8). In total, there were some 120 scholars involved between 1947 and 1951; records of the results of these projects were kept by the Institute for Intercultural Studies (Mead and Metraux 1953, pp. 451–453). There were additional links to the Institute of Human Relations at Yale University, especially through Gorer, Sapir, John Dollard, and Harry Stack Sullivan (Mead  1951, ­ p.  77;  1961a, p.  17); to the Hanover Human Relations Seminar of 1934 (Mead  1961a, p. 17); to the Social Science Research Council Study on Cooperation and Competition of 1935 (Mead  1961a, p.  17); to the Russian Research Center, Harvard University, 1947–1952, directed by Kluckhohn (Mead 1951, p. 77); and to the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (Mead 1961a, p. 17).

Implications What are the connections of this group of war-­period applied anthropologists to intercultural communication? Mead (1951) described such applied work in anthropology as being required by “the urgent need to devise better methods of cooperation between national groups and within national groups which are torn by regional, class, or ideological conflicts” (p. 76). First, this is still one of the goals of much intercultural communication research today; we have made less progress in the last 70 years than might have been hoped when this task was begun. Toward that goal, the 1930s studies utilized research methods still used by intercultural communication scholars: informant interviews; extensive life histories; study of fiction and films produced within a culture; study of oral narratives produced within a culture; analyzing interaction patterns, including gender roles and parent-­ ­ child interactions (Mead and Metraux 1953). In addition to research methods, some of the basic assumptions of this group were similar or identical to those held by scholars of intercultural communication today. Specifically, it is assumed by members of both groups that: all cultural behavior is mediated by human beings who not only hear and speak and communicate through words, but also use all their senses, in ways that are equally systematic, to see and to project what they see in concrete forms – in design, costume, and architecture – and to communicate through the mutual perception of visual images; to taste and smell and to pattern their capacities to taste and smell, so that the traditional cuisine of a people can be as distinctive and as organized as a language. (Mead 1953a, p. 16)

It is further a basic assumption of much intercultural research then as now that “every human being embodies in an individual from the culture or cultures within which he has been reared and within which he lives” (Mead 1951, p. 73). At both points in time, this justified the use of small numbers of informants: if all members of a culture learn all of the essentials of their own culture, the need for extensive research into different segments of a society is minimized.



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Of course, this approach only works in a homogeneous society, but that was assumed to be reasonable until surprisingly recently by the vast majority of researchers. Geoffrey Gorer lists a series of postulates taken for granted in the national character studies, and several of these are quite similar to modern assumptions.4 Of Gorer’s list, the five having greatest overlap are these: 1 human behavior is understandable; 2 it is predominantly learned; 3 “In all societies the behavior of the component individuals of similar age, sex, and status shows a relative uniformity in similar situations”; 4 “All societies have an ideal adult character”; and 5 “The habits established early in the life of the individual influence all subsequent learning” (Gorer 1953, pp. 77–78). I would argue that these statements characterize a substantial portion of intercultural c­ ommunication work through very recent times. In addition to similar assumptions like these, there are shared theoretical concepts, such as culture. Mead (1953a) defined culture as “the total shared, learned behavior of a society or a subgroup” (p. 22), a definition that would be amenable to most intercultural communication scholars today. Obviously such essential concepts in intercultural communication as ­ethnocentrism also come from anthropology, though that particular concept was not a central focus in the study of culture at a distance since it did not actually examine interaction between members of different cultures. Also, there are common emphases in topics studied, most especially the “analysis of the patterns of interaction between individuals or groups of individuals” (Mead 1951, p. 79). This is best exemplified in Mead’s own study of US soldiers and British civilians, described in some detail previously, although she usually cites Bateson as having greatest interest in the topic. In sum, I would argue that some of the precursor research necessary to the later establishment of intercultural communication was conducted by anthropologists in the overlapping groups surrounding Margaret Mead and the Institute for Intercultural Studies through the 1930s and 1940s. Some of the assumptions are the same, as are some specific theoretical terms, research methods, and topics investigated.

Conclusion Why should today’s communication scholars (and specifically, critical intercultural communication scholars) care about some largely forgotten projects conducted by an overlapping group of anthropologists in the 1930s and 1940s? The broad answer: one of the tenets of critical scholarship is the focus on historical context – something not only required when we embark upon a specific research project, but also when we reflect upon and begin to question the academic endeavor in which we take part. Thus, we must study the history of our own disciplinary traditions and assumptions. The more immediate answer: it is my argument that the research and assumptions of the particular group of scholars in the 1930s and 1940s documented in these pages have substantially influenced the current study of intercultural communication. If their work can in fact be shown to have influenced ours, we must be willing to spend at least a little time examining the history of our assumptions, and how they have developed over time. Multiple strands of research have influenced what we study today and how we study it; the fact that we have forgotten some, if not most, is no excuse to continue to ignore this work. Modern scholars can benefit from studying the past because it will help to reveal why we study what we do, and why we use the methods that we do. A critical approach to intercultural

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communication certainly implies this sort of reflexivity. Knowing our own history permits decisions about whether some of our assumptions should perhaps be revised, or whether they still serve researchers well. If modern-­day researchers continue to do in the present what our predecessors did in the past, it should at least be the result of a deliberate choice. What exactly was the influence of the 1930s research on intercultural communication research today? National character research is never named in early intercultural communication writings, but it had substantial impact on the assumptions of Edward Hall, who then influenced the assumptions of other, later scholars. Early intercultural communication research, at least into the 1990s, and some of the current work as well, takes for granted that each country has a typical set of patterns of communicating that can be described; this is a direct use of the concept of national character, even though this is no longer the accepted term. Scholars in the early days of intercultural communication did not, as we do today, seek to understand the various constituent groups in each country, or across national boundaries, let alone study the cosmopolitans who move easily between cultures and countries (Pearce  1989); rather each country was seen as a monolithic whole. While the national character studies made sense in the early days of understanding other groups, they limited the growth of intercultural communication research, which now sees each country as more heterogeneous. Is it possible that countries have become more heterogeneous, or is it the case that we simply are more likely to recognize the heterogeneity that has always been present? I would argue that both statements are true: yes, the world is becoming more heterogeneous (due to such factors as ease of travel and the increase in migration), but yes also to the suggestion that scholars did not look for heterogeneity initially, and so did not document it when they found it. In either case, the easy match between culture and nation is now out of date (Ono 1998). Culture at a distance studies are never named as a precursor to intercultural communication research, but the assumption that you could adequately understand a culture without actually traveling to the group responsible for its development and maintenance was taken for granted as unquestioned and unquestionable for a surprisingly long time. At least anthropologists moved from studying culture at a distance (by other names initially) to the practice of on-­site, in-­person ethnography, and only returned to accepting the study of cultures at a distance under wartime duress.5 Just as the anthropologists of the 1930s used recent immigrants and travelers as a resource, so intercultural communication in the 1960s and 1970s (and sometimes much later) assumed the use of international students and expatriates as adequate and sufficient resources to learning all that was necessary to understanding another culture. Once travel was not constrained due to war, such second-­hand sources became less justifiable, but they had become an easy and accepted method of gathering data, were taken for granted as appropriate, and so their use remained unquestioned for decades. It is my argument here that one reason for this unquestioning acceptance was the prior research in culture at a distance underlying intercultural communication as we know it today. Critical intercultural communication scholars, such as Mendoza et al. (2002), who now question the assumption that national identity controls communication behavior (as must be the case if international students are appropriate informants for all communication behavior in their home countries) can look to the research in the 1930s and 1940s documented here for an explanation of the origins of that assumption. It is through knowing our own past history that we learn to question the assumptions we take for granted, and to discover their origin. Now it is time to return to the question of why the early precursors have been so thoroughly ignored by intercultural communication scholars today. I can postulate several reasons. First, most of this work was conducted by anthropologists, therefore communication scholars did not see it as their heritage but someone else’s, and have felt free to ignore it. Second, Mead and her colleagues used organizations as tools to facilitate their research, not as ends in and of themselves. The result was that, as few of these organizations have lasted, and few have lived on in the collective memory of the academy, it is not only communication scholars who do not



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know about much about the work documented in this chapter, but most anthropologists as well. Third, several of the projects described here were conducted as part of foreign policy; they were understood to be applied anthropology, conducted for particular immediate purposes, rather than being traditional research conducted in order to document truth for future generations. Much of the work described here thus never was made widely available, so it is not surprising that it was not widely read and remembered. When research is not made readily available (and sometimes even when it is), its impact is severely minimized. These facts explain why the current generation of intercultural scholars is ignorant of the research studies listed earlier, yet they absolutely do not justify their deletion from the record. We need to know our past, not for its own sake, but so that we learn why we study what we do in the ways we do, and so that we can consider making changes to our current assumptions and practices based on what we discover. Presumably some of what was appropriate in the 1930s will still be appropriate in the new century, but at least some of it is outdated and in desperate need of revision. The historical moment of the 1930s and 1940s does not closely resemble the historical moment of today; to ignore that fact means not taking the assumptions of critical scholarship seriously. The implication is that, while all academics should spend time learning the history of research that underlies their own endeavors, it is particularly important for critical scholars.

Notes 1 This is not the place to supply an extensive list of work in the area, but a few relevant sources are Collier (2001), Martin and Nakayama (2000), Starosta and Chen (2003). 2 Sources directly addressing intercultural communication include Lee et al. (1995), and Leeds-­Hurwitz (1990, 1993, 2010). Hurwitz (1993) for further discussion of these assumptions within intercultural 3 See Leeds-­ communication. 4 The entries omitted in this summary specifically concern the learning of children, and have not been followed up as they might. 5 See Leeds-­Hurwitz (2004b) for details of the early days of ethnographic practice.

References Bock, P.K. (1980). Continuities in Psychological Anthropology: A Historical Introduction. San Francisco, San Francisco: W.H. Freeman. Cassidy, R. (1982). Margaret Mead: A Voice for the Century. New York: Universe. Collier, M.J. (ed.) (2001). Transforming Communication About Culture: Critical New Directions, International and Intercultural Communication Annual, 24. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Darnell, R. (2001). Invisible Genealogies: A History of Americanist Anthropology. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Gorer, G. (1950). The concept of national character. Science News 18: 105–122. Gorer, G. (1953). National character: theory and practice. In: The Study of Culture at a Distance (eds. M. Mead and R. Metraux), 57–82, 82. Chicago: University of Chicago. Howard, J. (1984). Margaret Mead: A Life. New York: Simon and Schuster. Lee, W.S., Chung, J., Wang, J., and Hertel, E. (1995). A sociohistorical approach to intercultural ­communication. Howard Journal of Communications 6: 262–291. Leeds-­Hurwitz, W. (1990). Notes in the history of intercultural communication: The Foreign Service Institute and the mandate for intercultural training. Quarterly Journal of Speech 76: 262–281. Leeds-­Hurwitz, W. (1993). Tendances actuelles de la recherche en communication interculturelle: aux Etats-­Unis [Research trends in intercultural communication: In the United States]. In: Dictionnaire

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critique de la communication, Tome 1 [Critical dictionary of communication, Vol. 1] (ed. L. Sfez), 500–501. Presses Universitaires de France, Paris. Leeds-­Hurwitz, W. (2004a). Rolling in Ditches with Shamans: Jaime de Angulo and the Professionalization of American Anthropology. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Leeds-­ Hurwitz, W. (2004b). Ethnography. In: Handbook of Language and Social Interaction (eds. K. Fitch and R. Sanders), 327–353. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Leeds-­Hurwitz, W. (2010). The emergence of language and social interaction research as a specialty. In: The Social History of Language and Social Interaction Research: People, Places, Ideas (ed. W. Leeds-­Hurwitz), 3–60. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. Lipset, D. (1982). Gregory Bateson: The Legacy of a Scientist. Boston: Beacon. Martin, J.N. and Nakayama, T.K. (2000). Intercultural Communication in Contexts. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield. Mead, M. (1944). The American Troops and the British Community. London: Hutchinson. Mead, M. (1948). A case history in cross-­national communications. In: The Communication of Ideas (ed. L. Bryson), 209–229. New York: Institute for Religious and Social Studies. Mead, M. (1951). The study of national character. In: The Policy Sciences: Recent Developments in Scope and Method (eds. D. Lerner and H.D. Lasswell), 70–85. Stanford, CA: Stanford University. Mead, M. (1953a). The study of culture at a distance. In: The Study of Culture at a Distance (eds. M. Mead and R. Metraux), 3–53. Chicago: University of Chicago. Mead, M. (1953b). The organization of group research. In: The Study of Culture at a Distance (eds. M. Mead and R. Metraux), 85–101. Chicago: University of Chicago. Mead, M. (ed.) (1959). An Anthropologist at Work: Writings of Ruth Benedict. New York: Avon. Mead, M. (1961a). National character and the science of anthropology. In: Culture and Social Character: The Work of David Riesman Reviewed (eds. S.M. Lipset and L. Lowenthal), 15–26. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Mead, M. (1961b). Letter to the editor: The Institute for Intercultural Studies and Japanese Studies. American Anthropologist 63 (1): 136–137. Mead, M. (1968). The importance of national cultures. In: International Communication and the New Diplomacy (ed. A.S. Hoffman), 89–105. Bloomington: Indiana University. Mead, M. and Metraux, R. (eds.) (1953). The Study of Culture at a Distance. Chicago: University of Chicago. Mendoza, S.L., Halualani, R.T., and Drzewiecka, J.A. (2002). Moving the discourse on identities in intercultural communication: structure, culture, and resignifications. Communication Quarterly 50 (3/4): 312–327. Modell, J. (1983). Ruth Benedict: Patterns of Life. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania. Murray, S.O. (1994). Theory Groups and the Study of Language in North America: A Social History. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Ono, K.A. (1998). Problematizing “nation” in intercultural communication research. In: Communication and Identity Across Cultures (eds. D. Tanno and A. Gonzalez), 34–55. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Pearce, W.B. (1989). Communication and the Human Condition. Carbondale: Southern Illinois Press. Starosta, W.J. and Chen, G.-­M. (eds.) (2003). Ferment in the Intercultural Field: Axiology/Value/Praxis, International and Intercultural Communication Annual, 26. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

3

Intercultural Communication and Dialectics Revisited Thomas K. Nakayama1 and Judith N. Martin2 1 2

Northeastern University Arizona State University

Twenty five years ago, we identified and described four distinct paradigms of culture and ­communication research (functionalist, interpretive, critical humanist, and critical structuralist) based on their metatheoretical assumptions and explored strategies for constructive interparadigmatic discussions (Martin and Nakayama 1999). We then proposed a way to conceptualize and study intercultural communication – a dialectical approach that could guide future research in two ways: first, as a trans-­paradigmatic methodology for studying culture and communication phenomena and second, as a conceptual framework for understanding intercultural communication practice. In this chapter, we again survey current culture and communication research through a paradigmatic lens, assess the current contributions of a dialectical approach to the study of culture and communication and offer new directions for incorporating a dialectic perspective into our research and practice. Since our last update in 2010, revisiting the contemporary terrain of intercultural communication seems warranted. The field continues to expand in many different directions that have opened up the very notion of “intercultural” communication. In some ways, the term itself, “intercultural,” tends to presume the interaction between discrete and different cultures. We know, however, that cultures have always been in contact and that the notion of cultural difference hides and masks the very ways that cultures have already influenced each other. So rather than cultural difference, our inclination is to put that concept into dialectical tension with cultural similarity to highlight the hybrid and heterogeneous character of all cultures. Thus, the very problem of conceptualizing “intercultural communication” remains as vibrant and relevant as ever.

Current Paradigmatic Approaches Our original essay identified four paradigms (functionalist, interpretive, critical humanist, and structural humanist) that defined the contours of research in the area and a recent review of extant culture and communication research reveals that the original taxonomy still guides inquiry. A recent metaparadigmatic analysis of articles published in major intercultural communication journals revealed that the framework continues to be useful in understanding the

The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication, Second Edition. Edited by Thomas K. Nakayama and Rona Tamiko Halualani. © 2024 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2024 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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breadth of culture and communication scholarship. That said, many articles reflected a b ­ lending of paradigmatic assumptions or a lack of specified assumptions (Dutta and Martin 2017). There seems to be three continuing trends in culture and communication research: (i) a continuing critique of Western paradigmatic research traditions (including our own framework), (ii) the clear influence of critical paradigms, and (iii) a growing trend of what we termed ­interparadigmatic borrowing and multiparadigmatic research, leading to a blurring of paradigmatic assumptions.

Functionalist Paradigm The functionalist (or postpositive) paradigm, continues to dominate much of culture and communication scholarship with foundations in social psychological research (see review in Dutta and Martin 2017). From this perspective, culture is often viewed as a variable, defined a priori by group membership, many times on a national level, and includes an emphasis on the stable and orderly characteristics of culture, and the relationship between culture and communication is usually conceptualized as causal and deterministic That is, group membership and the related cultural patterns (e.g. values like individualism–collectivism) can theoretically predict communication behaviors including conflict styles (Allison and Emmers-­Sommer 2011), face concerns (Neuliep and Johnson 2016; Ting-­Toomey 2005), conversational constraints (Dibble 2014; M.S. Kim 2005a), conversational style (Kim et al. 1996), anxiety/uncertainty management strategies (Gudykunst  2005; Rui and Wang  2015), accommodation strategies (Gallois et  al.  2018), and others (See Merkin et  al.  2014 for a review of research findings ­connecting cultural values and cultural variations in communication patterns).

Interpretive Paradigm Scholars who conduct culture and communication research in the interpretive paradigm are concerned with understanding the world as it is, and describing the subjective, creative communication of individuals, usually using qualitative research methods. Interpretivism ­ emphasizes the “knowing mind as an active contributor to the constitution of knowledge” (Mumby  1997, p.  6). Culture, in the interpretive paradigm, is generally seen as socially ­constructed and emergent, rather than defined a priori, and it is not limited to nation-­state collectives; interpretivists emphasize the stable, orderly characteristics of culture, reflecting an assumption of the social world as cohesive, ordered, and integrated (Martin and Nakayama 1999). The relationship between culture and communication is seen as more reciprocal than causal, where culture may influence communication but is also constructed and enacted through communication. Communication is often viewed as patterned codes that serve a communal, unifying function (Carbaugh  1988,  1990; Philipsen  1997; Philipsen et al. 2005). The strongest exemplars of such research continue to be the ethnography of communication studies conducted by Donal Carbaugh and colleagues, exploring how communicative codes vary from culture to culture and often lead to misunderstandings in intercultural interactions (Carbaugh  1996,  2007,  2017a). A second major interpretive research program is based on the Communication Theory of Identity (Hecht  1993; Shin and Hecht  2018). Examples of this are: Bergquist et al.’s (2019) study of identity gaps of refugee resettlement in US Midwest and Rubinsky’s (2019) study of identity and jealousy in polyamorous relationships. As we noted in our earlier essay, there are a few research programs, like Y.Y. Kim’s Integrative Theory of Cultural Adaptation (2005b) that do not fit neatly into one paradigm. While she describes her systems-­based theory as distinctive from both functionalist and



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interpretive ­paradigms (Kim 1988) and it has generated both functionalist and interpretive research (Gabor 2014; McKay-­Semmler and Kim 2014), one could argue that it is based primarily on functional social psychological research on cultural adaptation. Likewise, colleagues’ theorizing has also generated both interpretive and critical Carbaugh and ­ research. In particular, Cultural Discourse Theory/Analysis (CuDA) (Carbaugh 2007) which investigates “communication as culturally shaped, linguistically coded and interactionally employed” (Carbaugh 2017b, p. 4). The rise of the critical paradigm and its influence on research in other paradigms has been compelling. For critical scholars, culture is not a benignly socially constructed variable, but a site of struggle where various communication meanings are contested within social hierarchies – the ultimate goal is to examine systems of oppression and work for systemic change. Critical scholars in the two remaining paradigms vary in their emphasis either focusing on the “consciousness” as the basis for a radical critique of society, or structural relationships within a realist social world (Burrell and Morgan 1988, p. 34).

Critical Humanist Paradigm Critical humanist research has much in common with the interpretive viewpoint, as both assume that reality is socially constructed and emphasize the agency of human behavior. However, critical humanist researchers conceive of agency and human consciousness as dominated by ideological superstructures and material conditions that drive a wedge between them and a more liberated consciousness. Within this paradigm, the point of academic research into cultural differences is based upon a belief in the possibility of changing uneven, differential ways of constructing and understanding other cultures. One prominent strand of research focuses on the construction of cultural identities in intercultural settings, identifying ways that individuals negotiate relations with the larger discursive frameworks; for example, Nakayama’s (1997) description of the competing and contradictory discourses that construct identity of Japanese-­Americans, Flores’ (1994, 2003) work on Chicana and Chicano immigrant identities and Lee’s (1999) essay on Chinese women’s identities all explore the contradictory and competing ways in which identity is constructed. Other examples of research in this paradigm are critical rhetorical studies; for example, Nakayama and Krizek’s classic (1995) study of the rhetoric of Whiteness. Finally, there is also a growing body of popular culture studies that explore how media and other messages are presented and interpreted (and resisted) in often conflicting ways (e.g. Akinro and Mbunyuza-­Memani 2019). Of particular interest to culture and communication scholars is postcolonial scholarship. Postcolonial studies, based on Edward Said’s work (1979, 1994) examine power relations in the transnational global world, concerned with the effects and affects of colonialism that accompanied or formed the underside of colonialism (Diaz 2003; Schwarz 2000: Shome 1996; Shome and Hegde 2002). While much of critical theory work has focused on disenfranchised groups, based on race, gender, sexual orientation within nation-­states, postcolonial scholarship provides an historical and international depth to the understanding of cultural power. As noted by Shome and Hegde (2002), postcolonial scholars study issues of race, class, gender, sexuality, and nationality that are of concern to contemporary critical scholarship, “by situating these phenomena within geopolitical arrangements, and relationship of nations and their inter/ national histories” (p. 252). This scholarship is represented primarily within the critical humanist paradigm which stresses the importance of change and conflict in society. Based largely on work by Homi Bhabha, Edward Said, and Gayatri Spivak, postcolonial researchers have explored the ways that marginalized voices can speak and under what conditions. Scholarship in this area can emphasize hybridity and intersectionality. For example, in his work on Ghanian Pentecostalist charismatic church

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leaders, Asante (2020) argues that colonialism’s alignment with Christianity has ­masqueraded as “African” but a postcolonial approach could center queer Ghanians/African voices. Similarly, Lee (2003) argues for expanding our notions of same-­sex desire through the concept of “nu nu” (female-­female) that is used in Taiwanese and Chinese lesbian experiences. How people navigate identities within the historical contexts of Euro-­American domination around the world is reflected in this scholarship. Using postmodern, postcolonial and hermeneutic approaches, Liu and Kramer (2019) identify three types of Other-­identities in their examination of sojourners and immigrants. The switch from colonial to postcolonial contexts is exemplified by Amaro’s (2016) study of Macau and its move from a Portuguese colony to a Special Administrative Region of China in 1999. In an earlier piece, Amaro (2015) studied hybridity in the identities of Portuguese and Chinese residents in Macau and how the limited knowledge of Cantonese can be a barrier to integration of Portuguese speakers. These studies are concerned with questions of identity and hybridity in the aftermath of the forces of colonialism and imperialism. By focusing on the ways that people experience and negotiate these forces, postcolonialism can be a type of critical humanism.

Critical Structuralist Paradigm Critical structuralist research also advocates change  – but from a more objectivist and more deterministic standpoint because of its emphasis on structural analysis. Whereas the critical humanists forge their perspective by focusing upon “consciousness” as the basis for a radical critique of society, the critical structuralists concentrate upon structural relationships within a realist social world (Burrell and Morgan  1988, p.  34). Largely based upon the structuralist emphasis of Western Marxists (Gramsci  1971,  1978; Lukács  1971; Volosinov  1973), this approach emphasizes the significance of the structures and material conditions that guide and constrain the possibilities of cultural contact, intercultural communication, and cultural change. Within this paradigm, the possibilities for changing intercultural relations rest largely upon the structural relations imposed by the dominant structure (Mosco 1996). Here, culture is conceptualized as societal structures that reproduce themselves but not always in identical ways. These scholars largely examine economic aspects of industries that produce cultural products (e.g. advertising, media) and how some industries are able to dominate the cultural sphere with their products (Fejes 1986; Meehan 1993). For example, Roth (2001) examines a range of ways that the material world influences intercultural communication, from the medium of communication (e.g. more choice due to technological advances but these ­structures also shape the quality and type of interaction) as well as the larger structural contexts, such as international trade and globalization (e.g. McDonaldization and Coca-­colonization of cultures). The impact of the critical paradigms (emphasizing history, power relations, and societal forces/contexts) is increasingly reflected in intercultural communication scholarship, including (post)positivist and interpretive research (Alexander et  al.  2014a,  b; Collier et  al.  2002; Halualani et al. 2009; Kulich et al. 2020), In addition, critical sensibilities can be seen in various calls for culture and communication scholars in all paradigms to examine how researchers’ positions and privilege constrain their interpretations of research findings (Collier  2006; González 2000; Lu and Gatua 2014), calls to address issues of social justice, and a demand that research be relevant to everyday communicators (Alexander et al. 2014b; Broome et al. 2005). Finally, scholars continue to note the ethnocentrism in much of communication research, including culture and communication scholarship, and offer alternative foundations for research endeavors (Dai and G.M. Chen  2015; Miike  2012; Xiao and G.M. Chen  2009). Some call for more global multicultural theorizing and culture-­specific/indigenous communication models/theories of communication (Dai and Weng 2016; Dutta 2018) and scholars have heeded these exhortations, resulting in a “multicultural turn in communication theory”



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(Miike 2007, p. 272). Miike (2003, 2004, 2006) has suggested that Asiacentric e­ pistemological, ontological, and methodological traditions might transform Eurocentric communication research into culturally reflexive and sensitive theories and practice. For example, he proposes a Asiacentric approach to intercultural communication ethics (Miike  2019) based on Asian wisdom as a resource of ethical ideas and insights. Dai and Martin (2022) review Western and culture-­specific non-­Western approaches to intercultural competence, reconciling the two to propose global models or theories that have validity across cultures and approach intercultural communication from a multicultural/multinational perspective. Min Sun Kim (2002) has critiqued Western bias in the positivistic communication research on self-­related variables (e.g. communication styles, self-­disclosure, conflict styles) and called for a shift from an Anglo-­ centered field to one that questions the pervasive European-­American belief in the autonomous individual. As Miike (2007) noted “we need to recognize one major stumbling block in knowledge production in Western contexts: a cultural view that the individual, a priori, is separate and self-­contained, and must resist the collective” (p. 283). It remains to be seen whether these calls will result in new paradigms or whether the “new” multicultural scholarship will be incorporated into current communication conceptualization and research endeavors.

Beyond the Paradigms Our 1999 essay identified four research strategies for productively managing discourse across the paradigmatic divide: liberal pluralism, interparadigmatic borrowing, multiparadigmatic collaboration, and a dialectic perspective. These approaches remain relevant, with some modification, described below. Liberal pluralism acknowledges the value of each paradigmatic perspective, that each contributes in some unique way to our understanding of culture and communication. Researchers have adopted this perspective  – as a way of helping us think about various communication topics. For example, research on cultural identity can be described as falling into particular paradigmatic approaches (Yep 2003). A second and more frequent position is that of interparadigmatic borrowing. This position is committed to paradigmatic research, but recognizes potential complementary contributions from other paradigms. Researchers taking this position listen carefully to what others say, read research from other paradigms, and integrate some concerns or issues into their own research. As noted earlier, the influence of critical scholarship is now seen throughout positivist and interpretive scholarship – as issues of history, context, and power relations are incorporated into much of current research (Halualani et al. 2009). This borrowing is analogous to a traveler abroad learning new cultural ways that they incorporate into their lives back home. However, the researcher, while borrowing, is still fundamentally committed to research within a particular paradigm. A third position is multiparadigmatic collaboration. It is based on the assumption that any one research paradigm is limiting, that all researchers are limited by their own experience and worldview, and that different approaches each have something to contribute. Unlike the other positions, it does not privilege any one paradigm and attempts to make explicit the contributions of each in researching the same general research question. Scholars have noted the challenges to this approach. Deetz (1996) warned against “teflon-­coated multiperspectivalism” that leads to shallow readings (p. 204) and recent scholarship echoes this warning (Luo and Y.-­W. Chen 2017). We suggested in our original essay that culture and communication ­scholars are particularly well positioned for interparadigmatic dialogue and multiparadigmatic collaboration, since these approaches remind us of our interdisciplinary foundations, when anthropologists like E.T. Hall used linguistic frameworks to analyze nonverbal interaction – a daring and innovative move (Leeds-­Hurwitz 1990).

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Interparadigmatic dialogue now seems quite common as noted above, while ­multiparadigmatic collaboration (collaborative research in multicultural teams) is more challenging and less common. Our own collaboration focusing on questions of white identity (“What does being White mean communicatively in the United States today?”) led to a series of studies, a type of rotation among incompatible orientations and led to some insights about the meaning of Whiteness in the United States today (Nakayama and Krizek 1995; Martin et al. 1996). A fourth position is a dialectic perspective. Like multiparadigmatic research, this position moves beyond paradigmatic thinking, but is even more challenging in that it seeks to find a way to live with the inherent contradictions and seemingly mutual exclusivity of these various approaches. That is, a dialectic approach accepts that human nature is probably both creative and deterministic; that research goals can include prediction, description, and systemic change; that the relationship between culture and communication is, most likely, both reciprocal and contested. Dialectic offers intercultural communication researchers a way to think about different ways of knowing in a more comprehensive manner, while retaining the significance of considering how we express this knowledge. In our original essay, we did not advocate any single form of dialectic as “No single dialectical form can satisfy epistemological needs within the complexity of multiple cultures. To reach for a singular dialectical form runs counter to the very notion of dialectical because dialectical thinking depends so closely on the habitual everyday mode of thought which it is called on to transcend, it can take a number of different and apparently contradictory forms” (Jameson 1971, p. 308). A dialectical approach offers us the possibility of “knowing” about intercultural interaction as a dynamic and changing process. We can begin to see epistemological concerns as an open-­ ended process, as a process that resists fixed, discrete bits of knowledge, which encompasses the dynamic nature of cultural processes. As the rise of Afrocentric, Asia-­centric, and other indigenous approaches complicate the epistemic situation, these non-­Eurocentric ways of knowing are in dialectical relationships with Eurocentric ways of knowing. We no longer live in a world where we can resist other ways of knowing, but other ways of knowing also do not exist in isolation. A second contribution of our original essay was to propose a dialectical perspective to understanding intercultural interaction, summarized in the next section.

A Dialectical Approach to Studying Culture and Communication A dialectical perspective on intercultural communication practice emphasizes several important notions (Bakhtin 1981). First, a dialectical approach focuses on the relational, rather than individual aspects and persons. This means that one becomes fully human only in relation to another person and that there is something unique in a relationship that goes beyond the sum of two individuals. Second, the most challenging aspect of the dialectical perspective is that it requires holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously, contrary to most formal education in the United States. This notion, well known in Eastern countries as based on the logic of “soku,” (“not-­one, not-­ two”), emphasizes that the world is neither monistic nor dualistic (Nakayama  1973, pp. 24–29). Rather, it recognizes and accepts as ordinary, the interdependent and complementary aspects of the seeming opposites (Yoshikawa 1987, p. 187). Finally, it also underscores the dynamic character of culture, as well as our knowledge about cultures and communication. As these dialectical tensions shift – driven by many different forces, including globalization, economics, politics, natural disasters and so on – our knowledge of “others” also shifts as our own reasons for knowing about others change. Hence, what we “know” is never fixed or stable. In our original essay, we noted that interpersonal communication scholars applied a dialectical approach to relational research (Baxter  1988,  1990; Baxter and Montgomery  1996; Montgomery 1992) and current interpersonal researchers have continued this strong research



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tradition. We identified six similar dialectics that seem to operate interdependently in intercultural interactions: cultural–individual, personal/social–contextual, differences–similarities, static– dynamic, present–future/history–past, and privilege–disadvantage dialectics. These dialectics are neither exhaustive nor mutually exclusive but represent an ongoing exploration of new to-­ face intercultural interaction and research (Martin and ways to think about face-­ Nakayama 1999, 2015). A review of current scholarship reveals that the dialectic perspective is being used to study culture and communication more broadly, across a range of communication media in a variety of international and intercultural contexts. In our original essay, we argued that the dialectical approach represented a major epistemological move in our understanding of culture and communication, as it makes explicit the dialectical tension between what previous research topics have studied (cultural differences, assumed static nature of culture, etc.) and what should be studied (how cultures change, how they are similar, importance of history).

Current Dialectical Research A review of recent research once again reveals at least four ways in which scholars have ­incorporated the notion of “thinking dialectically” about culture and communication in contemporary communication (and related) scholarship and practice: (i) as a rationale supporting the concept of the fluidity and complexity of culture or the dynamic relationship between culture and communication; (ii) as a metatheory/methodological way to study/conceptualize the notion of culture and intercultural communication. The third and fourth incorporate the intercultural dialectics as a framework, sometimes adding to our dialectics or suggesting new ones (iii) for studying or (iv) for teaching about intercultural communication phenomena.

A Rationale for Supporting the Fluidity and Complexity of  Culture/Communication For some scholars, the contribution of the dialectic approach to the study of culture and communication seems to be as a rationale for supporting the concept of the fluidity and complexity of culture or the dynamic relationship between culture and communication. For example, Chuang (2003) mentions our dialectical approach as a way to avoid essentializing others in intercultural encounters. Rao (2010) and others suggest that we reject the false opposition of the global–local, center–periphery, universality–particularism models as inadequate, and rather propose the notion of globalization – a notion that sees global and local not as opposites, but rather as “mutually formative, complementary competitors, feeding off each other as they struggle for influence”(Kraidy  2002, p.  38), and always seen as interconnected forces (Rao 2010). This perspective calls for a more inclusive and dialogic–dialectic approach of theorizing culture and communication matters.

A Methodological Strategy for Studying Culture and Communication Phenomena To our knowledge, and perhaps not surprisingly, few researchers have taken up the challenge to use a dialectic approach as a transparadigmatic way to conduct research. One attempt is Luo and Y.-­W. Chen (2017), who, as noted earlier, echo our call for “increased cross-­paradigm scholarly collaborations” (p. 75). They are particularly interested in reconciling the different

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cultural epistemologies of Eurocentric and non-­ Eurocentric paradigms and propose a “paradoxical view” that goes beyond the dialectical approach “in establishing a roomier ­ ­philosophical and theoretical framework to understand the interparadigmatic relationship” (p. 80). They conclude by exhorting communication scholars to take seriously “the generative, ­in-­between space where opposing cultural, theoretical, or paradigmatic ideas meet” (p. 80). Martínez (2006), from a phenomenological position, argues that it may be easy to take a conscious shift toward thinking dialectically about culture and communication, but it is also important – and very difficult – to take a dialectical perspective in the preconscious and unconscious aspects of how we perceive other cultures. She challenges scholars to take “a much more robust theoretical and practical specification of how cultural perception drives our thinking and acting as scientists and scholars” (p. 295). Her challenge necessitates crossing paradigms to understand this complexity. She turns to Peirce (1958) to begin that robust theoretical and practical specification. More on a metatheoretical level, Dai and G.M. Chen (2015) center the dialectical in their theoretical approach (interculturality) where interculturality implies complexity, accepting tension/conflict, negotiating mutually acceptable identities need, “dialectical thinking leads people to face the simultaneous pull of opposing force . . .. It is the effective management of the tension that reflects the dynamism and complexity of intercultural interaction and induces productive cultural innovation . . .” (p. 109). More commonly, scholars use the dialectic perspective as a way to integrate critical and interpretive perspectives. For example, M.J. Collier (and colleagues) incorporate notions of history and power differentials in studies of interethnic relationships (Thompson and Collier 2006) and more recently, Y.-­W. Chen (2010) examines cultural identities, relational dialectics, and status of women working in nonprofit organizations, analyzing the ideological implications of discourses and the reproduction of broader social order. These authors all clearly delineate the contributions of each paradigm. That is, the interpretive perspective, characterized by a view of cultural identities as constituted and maintained through communication, honors the unique voices of the coresearchers. A critical perspective calls attention to a variety of structural forces. Chen concludes that the critical/interpretive dialectical perspective results in a “comprehensive analysis based on the constraints of social structures within the context of emergent, situated, relational conduct” (p. 491).

Dialectics as a Framework for Studying Intercultural Communication A number of scholars have used the six dialectics as a heuristic to study intercultural phenomena from a variety of theoretical perspectives  – rhetorical, interpersonal, autoethnographic, ethnographic, and so forth – either as sensitizing concepts to use in initial data analysis or as a way to explain findings. Some have identified additional dialectics and/or extended the focus to include contexts other than interpersonal relationships. For example, L. Chen (2002) explores dialectical tensions in intercultural romantic relationships, juxtaposing Baxter’s six relational dialectics (three internal, three external) with our intercultural dialectics (difference– similarity, individual–cultural, and personal–social) and shows how these dialectical tensions can play out in intercultural relationships. She concludes that the dialectical approach offers a coherent understanding of the intricacies of intercultural relationships. Similarly, Cools (2006) combines the relational dialectics of Baxter and Montgomery (1996) and the intercultural dialectics in a study of the relational communication of six heterosexual intercultural couples living in Finland; she extends our framework to include an additional relational dialectic: belonging–exclusion. Scholars have also extended the dialectical framework beyond in person interpersonal contexts. Yang (2020), using a phenomenological analysis, examines the experience of ­



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i­ntercultural competence in online communication and identifies the following dialectics: individual–cultural, personal-­contextual, linguistic-­communicative, functional-­psychological, and skillful-­transformational. She notes that her findings “support and extend the dialectical perspective by explicating a radical reconceptualization of intercultural competence with its inherent interrelatedness to time, place, contexts, and power in an increasingly networked society” (p. 54). Also focused on online communication, Cheong and Gray (2011) investigated identity perception and performance in multidimensional virtual worlds and identified personal-­contextual, static–dynamic and privilege–disadvantage intercultural dialectics dimensions of avatar representations. In the context of news media, Mengistu and Avraham (2015) examine the ways in which the national press includes or excludes Ethiopian immigrants in the Jewish-­Israeli collective, and finds a dialectic process of inclusion and exclusion “with blurry boundaries – sometimes they connect, other times they separate.” (p.  571). Also focused on media, Rauch (2015) argues that a dialectic of alternative media/mainstream media describes the view of current media users and continues to provide a critical and cultural touchstone for users in a converged environment. Similarly, Georgiou (2017) proposes a communicative “separation-­togetherness” dialectic to describe the complicated relationship between social media and in person communication of contemporary urban dwellers. Scholars also continue to find the dialectic framework useful for examining cultural identity in various contexts. For example, in the study noted earlier Y. W. Y.-­W. Chen (2010) examines relationships, status, and identity issues of women working in organizational contexts and identified the following dialectics: similarity/difference, inclusion/exclusion, independence/ dependence, hierarchy/equality, and relating as a family/functioning as managers and workers. Also in organizational settings, Levitt (2019) examined intercultural dialectics among multinational team members and found “a variety of cultural paradoxes and dialectics, complexities, and differences which affect many aspects of collaborative work” (p. 326) – including the other validation, importance of cultural identity and relationships. Dialectics include self-­ autonomy-­connection, national-­organizational culture, work-­life, ambiguity-­certainty, efficiency-­redundancy, and direct-­indirect communication styles. Using dialectics to understand cultural identity in broader societal contexts, L. Chen (2011) conducted a narrative analysis of cultural identity experiences of young HongKongers and  describes the following intercultural dialectics at work: personal–social, assimilation-­ differentiation, similarity-­ difference, instrumentality-­ affection, ideal-­ reality, and equality-­ inequality. Martínez Guillem (2017) investigated the cultural identity of participants in the Spanish Indignad@s social movement, describing how the activists’ discursive and organizational practices reveal dialectical tension between privilege and precarity. Also focusing on discourse in broader cultural contexts, Shugart (2014) examines mainstream narratives regarding the obese body (especially obese female bodies) and argues that popular discourse locates the tensions around consumption – within the dialectics of individual/community and materialism/spiritualism and that “navigating those tensions in such as to repair and restore broader, currently precarious neoliberal logics” (p. 55).

Dialectics as a Framework for Teaching Intercultural Communication A final way that a dialectical approach is incorporated into extant literature involves using the six dialectics as a framework for teaching about intercultural communication. For example, in Communicating Globally: Intercultural Communication and International Business, Schmidt et al. (2007) provides an overview of Baxter and Montgomery’s work and also our dialectics as a framework for learning about intercultural communication encounters. Similarly,

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Rimmington and Alagic (2008) in Third Place Learning: Reflective Inquiry Into Intercultural and Global Cage Painting uses our six dialectics as a lens for understanding intercultural interactions, pointing out that the dialectics are useful in preventing misunderstandings resulting from the effects of preconceived notions of cultural others. Thurlow (2004) also uses the dialectical framework as a way to help students resist a naïve and utopian view of intercultural communication as possibly perfect and easy. He furthers suggests that intercultural scholars and practitioners should be more oriented to the personal and political – that one teaching strategy for achieving a more experiential and critical orientation toward interculturality and difference is through autobiographical writing  – stories of the intercultural everyday. Root (2013) does just that, first noting that overemphasizing differences or neglecting similarities in intercultural communication courses can lead to stereotyping and prejudice. She then asks students to write narratives about their experiences with similarities and differences in their intercultural encounters/relationships. An analysis of these narratives reveals that some students focused only on differences, others initially on differences and then similarities and still other initially focused on similarities only to realize the intercultural differences, as well as revealing similarities/difference intersecting with privilege/­ disadvantage dialectic. She discusses the need to provide more accessible ways to communicate aspects of difference/similarity dialectic (given the US based emphasis on dichotomous/ binary thinking) and the need to highlight the relational element of this specific dialectic as well as perhaps expanding the category to include more possibilities. That is, “within the differences–similarities tension, there could also be a dialectic to explore the internal–external location of the differences/similarities . . . [that is, to] differentiate between dialectics that are internal (between or within a dyadic relationship) as compared to issues that are external (between the dyad and the greater community)” (p. 75).

Future of the Dialectical Perspective Our retrospective on the dialectical approach over the past 10 years shows that there is much more to be explored to demonstrate the utility and opportunity here for pushing the boundaries and conceptualization of intercultural (and international) communication. The dynamic epistemological claims of scholars in intercultural communication need to be better understood. How do we know what we know and when do we know it? What do we know about other cultures – or even our own cultures? – and what kinds of knowledge do we have? In whose interest is this kind of cultural knowledge, as opposed to knowing other kinds of knowledge? A dialectical approach helps us to emphasize that cultures are not fixed in how we describe them, know about them, and see them as “different” – the relational aspect to our own culture and selves can be foregrounded. A dialectical approach emphasizes that cultures and cultural knowledge are always shaped in relationship to other cultures. By emphasizing a dialectical approach, we can help avoid stereotyping others and misusing that kind of knowledge in cultural interactions. A dialectical approach is also helpful to explore the heterogeneity (in tension with homogeneity) of various cultures. As a dialectical approach underscores the many relational aspects of cultures (both within and without), it can be powerful in understanding how gender, sexuality, race/ethnicity, age, religion, and other cultural forces can help define and change cultures. Dialectical perspective might be a very useful tool in thinking about our own and other c­ ultures in far more complex ways. A dialectical perspective can expose hierarchies and power relations in cultures and how cultures present themselves and are defined. The dialectical tension between defining a culture from within and from the outside is well-­worth further exploration in understanding how a culture is defined. For example, in 2019, Mexico asked for an apology from Spain and the



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Vatican for the human rights abuses that occurred in the conquest of Mexico about 500 years ago (BBC News 2019). At that time, “Spain was a fiercely Roman Catholic country and saw as its mission the spread of Christianity.” A dialectical perspective could explore the tensions between the indigenous religions and Roman Catholicism in contemporary Mexico and Mexican identity. A dialectical perspective could also explore the tensions within postcolonial Mexico, which is no longer part of Spain, but remains tremendously influenced by Spanish culture including using the Spanish language, practicing Catholicism, and much more. The relationships between Spain and Mexico and the Vatican are complex and enduring and underscore that they are not simply discrete cultures to be compared. A dialectical perspective highlights the tensions over how cultures are related and distinct. A dialectical perspective, then, asks us to think about cultures as not simply dynamic, but about how these cultures change. What kinds of forces shape cultures? What role do global economics play? Religions? Language communities? We can hardly begin to list the many forces that have shaped cultures. Similarly, our call for a dialectical perspective also means that there are many more dialectical tensions to be discussed and utilized to understand culture and communication better. Our list of some dialectical tensions was never meant to be exhaustive. Rather, we begin with a call for more work on dialectical approaches to culture and communication. Finally, what would a dialectical study look like? We are often asked to describe a dialectical study. It is important to note that a dialectical approach is not a method, but a perspective. It is not driven by a particular set of methodological rules. Perhaps no single study can encompass what needs to be done in taking a dialectical perspective. Perhaps we need to work in collaboration with others  – using multiple methodological and theoretical approaches  – to understand culture and communication better. Perhaps a single study cannot do multiple methodologies and theories well. Our call for a dialectical perspective is a call for this scholarly collaboration, as there is no one approach that can begin to encompass the complexity of culture and communication.

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Peirce, C.S. (1958). The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, vol. 1–8 (eds. C. Hartshorne, P. Weiss, and A. Burks). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Philipsen, G. (1997). A theory of speech codes. In: Developing Communication Theories (eds. G. Philipsen and T. Albrecht), 119–156. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Philipsen, G., Coutu, L.M., and Covarrubias, P. (2005). Speech codes theory: restatement, revisions, and response to criticisms. In: Theorizing about Intercultural Communication (ed. W.B. Gudykunst), 55–68. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Rao, S. (2010). “I need an Indian touch”: glocalization and Bollywood films. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 3 (1): 1–19. Rauch, J. (2015). Exploring the alternative–mainstream dialectic: what “alternative media” means to a hybrid audience. Communication, Culture & Critique 8 (1): 124–143. Rimmington, G.M. and Alagic, M. (2008). Third Place Learning: Reflective Inquiry into Intercultural and Global Cage Painting. Charlotte, NC: IAP. Root, E. (2013). Insights into the differences-­similarities dialectic in intercultural communication from university students’ narratives. Intercultural Communication Studies 22 (3): 61–79. Roth, K. (2001). Material culture and intercultural communication. International Journal of Intercultural Relations 25 (5): 563–580. Rubinsky, V. (2019). Identity gaps and jealousy as predictors of satisfaction in polyamorous relationships. Southern Communication Journal 84 (1): 17–29. Rui, J.R. and Wang, H. (2015). Social network sites and international students’ cross-­cultural adaptation. Computers in Human Behavior 49: 400–411. Said, E. (1979). Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books. Said, E. (1994). Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage Books. Schmidt, W.V., Conaway, R.N., Easton, R.S., and Wardrope, W.J. (2007). Communicating Globally: Intercultural Communication and International Business. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Schwarz, H. (2000). Mission impossible: introducing postcolonial studies in the US academy. In: A Companion to Postcolonial Studies (eds. H. Schwarz and S. Ray), 87–111. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Shin, Y. and Hecht, M.L. (2018). Communication theory of identity. In: International Encyclopedia of Intercultural Communication (ed. Y.Y. Kim), 1–9. New Jersey, NJ: Wiley. Shome, R. (1996). Postcolonial interventions in the rhetorical canon: an “other” view. Communication Theory 6 (1): 40–59. Shome, R. and Hegde, R. (2002). Postcolonial approaches to communication: charting the terrain, engaging the intersections. Communication Theory 12: 249–270. Shugart, H. (2014). Flesh made word: the obese body as cultural matter. Communication, Culture & Critique 7 (1): 55–75. Thompson, J. and Collier, M.J. (2006). Toward contingent understanding of intersection identifications among selected U.S. interracial couples: integrating interpretive and critical views. Communication Quarterly 54 (4): 487–506. Thurlow, C. (2004). Relating to our work, accounting for our selves: the autobiographical imperative in teaching about difference. Language and Intercultural Communication 4 (4): 209–228. Ting-­Toomey, S. (2005). The matrix of face: an updated face-­negotiation theory. In: Theorizing about Intercultural Communication (ed. W.B. Gudykunst), 71–92. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Volosinov, V.N. (1973). Marxism and the Philosophy of Language (trans. L. Matejka and I.R. Titunik), Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Xiao, X.S. and Chen, G.M. (2009). Communication competence and moral competence: a confucian perspective. Journal of Multicultural Discourses 4 (1): 61–74. Yang, P. (2020). Reconceptualizing intercultural competence in a networked society. China Media Research 16 (2): 54–65. Yep, G.A. (2003). Approaches to cultural identity: personal notes from an autoethnographical journey. In: Communicating Ethnic and Cultural Identity (eds. M. Fong and R. Chuang), 69–83. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Yoshikawa, M.J. (1987). The double-­swing model of intercultural communication between the east and the west. In: Communication Theory: Eastern and Western Perspectives (ed. D.L. Kincaid), 319–329. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.

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Critical Reflections on Culture and Critical Intercultural Communication Dreama G. Moon California State University, San Marcos

As excited as I was to be in my very first graduate class on Intercultural Communication, by the end of student introductions I was quite confused and convinced I had made a terrible mistake in giving up a successful career in nonprofit human service organizations to become an intellectual. Working with people in prison, and with domestic violence and sexual assault victims showed me how social inequities can often mean life and death. When beginning my graduate education, I chose Intercultural Communication as a field as I imagined that it was sure to be compatible with my interests in social change. In that first class, I was surprised to learn that many people envisioned intercultural communication as being mostly about study abroad and traveling to exotic locations where “they” learned about “them.” I heard few speak of social inequality, human rights, and other issues about which I was passionate. It seemed that culture was seen as synonymous with nation and that culture usually signified somewhere else outside the United States. No one seemed to imagine the United States as a cultural space worthy of (and in need of) critical attention. These ideas seemed to be repeated in most of the literature we read that semester. I wondered how it was that intercultural communication came to be configured in this (what seemed to me) apolitical and ahistorical manner. Given its roots in the United States, I  was curious as to how intercultural communication scholarship seemingly escaped being influenced by the various freedom struggles of the 1960s and 1970s. To try to understand, I embarked on an in-­depth study of the discipline. How did this field of inquiry come to be? What were the field’s interests? What were its passions? I was curious to learn what the accepted “truths” were in intercultural communication and more importantly, how these ideas came to hold sway. I conducted a genealogical investigation of the field, a decision heavily influenced by Leeds-­Hurwitz’s (1990) piece on intercultural communication and Foucault’s (1972) notions of power and knowledge. As I assessed the genealogy (Foucault  1972) of the field from its inception through the early-­1990s, it became clear that Edward Hall’s experience at the Foreign Service Institute played a pivotal role in terms of how “culture” came to be defined and by extension, studied in the field. Hall himself reports his frustration with the governmental insistence that “­culture” be treated as an instrumental set of rules or “cookbook” that white US trainees could learn quickly then bring to bear as they pursued their assignments in foreign countries (Hall 1956). The legacy of Hall’s experience, according to Leeds-­Hurwitz (1990), was the creation of an

The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication, Second Edition. Edited by Thomas K. Nakayama and Rona Tamiko Halualani. © 2024 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2024 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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agenda for intercultural communication as a field of inquiry which included comparative approaches to the study of culture primarily defined in terms of national boundaries and a preference for microanalysis (and the commiserate lack of attention to structural influences and/or “dialogue” between micro and macro practices). However, the field was not always thus. In my analysis of the literature, I noted that the aforementioned agenda began to crystallize around 1980. Prior to that, the field entertained more heterogeneous notions of culture, approaches to its study were more varied, and scholarship was more engaged with social and political issues of the time. Drawing on Foucault (1972), I argued that 1980 represented a “disjuncture” in the field (perhaps related to the rise of conservatism around the world and insistence for “intellectual rigor” as defined by positivism) (Casmir and Asuncion-­Lande 1990, p. 282). As I read the scholarship produced in the 1980s, I identified some clear trends. First, I observed that “culture” had become primarily defined as “nation-state” and assessed almost completely quantitatively. This led to the development of many notions including individualistic versus collectivist cultures, high and low context cultures, and other sorts of generalizations about massive populations of peoples. Second, I noted that intercultural communication was studied from a primarily interpersonal/ microanalytic approach and generally did not attend to structural issues. This is problematic in that over-­focusing on micro practices encourages us to ignore how structural constraints push and pull such practices, and conversely, how micro practices can reinscribe or even be used to oppose and change structural configurations. Third, analyses of how power operates in intercultural contact of all sorts were absent. It seems clear that assuming such contact takes place in a power-­neutral context is bound to make one miss the intricacies of how intercultural relations play out. As a result of this assessment, I came to see that intercultural communication developed in the midst of World War II as a tool of imperialism and that much of its foundations were infused with a colonial perspective. More seriously, I did not see that social justice and equity were of great import to intercultural scholarship. As a result of my analysis, I suggested some directions that intercultural communication scholars might entertain in order to broaden the field. Those ideas included moving beyond the “culture = nation” formula to constructions that take into account power plays and minority perspectives; developing more complex notions of cultural identity especially those that attend to the political nature of identification processes; attending to communication processes within groups, particularly those that are socially dominant; rethinking foundational concepts (such as adaptation, competence, and sojourning) in the field from the perspective of the “Other” and understanding our investment in continuing to frame these concepts in traditional ways; and including popular culture as a site for examining representations of intercultural communication. In short, I argued for the adoption of a critical inter/cultural practice that I believed could contain all of these elements and more, and which could enhance intercultural theory and practice in a number of ways. Undergirding this notion of critical inter/ cultural communication is a deep and abiding commitment to social justice and equity. Since 1996, others have expanded our understanding of what might constitute a critical inter/cultural practice. In the last decade, the “critical turn” in intercultural communication has changed the face of the field in a number of noteworthy ways. In the next section, I review intercultural communication scholarship published in our disciplinary journals and noting some of the ways in which critical scholarship has made important innovations to the field.

Intercultural Communication, 1997–2007 Much has changed in the field of intercultural communication since the “Concepts of ‘Culture’” essay and I have been anxious to revisit its development. In that essay, I relied on the Index to Journals in Communication Studies Through 1990 (Matlon  1992) to identify



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articles published in the field using the key term “intercultural communication” as a descriptor, arguing that given that the Index was published by the Speech Communication Association (now the National Communication Association), it provided a reasonable indicator of what was then understood as “intercultural communication” within the communication discipline. In that search, I located 102 articles published between 1951 and 1990. My approach to the current project had to be modified as the Index is no longer published. I decided to continue the focus on journal articles using the key term “intercultural communication” and broadened the search to include journals published by both the National Communication Association and the International Communication Association. Although many of us publish in outlets other than those offered by our professional associations, the journals endorsed by and published by our two major disciplinary associations should reflect the breadth of our field and suggest what types of work garner attention in the form of publication. In other words, a field publishes what is important to it and its members. Focusing on the years 1997–2007 (10 years after publication of the “Concepts” essay) and using the Academic Search Premier and Communication and Mass Media Complete databases, I identified 1051 articles using the search term “intercultural communication” of which only 68 (fewer than 10%) of which were published in our associations’ journals. Although I realize that scholars often use other words (e.g. interracial, international, cross-­cultural) to situate work that many would identify as “intercultural,” I tried to stick as closely as possible to the process that I employed in the “Concepts” essay. In addition, given that scholars ­suggest key terms to use for describing their work, the focus on the key term “intercultural communication” is a clear indicator of how authors position the work in the field. Of the 68 essays that I reviewed, the overwhelming majority reflected the trends noted by Leeds-­Hurwitz (1990) and observed by myself in the “Concepts” essay. For example, well over a fourth of the essays (29% or 20 out of 68) are grounded in a variable analytic tradition in which culture is defined in terms of national citizenship or in terms of Hofstede’s individualism/ collectivism framework; just under one-­third use comparative approaches (18 of the 68) in which two or more national cultures are compared and contrasted on some variable of interest (i.e. self-­construal); and little attention is given to structural influences or power dynamics. The foci of much intercultural communication scholarship continues to place emphasis on individualism-­collectivism, low-­context/high-­context, interpersonal processes, intercultural competence, and adaptation from traditional points of view. As I examined the literature more closely, critical impulses emerged (although the authors themselves may not have acknowledged them as such). In the next section, I discuss six trends identified in my analysis of these texts that illustrate the impact that the “critical turn” in intercultural communication has made to the field.

Contributions of the “Critical Turn” My review of the intercultural scholarship published between 1997 and 2007 uncovered six  areas to which critical scholars have made useful contributions. These areas include (i) ­historicizing the field, (ii) conceptualizations of culture, (iii) theoretical/conceptual development, (iv) expansion of foundational concepts, (v) critique of dominant ideologies, and (vi) pedagogy as critical praxis.

Historicizing the Field One of the most interesting occurrences I observed is the proliferation of histories of the field (Cooks 2001; Dresner 2006; Kim 2005; Rogers 1999). For most, Leeds-­Hurwitz’s (1990) historical piece has been viewed as the “official” history of the development of the field and its

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intellectual legacy (Cooks 2001; Moon 1996; Rogers 1999). This agenda-­setting legacy left us with a highly constrained (and constraining) notion of culture, and a penchant for comparative microanalyses grounded in such notions. While my “Concepts” essay offered a critique of this agenda, more recently intercultural scholars have uncovered other influences that give us alternative ways of thinking about the field and its possibilities (Carbaugh and Berry 2001; Cooks 2001; Kim 2005; Rogers 1999). This is a highly important work as “to create a history, to have the authority to shape and give voice to the story, has implications for not only the past and present, but gives important impetus to how future stories are told” (Cooks 2001, p. 342). For example, Rogers (1999) noted how Simmel’s notion of the stranger has informed current day intercultural communication inquiry, especially work dealing with uncertainty reduction theory which Rogers sees as foundational to the field of intercultural communication. In response, Cooks (2001) levied a stinging critique, arguing that the notion of stranger has enabled intercultural communication scholars to ignore unequal power differentials inherent in intercultural contact and instead assume a neutral playing field and equal stakes in reducing uncertainty. Rather than seeing uncertainty reduction theory as foundational, Cooks instead observes that this and similar theories are “noteworthy for their lack of attention to the material circumstances and consequences of actually embodied interaction” (p. 343). As an intercultural communication scholar, it is exciting to see intellectual debates such as this. Rather than accepting a master narrative that centers the work of one or two prominent scholars, other stories of origin and influence offer multiple ways of “seeing” the field’s past and thus, multiple ways of envisioning its future. The proliferation of historical narratives discourages the formation of “official” rules and points of view and provides contested ways of understanding the field’s inception as well as its current moment.

Conceptualizing Culture In addition to historically diverse readings of the field, a second trend noted in the sampled texts involves how the ways in which we conceptualize culture have changed (Kim  2005; Rogers 1999). From its original signification of nationstate, the meaning of culture has been broadened to include gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, social class, and other identifications that affect and are affected by interaction. In the body of the literature reviewed, culture was defined as nationality in many of the essays; however, culture was also conceptualized in terms of race (Cooks 2003; Covarrubias 2007; Foeman 2006; Gorham 2006; Halualani et  al.  2006; Harris  2003,  2004; Hoerl  2007; Martin and Davis  2001), gender (Mulac et al. 2001), and ethnicity (Rinderie 2005). While the nationstate is still often taken as a unit of analysis in intercultural communication research, critical intercultural communication has offered other constructions of culture that do not rely on notions of sharedness. The unifying theme here is the treatment of culture as “imagined, constituted in communication, and constrained by social structures and ideologies over a trajectory of time by people and institutions” (Collier 2002, p. xi). The framing culture as a site of struggle and contestation rather than comprised of shared values, behaviors, and attitudes introduced by Martin and Nakayama’s (1997) important text, Intercultural Communication in Contexts, is now taken for granted by critical intercultural scholars and is one of our most important contributions to the study of intercultural communication. The move from viewing culture as unproblematically shared and relatively stable to one that acknowledges culture as a contested zone and thus in flux opens up new possibilities for intercultural scholars, allowing us to understand that rather than being comprised of “a reality,” culture is a space of competing realities embedded in power relations with all but the dominant or hegemonic version getting short shrift. In coming to understand how and why this occurs allows scholars to engage the operations of power and structural influences on intercultural communication processes and possibilities.



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Given the critique levied against equating culture with nation, it is surprising that so much of the published work continues to draw on this construction (e.g. Barnett and Eunjung 2005; Bresnahan et  al.  2005; Cai and Fink  2002; Callahan  2005; Carbaugh and Berry  2001; Chen  1997; Crabtree  1998; Drake  2001; Fitch and Morgan  2003; Heinz  2004; Lee and Choi 2005; Matveev 2004; McCann and Honeycutt 2006; Manusov et al. 1997; Miller 2002; Toomey  2003; Oetzel et  al.  2001; Ota Nishishiba and Ritchie  2000; Oetzel and Ting-­ et al. 2007; Park and Levine 1999; Scott 2000; Sellnow et al. 2006; Tasaki and Min-­Sun 1999; Wurtz  2005). Using nation as a unit of analysis hides more than it illuminates by forcing researchers to “discover” unifying principles (i.e. individualism) that “describe” whole populations (Ono 1998). These “discoveries” are likely to be stereotypes that the people supposedly identified by them would not recognize. Ono strongly claims that “blanket stereotypes of a society . . . is a move toward controlling the people in that country” (p. 198). In this he means that the stereotypes are used to differentiate the culture under investigation from US culture where the differentiation is usually noted for the purposes of arguing for US superiority. To make matters worse, these stereotypes are often taught to naïve students as tools for survival in a global economy and who one day may need to communicate with the persons so described by the stereotypes. In the view of critical scholars, this approach ill prepares students to address the complexities of the global condition. While typically nation-states are thought of as a geographic space in which politics, ethnicity, and culture coincide, in today’s world this is less and less the case. In fact, few true nationstates exist. In today’s economic and war-­torn climate, we can expect to see an increase in migrating populations as new markets are sought and as people leave their current home countries in search of work and/or safety. Critical scholars argue that a more complex world needs more complex ways of understanding its populations.

Theoretical Development A third area to which critical intercultural scholars have contributed is to the field’s conceptual development. In particular, I noted at least three critical theoretical innovations in the examined set of texts: Martin and Nakayama’s (1999) dialectics, Martinez’s (2006) phenomenological extension of dialectics, and Orbe’s (1998) cocultural theory. Taking on the notion of polarizing “paradigm wars,” Martin and Nakayama (1999) advocate for the possibility of inter-­paradigmatic dialogue and collaboration. As a way of actualizing such a possibility, they offer dialectics as an approach to culture and communication stating that “[it] offers us the possibility of engaging multiple, but distinct, research paradigms. It offers us the possibility of seeing the world in multiple ways and to become better prepared to engage in intercultural interaction” (p. 13). Such an approach reinterprets intercultural interaction as a dynamic and changing process that transcends facile dichotomies and “resists fixed, discrete bits of knowledge” (Martin and Nakayama 1999, p. 14). In other words, the dialectical approach to the study of intercultural communication “makes explicit the dialectical tension between what previous research topics have been studied (cultural differences, assumed static nature of culture, etc.) and what should be studied (how cultures change, how they are similar, importance of history)” (Martin and Nakayama 1999, p. 19). Seeking a method of dealing with the complexities of racial and ethnic difference in scholarly inquiry, Martinez (2006) demonstrates how semiotic phenomenology can particularize the dialectical approach both theoretically and practically. One last important contribution from critical intercultural scholars has been the development of Orbe’s (1998) cocultural theory. Working out of muted group and phenomenological traditions, Orbe outlines communication strategies that marginalized group members’ use in interactions with dominant group members. As members of marginalized groups must develop strategies for communicating and negotiating with those from more socially powerful groups, this work can help us understand how power works in intercultural interactions from minority

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perspectives which are all too often ignored in traditional intercultural communication research. Orbe’s work on cocultural theory has been crucial to the shift away from traditional descriptors of subordinated cultures (i.e. subculture) to the term “coculture” which draws attention to the diversity of influential cultures that exist in the United States while acting as a sanction to the use of past terms such as “subculture” which call up and/or rely on notions of hierarchy, superiority, and inferiority.

Reimaging Foundational Concepts Over the past 10 years, scholars have devoted a fair amount of energy toward questioning and rethinking foundational concepts such as intercultural communication competence, cultural adaptation, and cultural identity through a critical lens. As I mentioned earlier, a number of the works reviewed addressed the important notion of intercultural communication competence (e.g. Arasaratnam  2006; Blake and Kaplowitz  2001; DeTurk  2001; Matveev  2004; Neuliep and McCroskey 1997; Quinlisk 2004; Zhu and Valentine 2001). As Collier (1998) observes, “competence . . . is a construct based on implicit privilege . . . Who decided the criteria? . . . Competent or acceptable on the basis of what social and historical context? To assume that ontological interlocutors negotiate mutual rules of appropriate conduct is to deny the power of ideology, historical structures, and limitations in the field of choices” (p. 142). In this line of inquiry, new models of intercultural competence have been developed which identify competence as comprised of empathy, motivation, attitude toward other cultures, experience, and listening (Arasaratnam 2006). Although the initial development of the measures was drawn from individuals of multiple cultural perspectives, continued development of the measures have been tested on mostly white US undergraduate students. Challenges to the notion of competence have been made by critical scholars. For example, DeTurk (2001) draws on the work of Dace and McPhail (1998) to challenge the notion of empathy as a skill or competency. Traditionally intercultural communication research has taken the presence of empathy as an important indicator of intercultural competence. DeTurk persuasively argues that any conceptualization of empathy across cultures or social groups of any kind must take into account power differentials. In fact, “mutually enhancing interaction between unequals is not probable. . . In fact, conflict is inevitable” (Miller 1992, p. 79). In addition to intercultural competence, scholars in this sample also paid a fair amount of attention to studying cultural adaptation (Chen 1997; Hammer et al. 1998; Kassing 1997; Neuliep and McCroskey 1997; Neuliep and Ryan 1998; Roach and Olaniran 2001; Yang and Rancer 2003). Most of these studies are concerned with issues related to reducing uncertainty and apprehension. Recently, traditional approaches to the study of cultural adaptation have relied on the notions of interpersonal saliencies, intergroup saliencies, communication message exchange, and host contact conditions as explanatory and predictive measures of cultural adaptation (Hammer et al. 1998). Critical scholars have attempted to problematize the notion of adaptation as a power-­neutral, linear process. For instance, my work on “passing” was an attempt to politicize the notion of cultural adaptation and to unhinge it from traditional portrayals as a relatively seamless neutral process through which migrants come to take on the behaviors, attitudes, and values of the dominant culture (Moon 1998, 2000). By conceptualizing adaptation as a process of identity negotiation and as a dynamic process of resistance and acquiescence to dominant notions of who “we” are (or should be), with all of this taking place within relations of power, the metaphor of “passing” can be invoked in order to rethink adaptive processes as potentially disruptive, contested, and transformative. Last, cultural identity continues to be a popular focus in intercultural research (Kim 2007). As I have pointed out, cultural identity tends to still be manifested as national identity or in terms of collectivism/individualism and low-­high context. Despite this, the reimaging of



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culture has also inspired and necessitated the rethinking of identification processes and how we think about cultural identity. Rather than think in terms of “sharedness” or “stability,” critical intercultural communication scholars are more likely to examine cultural identity through tropes of “displacement,” “struggle,” and “resistance” (Flores 2001; Hegde 1998). The historization of intercultural communication has pushed the field beyond the notion of identity and identification as given or natural to one that encourages attention to the historical and political processes that produce them (Mendoza et al. 2002). Mendoza et al. (2002) argue that intercultural scholars need to analyze both ends of identity construction – “its structural determinations, on the one hand, and its ongoing, open-­ended, unforeclosed re-­creation and re-­construction, on the other” (p. 313). Critical scholars have moved beyond a focus on isolated cultural groupings to “scrutinize intersections of nationality, race, ethnicity, gender, and classes” (Collier 2001, p. xii). By attending to notions of intersectionality, scholars are more likely to produce knowledge that is specific and local, rather than abstract and overly generalized. In addition, we are more likely to be able to observe how issues of power and privilege may play out in intercultural interactions. In this way, identification can be seen as both voluntary and imposed, both embraced and struggled over and with, both rejected and claimed.

Critique of Dominant Ideologies The field has increasingly witnessed an interrogation of dominant ideologies and their implications for intercultural inquiry which have opened up new and exciting agendas for the future of the field. In identifying what they call the “white problem” in intercultural communication studies, Nakayama and Martin (2007) articulate the ways in which the history of the development of intercultural communication studies in the United States centered and became infused with the interests of white hegemony which continue to taint our scholarship and teaching today. More specifically, they argue that this centering of whiteness has influenced intercultural communication in at least three ways: by implicitly defining American as “white”; by ignoring transnational relationships developed through migration, displacement, colonialization, and imperialism; and by overlooking the voices and experiences of marginalized Americans. They advocate a postcolonial intercultural communication as a corrective for these gaps that would de-­center whiteness and include postcolonial notions of culture and identity and a deeper reflexivity on the part of white scholars as they study the “Other.” As they and others have made apparent, in many ways intercultural communication remains ensconced in colonial perspectives that de-­humanize “others” and which implicitly (and perhaps explicitly) support and reproduce US imperialism. In the body of work reviewed, I noted moves designed to rectify the “white problem” by rendering the ways in which dominance works in intercultural interactions and by supplying counter-­memories to offset hegemonic memories of dominant-­subordinate relations, especially in the US context (Cooks  2003; Covarrubias  2007; Crabtree  1998; Halualani et  al.  2006; Hoerl  2007). In this literature, whiteness is taken as a “set of rhetorical strategies employed to construct and maintain a ­dominant white culture and identities” (Cooks 2003, p. 246) and critical scholars are interested in explicating the form and impact of such strategies in cultural and intercultural contexts. Much of this work is tied to a social justice framework that understands that contact alone will not ensure global awareness and sensitivity (Crabtree 1998).

Pedagogy and the Activist Turn A last area that has enjoyed a notable amount of scholarly attention is intercultural pedagogy. One of the aspects of critical theoretical approaches that I find valuable is the insistence that theory and praxis be fused. Critical intercultural scholars have devoted a fair amount of thought

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regarding how one can successfully bring this point of view to the classroom. The availability of textbooks that include or are written from a critical perspective (e.g. Martin and Nakayama  1997) has made this task somewhat easier. Of the essays that I reviewed, 15 addressed issues dealing with the intercultural classroom. In particular, these scholars are interested in using intercultural theory and insights as strategies for challenging students’ ­levels of prejudice and their sensitivity to racial issues in particular (Cooks 2003; Harris 2003), and their overall worldviews in general (Martin and Davis 2001). The conundrum for critical scholars is how to help students “unlearn” ways of thinking about the world that bolster the status quo and envision alternative ways of thinking about the world that challenge it. This interest in imaging the classroom as a potential site for social change is central to critical pedagogy and is especially relevant as we reflect on more traditional approaches to understanding the acquisition of intercultural skills and their relevance for real world interactions. Related to this is the manner in which we define relevant concepts and attempt to measure them. For example, in traditional intercultural work on intercultural competence, empathy is seen as the central characteristic to “competent and effective intercultural communication” (Broome 1991, p.  235). Unfortunately, traditional pre-­and posttests of empathy after exposure to courses with a diverse focus have not always supported the idea that diversity matters in terms of increasing students’ levels of empathy (Carrell 1997). Rather than assuming that diversity does not matter in terms of content, instructor identity, and approach, critical intercultural scholars argue that it is perhaps our pedagogical strategies for teaching intercultural communication that require our attention. One of the most intriguing and timely developments spawned from the critical turn in intercultural communication has been the inclusion of whiteness in the intercultural curriculum. For example, Martin and Davis (2001) observed that intercultural communication scholars have “rarely explicitly studied the cultural patterns of white people” but instead have done so “under the rubric of ‘Americans’” (p. 298). For intercultural educators, the tendency for US Americans (and others) to invoke a white face when imaging the word “American” has been one of the most deeply problematic assumptions to unpack. As a corrective, Martin and Davis suggest four areas of study that could be fruitfully integrated into the undergraduate intercultural communication classroom: the historical “whitening” of some US immigrant groups and the role of history in understanding the social and political development of whiteness, white privilege, the discursive and communication patterns of US whites, and representations of whiteness in popular culture. These have proved to be extremely fruitful areas of study and have led to the writing of two excellent texts dealing with such relationships in pedagogical settings (Cooks and Simpson 2007; Warren 2003).

Dialogue on the (Disciplinary) Edges In my examination of the intercultural communication work published from 1997 through 2007, it seems clear that critical scholars have made pivotal contributions to the intercultural inquiry. To reiterate, critical work has broadened the ways in which we think about, define, and study culture. Critical scholars have contributed theoretical innovations to the field, offering ways of theorizing intercultural ideas in intersectional and complex manners. Along the way, we have reworked and rethought foundational concepts such as adaptation, competence, and identity that read in power differentials and structural constraints. Most importantly, we have levied a deep interrogation of dominant ideologies such as whiteness and the myriad of ways that such worldviews play out in intercultural contact at all levels of interaction. Last, we have taken the critical impulse to the classroom, imagining it as a space of change, and have worked to develop pedagogies that empower students and provide them with ways of changing their worlds. Critical scholars can be proud of these valuable insights and contributions.



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On the other hand, it has been difficult for critical scholars to engage most “traditional” intercultural scholars (I apologize for the binary distinction and use it only to distinguish scholars who work out of a critical theoretical tradition from those who do not) in intellectual conversation in consequential ways (Ono 1998). When I reflect on who attends which conferences panels at professional conferences or who cites whom in published work, it appears that a kind of one-­way communication often occurs with critical scholars attempting to engage “traditional” scholarship in conversation while their own work is generally ignored by more “traditional” scholars (with a few notable exceptions of course). My evidence for this is primarily anecdotal but let me elaborate on this point as I believe that it highlights an important gap in the intellectual community of intercultural scholars that does not bode well for the future of critical intercultural studies both domestically and globally. The first piece of evidence I want to note is the observation that few “traditional” intercultural scholars utilize insights about intercultural communication offered by critical work. In my review of the references cited lists of the 68 published articles examined as part of this project, I note that critical work is seldom cited by “traditional” scholars while the reverse is less true. For example, all but three of the articles based in the critical tradition reviewed here cited “traditional” scholars, while only three of the “traditional” articles included reference to the work of critical scholars and even then the reference tended to be cursory. This pattern may be partly explainable by the usual graduate school experience. Given that critical scholars are trained in “traditional” graduate programs, we must know and engage a broad spectrum of ideas across a variety of paradigmatic approaches and thus come to see the value of multiple perspectives which we often incorporate in our work. The reverse is not true. A student can easily complete a graduate program without ever being exposed to a piece of work written from a critical perspective. And, in fact, the general devaluation of critical paradigms in many graduate programs reduces the likelihood of students seeking out this work on their own. This tendency then may affect future ways of thinking about the value of multiparadigmatic approaches and the value of reading work outside one’s research tradition. In addition and perhaps relatedly, publishing critical scholarship in mainstream peer-­ reviewed outlets has proven challenging (Calafell and Moreman 2009; Hendrix 2005). For example, of the 68 articles published in our profession’s mainstream journals reviewed for this chapter, fewer than 20 of them could be accurately as “critical.” In main part, positivist views and treatment of intercultural communication continue to dominate our field’s academic journals while critical scholars have been forced to seek alternative outlets for publication of their work, outlets overlooked by my approach. For example, two extremely important outlets for critical intercultural communication scholarship have historically been the International and Intercultural Communication Annual and Howard Journal of Communication. In addition, many other important pieces of critical scholarship are located outside peer-­reviewed outlets such as edited volumes and textbooks. With the addition of new journals such as Critical/Cultural Studies and the Journal of Intercultural and International Communication, critical scholars have had more opportunity to disseminate their work in the field’s outlets. Due to the difficulty in finding publication outlets, critical work has tended to be engaged most often by those who have deliberately sought it out rather than one being able to skim a  recent copy of a journal and easily access a variety of ideas and approaches including critical ones.1 A last observation I would like to offer is what I can only label as the intellectual dismissal often extended to critical work by “traditional” scholars. This dismissal is expressed in a multitude of ways including failure to acknowledge that a critical perspective in intercultural communication exists (this can be seen in failures to include the contributions of this tradition in historical overviews of the field with the notable exception of Kim 2007); or when acknowledging that a critical tradition exists, to dismiss it as irrelevant or unimportant (I heard this in at two different graduate programs I attended: “and then there’s the critical paradigm but we

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won’t be discussing that”); and to fail to take seriously insights derived from critical work as discussed above (and thus to include them in your own work). I find this type of academic dismissal most disturbing and would like to offer a couple of examples. The first involves a roundtable submission to NCA and a reviewer’s response. Composed of both emerging and established mostly critical (but including a couple of well-­ known “traditional”) scholars, the panel was to explore the future of intercultural communication in a time of economic and institutional instability. One reviewer wrote, “Overall, I do not find much theoretical or methodological contribution coming from this session.” As a reviewer, I am not aware that roundtables must meet standards regarding the development of theoretical and/or methodological innovations. Most generally, roundtable discussions are focused on specific topics of interest, state/future of the field discussions, and so forth and are not constructed to engage in theory building (although they often may). The fact that the reviewer found it necessary to make a snide remark regarding the potential outcomes of such a discussion seems mean-­spirited at the least. A second example regards a forum published in the 1998 International and Intercultural Communication Annual. The forum topic was the notion of “nationstate” for which James Chesebro (1998) wrote an essay to which Kent Ono and Carley Dodd responded with Chesebro having final comments. When reading the forum, I was most struck by Chesebro’s lack of engagement with Ono’s ideas and his thinly veiled attacks on Ono’s character and motivations. It resonated with some of my experiences in graduate school as I tried to be a critical scholar in an increasingly unfriendly-­to-­critical academic environment. In my view, Ono’s response to Chesebro’s essay clearly illustrated his intellectual engagement with the ideas. Ono carefully challenged evidence offered by Chesebro, identified points of agreement and divergence, and articulated a cogent argument regarding how he saw Chesebro’s underlying assumptions of the “nation-state” as problematic. Conversely, Chesebro opened his response to Ono with the following: “Kent Ono uses my chapter on cultural change as an opportunity to promote his specific political and ideological agenda” (p. 216). Chesebro goes on to say, “Although Mr. Ono is worried that my chapter will ‘unwittingly’ promote an ideological position he dislikes, he does little to underscore the ideological position he himself argues for, nor does he offer the kind of reasons and evidence for his position that one might expect in an academic exchange” (pp. 216–217). After reducing Ono’s carefully crafted essay to nonacademic ideological positioning, Chesebro continues go to chastise Ono for “pretending” to be objective and unbiased. This sort of contradictory and emotive response of “traditional” scholars to challenges posed by critical scholars to their work is one that unfortunately I have observed on any number of occasions as well as been victim to. The animosity underlying such responses indicates that something is going on here other than simple intellectual disagreement. To disagree with another’s ideas requires serious engagement of those ideas which most read as an indicator of professional and intellectual respect. Debate is something that pushes a field to grow and thus should be welcomed. To attack a colleague’s supposed “agenda” rather than to address their argument suggests the existence of deep, underlying paradigmatic tensions. Similar to Calafell and Moreman (2009, p. 128) observation in regard to the reception of autoethnography in performance studies, “The inability of academia to honor various types of knowledge production and theory serves as a huge impediment” to furthering the field. As we ponder the “critical turn” in intercultural communication, the observations I have made about the reception of the turn should be kept in mind. Part of the way one can trace the influence of a tradition is by counting how many times that tradition is used or engaged in publications. If we were to use this method, given the above observations, I might be inclined to say that talk about something called “the critical turn” in intercultural communication research is somewhat overstated. Certainly given the preference in the field both domestically



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and globally to hold on to concepts such as national culture, uncertainty reduction, and ­individualism/collectivism, one cannot argue that critical scholars have set off a paradigmatic revolution in the Kuhnian sense. Another way that one might assess the importance or significance of a school of thought is by the level of resistance to it by the mainstream. One might recall the reception that other ideas which have questioned accepted ways of thinking about something have garnered throughout history. If we take this measure, then the critical turn has evidently posed some deep challenges to the field’s normative approach to intercultural inquiry. In the critical essay “Dialogue on the Edges,” Collier et al. (2001) describe how they came to settle on the use of the metaphor of “edges” in conceptualizing their cyber-­dialogue about intercultural communication inquiry. Their ultimate decision to use the term “edges” to connote the liminality, fluidity, multidirectionality, and contested nature of critical intercultural communication is especially apropos when one considers the state of our published work and the engagement of this work by the rest of the field. Speaking from the edges can be an extremely powerful position. Edginess questions what is most taken for granted; it motivates us to think and to imagine something better than currently exists; moreover, it unsettles us, pushes us to consider previously undreamed-­of possibilities. Too, edginess can be a self-­ corrective measure to absorption into unself-­reflexive ways of thinking about the world, the people in it, and possibilities of relationships among us. Perhaps it is this edginess that has enticed some “traditional” scholars who have incorporated “paradigmatic borrowing” and multiparadigmatic collaboration as strategies to both enhance their own work and provide a path out of the woods of polarized paradigm thinking that other intercultural scholars can follow (Martin and Nakayama 1999). As examples, I can think of how the work of Mary Jane Collier and Judith Martin (long-­standing and highly-­respected scholars) has been enhanced by their engagement of critical approaches and in turn, how their work has grown in its appeal to intercultural scholars of many traditions. These scholars (and others) evidence the cross-­ paradigmatic conversation called for by Martin and Nakayama. Cleary “edginess” alone is insufficient to address the (increasing?) polarization of “­traditional” and critical scholarship in the field. The dialectical approach outlined by Martin and Nakayama (1999) offers us the possibility of engaging multiple, but distinct, research paradigms in ways that permit us to see the world in complex and varied ways and become better prepared to engage in and study intercultural interaction. Such a process of engagement will not be easy as they note, “Whereas there cannot be any easy fit among . . . paradigmatic differences, it is important that we not only recognize these differences, but also seek ways that these epistemological differences can be productive rather than debilitating” (p.  19). Refusal to address this issue deprives our field of robust intellectual engagement essential for its growth and evolution and thus remains the next great challenge for critical scholars to take on.

Note 1 In case you may be tempted to think that low numbers of published critical work might be attributed to problems with the search terms used in this essay, let me clarify my process. As I mentioned earlier, many critical intercultural scholars may use key words other than “intercultural communication” to locate their work. To explore this possibility, I ran additional searches of the Academic Search Premier and Communication and Mass Media Complete and databases using other key phrases including “cross-­ cultural communication.” In using this key term, I located five essays published in association journals. I also did the same with the search term, “culture and communication” and in that search, I located 12 articles published in association journals, most of which deal with media effects and discourses. Of these additional 17 articles, perhaps 3 or 4 were written from a critical perspective. Thus, even when expanding the search terms used, critical scholarship remains a small percentage of published work.

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Reflections on “Problematizing ‘Nation’ in Intercultural Communication Research” Kent A. Ono University of Utah

When Dolores Tanno asked me to write a piece responding to an essay by James Chesebro for the twenty-­first volume of the Intercultural Communication Annual, at first I hesitated. Despite the fact that Dolores was one of my scholarly heroes, and despite the fact that I knew I would need to publish more in order to get tenure at UC Davis and that writing an essay for the Annual would help, and despite the fact that it was an honor to have been asked to write a response to an essay written by such a prominent figure in the field as Chesebro, I wavered. Not only had I not been trained as an “intercultural communication scholar” (I was a rhetorician, after all), but the idea of responding to a piece by James Chesebro was a daunting prospect. In this brief chapter, first, I want to tell a story about how my response emerged, in part to demonstrate that ideas do not come ready made, and also to show how critical work emerges, often in unusual ways, and sometimes without a lengthy literature from which to build one’s theory. Second, I discuss the central ideas in the essay that I think still have relevance to critical intercultural communication today.1 Finally, before concluding, I provide a rejoinder to Chesebro’s response to my response to his essay, as a way of furthering the conversation.

History of My Essay I was, at the time Dolores asked me to write the essay, an Assistant Professor at UC Davis, one without the necessary ethos, I thought, to be a credible respondent. Not only was this the first time I had been asked to respond to an essay in print, but here I was being asked to respond to a senior scholar’s work, and not any senior scholar, either. At the time, Chesebro was President of the National Communication Association, and was recognized as one of the most complete scholars in the field. Since I did not consider myself an intercultural communication scholar at the time and was critical of much of the work I had read (as is clear by the arguments I ended up making in my published response to Chesebro. This essay is in part a story of my journey to becoming a critical intercultural communication scholar). What right did I have responding to Chesebro, and what could I say that would be of value? Equally intimidating was the fact that I held Professor Chesebro in high esteem, having read his essays on television and Kenneth Burke as a graduate student and consulted his edited book, Gayspeak: Gay Male and Lesbian Communication (Chesebro 1981), on numerous occasions. The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication, Second Edition. Edited by Thomas K. Nakayama and Rona Tamiko Halualani. © 2024 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2024 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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Dolores and I had more than one conversation about my writing an essay before I reluctantly agreed to write the piece. I remember her trying to set my mind at ease by telling me that a second scholar, Carley Dodd, would also be writing a response to Chesebro’s essay. Still reluctant, but encouraged by the fact that Dolores continued to think it important that I write the piece, and knowing that as a fellow person of color she likely recognized the hesitant feelings I might be having about writing it, I agreed. I did not know what she saw in me or my work or why she thought I would be appropriate for this specific task, but her encouragement helped give me the confidence and strength necessary to agree to write the essay. Next came the task of reading Chesebro’s article. Dolores sent me a version of the essay. At that point in the process, his article was only available to me in text form, having not yet been typeset, or printed. I worked from his draft, carefully reading it, jotting down notes, and beginning to formulate my own ideas. I read relevant articles but spent most of my time thinking about what to say and how to respond. Perhaps because I was teaching a full course load in fall 1996, perhaps because I was beginning my fourth year at UC Davis pretenure, perhaps because the deadline to submit the piece was very short, perhaps also because I was still getting my grounding as a scholar in the discipline, the piece is more defensive and the tone less generous than I would like to think it would be were I to have written it today. Writing an essay that challenges basic and fundamental assumptions of a discipline such as that of intercultural communication, in part because one finds certain assumptions, as well as the carrying out of research based on those assumptions, sometimes troubling and at other times offensive, is not unique for those from marginalized backgrounds and perspectives. Moreover, making such a challenge from a marginalized position may mean, as it did for me: (i) developing an alternative approach without the benefit of having significant historical or theoretical examples on which to draw, and (ii) establishing that there is something wrong with the key tenets of traditional scholarship that requires change. Coming from outside the field and working in a new scholarly area, rather than building a theory with the benefit of a wealth of published information, my approach was to build theory organically; hence, I built a case out of alternative approaches to research. The hard part, however, was summoning the courage to challenge widely held beliefs and ideas about scholarship and finding the words and ideas with which to convey that challenge (since in many ways what one wants to say has either not yet been articulated, or at least has not been discussed widely). In retrospect, my hesitation in writing the article made sense. While intercultural communication had been around for some time, critical intercultural communication scholarship was in its bare infancy. From my current historical perspective, by critical intercultural communication, I mean the retheorization of intercultural communication that in part developed out of cultural studies and critical theory scholarship. In particular, critical intercultural studies foregrounds, or at least acknowledges as relevant, political and cultural dimensions of communication within and across cultural groups. Critical intercultural communication stresses the significance of cultural identity as a dimension of both communication and the study of culture. Critical intercultural communication also typically emphasizes theory as germane to praxis, even as practical. It builds ideas, concepts, and theories across academic divisions, hence is transdisciplinary. Critical intercultural communication sees the personal not only as a part of research but also as a constitutive dimension of scholarship in the academy. In taking the personal seriously, critical intercultural communication acknowledges the rhetorical and performative dimensions of everyday life and foregrounds questions generally understood to be central to the humanities generally. Activism and experience, themselves, may be integral to theorizing. In fact, social change and shifts in power may be the end goal, and theories may develop directly from social praxes. Typically, critical intercultural communication resists and challenges normative assumptions about academic life that have a tendency to stifle curiosity, identity, creativity, and openness to and interest in difference.



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At the time Dolores asked me to write the essay, however, even basic positions about what critical intercultural communication was had not yet been taken, and theoretical concepts had not been developed in print. Who could have imagined at that very early point that 13 years later critical intercultural communication would be so vibrant an area of research as to warrant an entire collection, one that includes this essay by me reflecting on my earlier piece?2 In short, it was clear to me that writing the essay I had agreed to write would be difficult. On 9 October 1996, I wrote a letter to Dolores, after she had kindly read a draft of my piece and had given me comments. In my letter to her I wrote, “I am feeling a bit better about this draft, but I still feel I lack some further background on the intercultural issues Chesebro ­discusses.” Feeling that the essay required more research, but not knowing quite where to turn, I searched once more for relevant articles but again found few. Then, it occurred to me that, even though not much had been written, I could contact people who had been attempting to make critical arguments within communication and intercultural communication, such as Carole Blair, Wenshu Lee, Tom Nakayama, and Rona Halualani. They, too, were at a loss for resources and could think of little published on the topic. My conversations with them, however, helped me to realize just how little published research was out there taking a critical intercultural communication studies approach. I was running out of time; the deadline for the essay submission was quickly approaching. I worked swiftly, focusing my attention primarily on making arguments that emerged directly from reading Chesebro’s text, brought in what little scholarship I had been able to gather, and built from ideas I had resulting from my conversations with Carole, Wenshu, Tom, and Rona. NCA 1996 was fast approaching. I got the essay into shape and sent it to Dolores on 6 November 1996, to be published in 1998.

Central Ideas in the Essay Let me say at the outset that, in retrospect, some of my main points were not specific to Chesebro’s article. My critiques could have been written about any number of intercultural essays produced during the same time period or even before it. Thus, it was not just to Chesebro’s work I was responding but also to the broader field of intercultural communication. For instance, I challenged Chesebro’s argument that nations should be compared culturally, but by no means was he alone in making such comparisons. Comparing nations was basic to communication research and, to some extent, a defining approach to intercultural communication research. Chesebro’s own review of literature demonstrated just how accepted a “nationstate” approach to intercultural communication had been up until that point. Despite how commonplace a national approach to scholarship was, thinking about the concept of the nationstate critically was new within communication studies and to intercultural communication, more specifically. While Chesebro and I both viewed the nation as a social construction, my way of viewing it is as a figure, or a symbol, that can be and often is used in a strategic manner to mobilize peoples’ interests, ideas, and activities, even ways of being, ­differs significantly from Chesebro’s view of the nation as a social construction. The taken for grantedness of the nationstate in Chesebro’s and other intercultural work of the time suggests the level of acceptance people have with the way the world is organized, implying the degree to which “the nation,” perhaps even more so than “the people,” was (and still is) a commonplace of US-­American life.3 Additionally, discussing nations the way Chesebro did fits squarely within a field with a liberal humanist foundation. Such a foundation is evident in intercultural and cross-­cultural communication research that has drawn heavily from research in psychology, cultural behavior and behavioral management, and cross-­cultural relations. The values of such a tradition encourage scholars to learn about others, provide goodwill when possible, share (or “exchange”)

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information and ideas, and in general tolerate difference. In this same vein, Chesebro’s article was written in good faith, hoping to improve knowledge across cultures. As he wrote, “as cultures are compared and contrasted to each other on an increasing number of dimensions, the unique identity of each cultural system begins to emerge” (Chesebro 1981, p. 178). Finally, Chesebro’s comparison of nations’ similarities and differences, rather than on racial structure and attitudes, reflects the lack of broad discussion and theorization of race as a ­constitutive dimension of communication research in the field as a whole. To be clear then, Chesebro could not have drawn on critical intercultural research in formulating his arguments about cross-­cultural comparisons. Indeed, I, myself, was not able to draw on that research in writing my response to his article, since that research did not exist at the time. Our dialogue in these essays was, after all, prior to most publications on transnationalism, postcolonialism, whiteness, and critical race theory in communication. His essay was ­written when the Critical/Cultural Division of the National Communication Association was a concept, not a reality, and, thus, well before the Journal of Communication and Critical/ Cultural Studies and the Journal of International and Intercultural Communication came onto the scene.

Key Points from the Original Essay As I look back on my essay, I make three key points that still have relevance to critical intercultural communication studies today: First, it is problematic to use the nationstate as the primary basis for cultural comparison, because, as Benedict Anderson has suggested, nationstates are imaginary formations. As constructs, nationstates necessarily have limited explanatory power, especially when attempting to represent the diversity of ideas, opinions, lifestyles, and behaviors of people. Not unlike the building of nationstates, the recurrent discursive representation of nationstates as coherent entities and as stable and fixed formations often serves to reify notions of difference and commonality – rather than put them into question, as critical intercultural communication seeks to do – rendering nations a problematic standard for cultural comparison. Absolutely, it is still the case that people do refer to nations every day as if they exist. The word “nation,” therefore, is not just another household word. It is one of the many houses like cities or states that moors us to planet Earth. Because it helps position us as individual subjects within our daily lives, and in relation to people, institutions, and spaces, and plays a significant role in articulating identities, the reification and naturalization of the nation also occurs on a daily basis across disparate social spaces. It is this habitual referencing or citation – its citationality – that renders nation a seemingly uncontestable, indisputable part of reality.4 However, the concretization of nations through daily reification should not keep us from maintaining, intellectually, that nations are very much fictions. Gayatri Spivak famously described the “worlding” of “the Third World” as a strategic act of signification, as a discursive act imperial cultures did to produce a particular kind of power relationship between the imperial nation and subjects of “distant cultures, exploited but with rich intact literary heritages waiting to be recovered, interpreted, and curricularized in English translation” (Spivak 1985, p. 262). Worlding is not unlike what we might call nationing; however, whereas in Spivak’s approach, worlding refers to something an empire does to establish its power relationship with people it generalizes as of a particular kind or type, we define nationing here as the production of a power relationship that aims to put in place a particular worldview for those conceived of as members of the nation who will, in the future, do the labor of maintaining the nation. As the late Michael McGee might have asked about nations, “When was the last time you saw a nation walking up your driveway?” Nations can be conceptually useful sometimes, such as when nations allow for the delivery of social justice (sometimes a rare event). However, the



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taken for grantedness of nations, the automatic way subjects often think of nations as protecting “us” from outsiders and determining our social identities (e.g. rendering us patriotic to only one flag in the world) make them obstacles, too. Thus, for example, a nation may play a role in inhibiting filial relations and communications with those demarcated as outside of a given nationstate, precisely because this would be regarded as communing with members of other nations and not with one’s own. Today, the degree to which nations have become naturalized is indeed troubling and renders their use for the purposes of cultural comparison problematic. Comparing the United States with Iraq, for instance, would, by suggesting those living in Iraq have cultural identities that are alike in some fundamental, national way, seriously abrogate scholarly responsibility to study such fundamental tensions within Iraq and the United States such as religious, ethnic, gendered, and classed ones. Moreover, in the case of Iraq, thinking of it as a nationstate may mean having to overlook the degree to which the “people” are not one and the same as those in charge of its government, even as “heads of state,” and what they say are often taken to be symmetrically interrelated with the objectives of the abstract polity circumscribed by the nation. As Shohat and Stam have written, “The nation of course is not a desiring person but a fictive unity imposed on an aggregate of individuals, yet national histories are presented as if they displayed the continuity of the subject-­writ-­large” (Shohat and Stam 1994, p. 101). It is precisely this kind of abstraction, this attempt to identify a unifying principle that applies to all cases equally, to subsume individuals, groups, and individual and group thought and action to the nation, through the figure of the nationstate, that evacuates cultural analysis of the obligation to understand and search for cultural complexity and that, one might argue, helped rationalize the United States’ invasion of Iraq in the first place and the continued efforts by the United States to control paternally the people living there. Since writing my essay, work in transnational communication studies and transnational studies more broadly has blossomed.5 That work, often written by people living in a country other than the one where they were born, really challenges nation-­centered analysis. The rich, complex, and vast criss-­crossing of national boundaries both by people and by capital has intensified and fundamentally altered the space for cultural analysis and comparison. For, national politics still do exist, and as the recent formation of the Republic of Kosovo suggests, desires for nationhood and for independence continue, despite the powerful role that transnational politics, capital, and power now play. In short, while it would be folly to suggest that one can ignore the nationstate, it is important to understand the way the nationstate functions in relation to transnational capitalism and corporations. Second, many theoretical concepts used to compare cultures historically have limited analytical or heuristic value today, despite having been used repeatedly over time in intercultural communication research and in other fields. Here, I am thinking of the binaristic concepts developed primarily by Geert Hofstede, Harry Triandis, and by paid cross-­cultural educators like Edward T. Hall (1959) such as individualist/collectivist, low context/high context, authoritativeness/obedience, and masculine/feminine. It is important to note that the current use of these terms seems to have been little informed by the transformation of thinking about culture following the civil rights era of the 1950s through the 1970s. Thus, when used these concepts often function simply as stereotypes. As Voronov and Singer (summarizing Sinha and Tripathi) write: When a whole culture or society is pigeonholed in dichotomous categories (e.g., masculine–­ feminine, active–passive, or loose–tight), subtle differences and qualitative nuances that are more characteristic of that social entity may be glossed over. Such descriptive labels evoke unduly fixed and caricature-­like mental impressions of cultures or societies rather than representative pictures of their complexities. Also, presenting cultures in black-­or-­white terms not only clouds one’s understanding of them but inevitably leads to good–bad comparisons (Voronov and Singer 2002, p. 461).

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Thus, conceiving of culture in terms of binaries about nations facilitates the differentiation of self from others and does so by affirming, and confirming, binaries, ones often reputed to be linked to nature, hence rendering them resistant to change, that serve to facilitate the c­ oncept of self-­preservation over communal and the preservation of society as ideals. As my original article suggests, such stereotypes also can help create and maintain contemporary power relations. They can promote and reify a particular and peculiar kind of Western gaze. Such abstractions can be used to privilege a particular perspective, a vantage point of the Westerner, the citizen of the United States, white European Americans, people with legal and political legitimacy within a Western nationstate, those who invent the grounds for cultural comparison from a subjective and limited point of view. Representation studies have demonstrated that assumptions are built into representations and, thus, that representations make sense within particular social, cultural, and historical contexts. Those who invoke the nation, those figureheads who stand in for the national government, and those who simply benefit from a national way of thinking may do so inadvertently but nevertheless, through actions and discourse, play a role in the maintenance of a particular relation of power. Additionally, whether aware of it or not, subjects may inadvertently take on a white, masculine, heterosexist, US, European, or Western perspective, without recognizing that such a position of power to name, define, and represent has the potential to create and maintain problematic, stereotypical assumptions based on US colonial, historical imaginings across East/West, North/South dimensions. This power-­effect should remind us that the power to name and describe is interlinked with cultural capital and privilege. Those with the power to name, and in this case to compare, have the power, as do baseball umpires, to “call them they way they see them,” with their own particular ideas, attitudes, and perspectives informing the ultimate representation of a given culture and its relationship to them. Additionally, however, employing a Western gaze also has the potential to incur tremendous costs. For instance, those using this Western gaze may accept unequal power relations as a given and therefore may overlook important dimensions of the cultural relationship, as well as the positive dimension of the Other. Additionally, objectification of the other may ultimately prevail over the Other’s humanity, since already available categories exist that make further understanding, exploration, and curiosity unnecessary. Finally, because of this objectification of the Other, a full and complex understanding of humanity, and of the Self, becomes less realizable, sapping humanity from those invoking this objective gaze and reducing the ­complexity of human life to simple, formulaic understandings that may also reduce meaningfulness. In part, concepts that function to produce simplistic understandings of other cultures and their differences from those in the West emerged because of a lack of scholarship recognized by those in the Western academy as germane to the study of culture, and a lack of cultural analysis that questioned and challenged the ideologically laden assumptions of US scholarship. However, since my essay was written, work on cultural perspectives and “the gaze,” as well as work that simply retheorizes relationships with a much broader conception of identities, has been produced.6 A third argument I make in the earlier essay is that historically the field of communication, and arguably the sciences, social sciences, and humanities more broadly have produced theory that aims to be universally applicable. This tendency to universalize and strive for theories with universal applicability is problematic and may result in scholars attempting to produce and justify scholarship that is dependent on problematic assumptions about national similarities and difference. This critique clearly goes beyond a critique of Chesebro’s argument and beyond the field of intercultural communication to a critique of “universalist” theory and its presumptions in scholarship, more broadly. Theories that aim for universality, as so many have argued persuasively, necessarily maintain culturally specific assumptions and perspectives. Thus, while they may appear to be universal, because they aspire to apply to every case, in fact they obscure the degree to which such universalizing assumptions and ideals are deeply



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ideological and specific and not universal at all but in fact are narrowly subjective. Questions that help us make sense of the problems with theories that universalize include: Why is generalizing across experiences necessary? In making such generalizations, what aspects of specificity are overlooked or covered over? What justifies a generalizing principle rather than a particular one? That is, whether it is an argument that all people should have human rights or that queer identities should be valued everywhere, equally, such universalist notions, no matter how apparently obvious they may be to those who advance them, are far more complicated when discussed within the context of a multiplicity of cultural spaces, and not just the ones from which such ideas emerge. It is not, of course, that having a theory that applies to everyone is a problem. The problem is that employing theories as if they are fact, are irrefutable, and explain everything for everyone, without taking the academic step of specifying the ground on which those theories are formed, noting their potential limited scope and applicability, and admitting alternative views exist (or even focusing primarily on those alternative views), by not identifying the cases that do not apply because of their unusualness, distinctness, uniqueness, or oddity weakens the theory and means it is less objective than it would be otherwise.7 Thus, I am not arguing that universality as a stance does not have usefulness. Rather, I am suggesting that in articulating a universal position that it not be conceived either as the only position or that it serve to marginalize theories that argue the opposite stance of, say, case-­specific examples. More germane to the study of nations, universality is the abstracting step that leads to the generalization of people’s ideas and interests as “national” ones.

Rebuttal to Chesebro’s Response to My Article Since I did not get an opportunity to respond to Chesebro’s response to my response to his essay, I am pleased to have the opportunity now to address some of the points he makes there. For those interested in the debate, having a response from me might be helpful, since our dialogue there took place at an important turning point in the field of intercultural communication, just as the vibrant subfield of critical intercultural studies was beginning to emerge. The main critique I level against Chesebro, to which he did not respond in his rebuttal to my essay, is of his use of literature, not his main argument that change should be an important variable in cross-­cultural comparison. I say on p. 195, “DCS’s primary limitations stem from problems in the literature used as the basis for the study” (Ono 1998). I suggest that there does exist work within cultural studies in particular that helps to put some of the key assumptions about nation and culture that Chesebro’s article articulates into question. I then also suggest that it is surprising that given the tremendous amount of cultural studies work that exists, which would have helped strengthen the analysis in the article, that Chesebro somehow bypassed that scholarship entirely. Another challenge I make to Chesebro in the article is that scholarship he cites and relies upon does not conceive of the people under study themselves as offering valid perspectives with which outsiders might understand them. This issue goes beyond self-­reports by interviewees. Rather, the point I did not make as clearly as I would have liked is that without an understanding of worldviews, without an understanding of cultural complexity and cultural syncretism, without an in-­depth understanding of cultural difference, not much of value can be said about people by outsiders. While he was only reviewing work on cross-­cultural international communication in that section, my critique of his use of Liebes’s work was that Liebes assumes that the ways nonUS Americans view US television conforms entirely to the stereotypes that exist in the United States and the West about those outside it. Her work suffers from a problem of much cultural work prior to critical intercultural studies and that is trying to understand people by

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reproducing what we already know about them. Without realizing it, ideological assumptions about cultures other than one’s own come to be used as a basis for cultural comparison. Because the lens of Western knowledge mediates the researcher’s apprehension of difference, and because that difference is understood through the language, discourse, and ideological structures common in the West, there was reason to question and challenge not only Liebes’s research, but also Chesebro’s use of it. Additionally, I was troubled by the theoretical assumption Chesebro makes that the differences Liebes found could be understood as “national” versus ideological differences, when in fact one of my main arguments was that what are conceived of as national characteristics in studies that compare nations are in fact ideological ones. Words like “a culture” and “a collective” suggest that while Chesebro defines culture as socially constructed, he also constitutes concrete national differences in his language and relies on troubling notions of national differences as informative of cultural ones. Perhaps the part of his essay that I found most problematic was on p.  182, where, after defining culture as socially constructed, he defends a “nationstate” model for ascertaining and evaluating cultural differences. He writes “In terms of the practical, we need to study nation-­state cultures. In an ideal world, we might examine cultures regardless of nation-­state boundaries. But data and understandings are now linked to and collected by nation-­states, not by cultural systems” (Chesebro 1998, p. 182). He goes further to defend what he calls Triandis’s production of “stereo-­types as hypotheses of national character” (Chesebro 1998, p. 182). Such a position is highly surprising, given Chesebro’s evident support through his own work of research on multicultural communication. In retrospect, Chesebro’s primary argument that “change” ought to be a key variable for cultural comparison is a good one. While his interest is in change being a predictor of a technological or progressive society, a despotic one, or a conservative one, and while his own work rightly challenges the United States for having possibly become conservative over time, since I now have a second chance, I would say that change should be a fundamental part of intercultural analysis for the reasons Chesebro gives. Additionally, however, change should be a central concept for understanding cultural identities, lives, and bodies unfamiliar to a given scholar. There is an historical tendency to conceive of “others” as fixed in time and as “Europe, alone and unaided . . . as the ‘motor’ for progressive social change” (Shohat and Stam 1994, p. 2). Shohat and Stam tell a story from the film Het Dak Van de Walvis of a French anthropologist who studies Indians returning home to Europe in despair after finding out that Indians change their names each month and invent an entirely new vocabulary every day (Shohat and Stam 1994, p. 44). One could imagine the researcher’s frustration at not being able to objectify them, render them legible or fixed. Their dynamism and commitment to change flies in the face of colonialism’s need to render them artifactual, lifeless, and timeless. The very concept of the “Third World,” Shohat and Stam suggest, was framed as referring to nations as “backward,” “underdeveloped,” and “primitive” (Shohat and Stam 1994, p. 25). In part, this is why Native Americans are often represented in traditional, historical plains Indian clothing (usually not even historically accurate), and Asians are represented as wearing traditional kimonos (Japanese) or peasant clothing (Chinese), rather than as living, breathing, human beings within rapidly changing global contexts.

Conclusion During a time when so much is happening on worldwide scale, when economics has gone global, and when transnational exchanges of labor and capital, not to mention world travel, is at unprecedented highs, rethinking the nation and what it means for the study of



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communication, and what the nation’s role will be in burgeoning subfields like critical intercultural communication studies is highly necessary. While earlier approaches to intercultural communication may have conceived of the nation in particular ways, ways that researchers still find useful today, in order to stay current and therefore to be heuristically significant, readapting tools for cultural analysis is required. While mine is only one among many essays that people consider central to the early emergence of critical intercultural communication studies, perhaps in the way I tell the story, people can learn about the process of publication, speaking from the margins, rethinking fields and beginning new ones, and understand better some of the stakes involved in doing critical intercultural communication today. Perhaps this essay is but one more attempt to rethink key concepts like nation anew, in hopes that further dialogue and theorization rethinks the grounds for this essay, as well.

Notes 1 While it is beyond the scope or focus of this essay (and certainly endnote) to discuss all precursors to, contributors to, and builders of critical intercultural communication studies, it is possible to define at least some central dimensions of what has become a reconception of intercultural communication, as well as a field of communication that has theoretical and practical dimensions that adequately render it a field in and of itself. One would be remiss not to notice that from the mid-­1990s to the present, scholars at and emerging from Arizona State University’s communication department have been at the forefront of developing critical intercultural communication. For full details of these publications see Further Reading. 2 The fairly recent emergence of the Journal of International and Intercultural Communication (National Communication Association) and the appointment of Thomas Nakayama as its inaugural editor, suggests the current centrality of critical intercultural communication studies research, even as the journal publishes both traditional and critical work. 3 Michael McGee’s famous essay about “the people” suggested the degree to which the people was an ideograph that was and could be used rhetorically to exert influence. McGee, himself, was fond of saying, “All people try very hard to live up to the stereotype of their choice.” By using “people” in this way, McGee invited his listeners to see themselves as one of the people, to understand the people to be definitive of what humans are, and to (suggestively) imply that there was a generalizing entity, the people, about which universal-­like claims could be made. The power generated invoking the notion of the people to make grand claims that appeared to apply to the largest number of social members was, as McGee noted so eloquently and definitively, rhetorically produced. So, too, is the power behind “the nation.” Those successful at invoking the concept of the nation, and on its taken for grantedness, can, potentially, seem to have access to a highly broad notion of the broader society. However, in invoking the nation, what one, in fact does, is cover over the vastly different ways individuals and individual groups live their lives. Critical intercultural communication departs from a nation-­based model of communication precisely because a nation-­based model has a tendency to generalize behavior; whereas, critical cultural communication seeks to radically empiricize that reality. By radical empiricism, I mean that critical intercultural communication sees the discourse of the nation as something that people do and do not buy into, based on their social circumstances. Personal experiences, in everyday life, may or may not allow someone to wish to identify with national discourses. It is true that a very large number of people, who we might call “national subjects” might try very hard to live a life in accordance with what they view as the ideal behavior of a citizen of the nation. Yet, their economic, health, personal, interpersonal, and more generally life circumstances may allow them, to a greater or lesser degree, to imagine themselves to be part of that ideal national subjectivity. Indeed, people may opt either to be national members, and hence accept invitations to understand themselves to be a part of this larger project, or not to be members of what they u ­ nderstand to be definitive of that collectivity. Part of what critical intercultural communication aims to do, then, is to seek to define what is actually meaningful to people within their historical, cultural, political contexts, not what is taken for granted as meaningful to the nation. Critical intercultural communica-

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Kent A. Ono tion seeks to find out what is important to people, not what is assumed to be important about their everyday lives and the social connections they make. For instance, in Judith Butler’s (1993) discussion of the performative, she suggests that “it is not because an intention successfully governs the action of speech, but only because action echoes prior to actions, and accumulates the force of authority through the repetition or citation of a prior, authoritative set of practices” (pp. 226–227). For more on transnationalism in the field, see Shome and Hegde (2002), Appadurai (1996), Moallem et al. (1999). Also, especially as it relates to politics and communication, see Ono (2005). I am thinking here of work such as Rony (1996) which does a wonderful job of critically examining the anthropological gaze. Also of note is works such as Halberstam (1998) and Sloop (2004) both of which trouble discrete notions of gender and sexuality and by doing so fundamentally problematize scholarly approaches that “gender” nations as masculine and feminine. In her essay, Sandra Harding (1993) argues for “strong objectivity,” suggesting that scientists historically have promoted a notion of “objectivity” that, in fact, is not very objective and has tended to disregard people who are marginalized when applied. Her argument is that by specifying one’s social position, or “standpoint,” stronger, not weaker, objectivity is rendered possible.

References Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Butler, J. (1993). Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex”. New York: Routledge. Chesebro, J. (1981). Gayspeak: Gay Male and Lesbian Communication. New York: The Pilgrim Press of the United Church. Chesebro, J.W. (1998). Distinguishing cultural systems: change as a variable explaining and predicting cross-­cultural communication. In: Communication and Identity across Cultures: International and Intercultural Communication Annual, 21 (eds. V. Dolores, T. Tanno, and A. González), 177–192. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Halberstam, J. (1998). Female Masculinity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Hall, E.T. (1959). The Silent Language. New York: Doubleday and Company. Harding, S. (1993). Rethinking standpoint epistemology: what is “strong objectivity”? In: Feminist Epistemologies (eds. L. Alcoff and E. Potter), 49–82. New York: Routledge. Moallem, M., Kaplan, C., and Alarcon, N. (eds.) (1999). Between Woman and Nation. Nationalisms, Transnational Feminisms and The State. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Ono, K.A. (1998). Problematizing “nation” in intercultural communication research. In: Communication and Identity across Cultures: International and Intercultural Communication Annual, 21 (eds. V. Dolores, T. Tanno, and A. González), 193–202. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Ono, K.A. (2005). From nationalism to migrancy: the politics of Asian American transnationalism. Communication Law Review 5 (1): 1–17. https://drive.google.com/file/d/12ugaTef6gCLP wzSFoXNP5vzcYK37WF4y/view. Rony, F.T. (1996). The Third Eye: Race, Cinema, and Ethnographic Spectacle. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Shohat, E. and Stam, R.S. (1994). Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media. New York: Routledge. Shome, R. and Hegde, R. (2002). Culture, communication, and the challenge of globalization. Critical Studies in Media Communication 17 (2): 172–189. Sloop, J.M. (2004). Disciplining Gender: Rhetorics of Sex Identity in Contemporary U.S. Culture. Boston: University of Massachusetts Press. Spivak, G. (1985). Three women’s texts and a critique of imperialism. In: “Race,” Writing, and Difference (ed. H.L. Gates Jr.), 262–280. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Voronov, M. and Singer, J. (2002). The myth of individualism-­collectivism: a critical review. Journal of Social Psychology 142 (4): 461–480.



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Further Reading Allen, B.J. (2003). Difference Matters: Communicating Social Identity. Long Grove, IL: Waveland. Calafell, B.M. (2007). Latina/o Communication Studies: Theorizing Performance. Peter Lang. Cheng, H.-­I. (2008). Culturing Interface: Identity, Communication, and Chinese Transnationalism. New York: Peter Lang. Delgado, F.P. (1998). When the silenced speak: the textualization and complications of Latina/o i­ dentity. Western Journal of Communication 62 (4): 420–438. Flores, L.A. (1996). Creating discursive space through a rhetoric of difference: Chicana feminists craft a homeland. The Quarterly Journal of Speech 82 (3): 142–156. González, A., Houston, M., and Chen, V. (eds.) (2000). Our Voices: Essays in Culture, Ethnicity, and Communication. Los Angeles: Roxbury. Halualani, R.T. (2002). In the Name of Hawaiians: Native Identities and Cultural Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Hecht, M.L. (ed.) (1998). Communicating Prejudice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. International and Intercultural Communication Annual (particularly the 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2006, and 2007 editions). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Kraidy, M.M. (2005). Hybridity, or the Cultural Logic of Globalization. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Martin, J. (ed.) (2000). Ethnicity and methodology. International Journal of Intercultural Relations (special issue): 24. Martin, J.N. and Nakayama, T.K. (1997). Intercultural Communication in Contexts. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield. Martin, J.N., Nakayama, T.K., and Flores, L.A. (eds.) (1998). Readings in Intercultural Communication. Boston, MA: McGraw-­Hill. Martinez, J. (2000). Phenomenology of Chicana Identity and Experience. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Mendoza, S. (2001). Between the Homeland and the Diaspora: The Politics of Theorizing Filipino and Filipono American Identities. New York: Routledge. Mendoza, S.L., Halualani, R.T., and Drzewiecka, J.A. (2002). Moving the discourse on identities in intercultural communication: structure, culture, and resignifications. Communication Quarterly 50 (3/4): 312–327. Moon, D.G. (1996). Concepts of “culture”: implications for intercultural communication research. Communication Quarterly 44 (1): 70–84. Nakayama, T.K. (1994). Show/down time: “race, gender, sexuality and popular culture”. Critical Studies in Mass Communication 11 (June): 162–179. Nakayama, T.K. and Krizek, R.L. (1995). Whiteness: a strategic rhetoric. Quarterly Journal of Speech 81: 291–309. Nakayama, T.K. and Martin, J.N. (eds.) (1998). Whiteness: The Communication of Social Identity. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Shome, R. (1996). Race and popular cinema: the rhetorical strategies of whiteness in City of Joy. Communication Quarterly 44 (4): 502–518. Shome, R. and Hegde, R.S. (2002). Culture, communication, and the challenge of globalization. Critical Studies in Media Communication 19 (2): 172–189. Warren, J. (2001). Doing whiteness: on the performative dimensions of race in the classroom. Communication Education 50: 91–109.

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“A Transdisciplinary Turn in Critical Intercultural Communication” Ako Inuzuka University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown

In 2013, I published my essay, “When the Periphery Becomes the Center: A Critical Turn in Intercultural Communication Studies,” reviewing four books on critical intercultural communication, including the first edition of The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication (2010). When invited to write that essay for the Journal of Multicultural Discourses, I initially had mixed feelings. While it was an opportunity to write on a topic I was passionate about, I had difficulty knowing to which subfield of intercultural communication I belonged. My research areas involved social justice and challenging power relations and oppressive ideologies, and yet, my research was not typically discussed as a critical intercultural communication topic. I was fortunate to be trained in graduate programs that taught critical and interpretive approaches to intercultural communication from the mid-­1990s to the early 2000s, when a critical approach to intercultural communication was just emerging. I became fascinated by critical intercultural communication theories such as postcolonial theory, whiteness studies, and performance studies. Although I greatly enjoyed reading those theories and attempted to apply them to my own work, I was not very successful. After I was introduced to history research toward the end of my doctorate program, I became interested in how ideologies influence the ways in which people remember past events/figures, which eventually led to my interest in collective memory studies. When others were discussing concepts such as “subjectivity,” “hybridity,” and “transnationalism,” I was not, which made me feel that I did not belong to this emerging new field of critical intercultural communication. On some occasions, I was even hesitantly asked by people who read my work or heard my conference presentations if my area is critical intercultural communication. I was thus surprised at being invited to write a review essay on critical intercultural communication. I have always felt that “invisible boundaries” existed, differentiating critical intercultural communication topics from others, and my works were not within the boundaries. Through closely reading these four books, I became aware that there were far more topics in critical intercultural communication and was encouraged by scholars’ calls for boundary crossing (Nakayama and Halualani 2010). Their statement opposed to such boundaries was particularly heartening: We understand the academic obsession for boundary delineation and identification of positions (especially in the United States). However, it is key for us to consider how such a need to name, identify, and solidify may in fact suffocate that with which we critique in terms of the larger ­contextualizations and situated power dynamics that constitute such phenomena (Halualani and Nakayama 2010, p. 10). The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication, Second Edition. Edited by Thomas K. Nakayama and Rona Tamiko Halualani. © 2024 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2024 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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Similarly, Nakayama and Halualani call for becoming more open to the forms for our critical inquiry: “whether as critical praxis demonstrations, policies, interventional programs, popular cultural forms, performances and narratives, and organized groups” (p. 596). When reviewing the four books, I noticed a wider range of intercultural communication topics such as ableism (Fassett 2010), and public memories (Drzewiecka 2010; Hasian 2010). Since then, I have come across an even wider range of topics, such as an ecological turn in intercultural communication, as suggested by Mendoza and Kinefuchi (2016). A wide range of critical intercultural communication topics have been important to me. In this present essay, I argue for a further expansion of the critical intercultural communication field by incorporating topics from other disciplines such as linguistics. In so doing, I propose a transdisciplinary turn in critical intercultural communication. In the following section, I first reflect back on what I discussed in my 2013 essay, followed by my contextualization of transdisciplinary collaboration and research. Lastly, I consider how transdisciplinary inquiry can expand critical intercultural communication topics.

“When the Periphery Becomes the Center” For my 2013 essay, “When the Periphery Becomes the Center: A Critical Turn in Intercultural Communication Studies,” I reviewed four books on critical intercultural communication: Intercultural Communication: A Critical Introduction (2011) by Ingrid Piller; Intercultural Communication: An Advanced Resource Book for Students (2010) by Adrian Holliday, Martin Hyde, and John Kullman; Intercultural Communication and Ideology (2011) by Adrian Holliday; and The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication (2010), edited by Thomas K. Nakayama and Rona Tamiko Halualani. The essay introduced some of the books’ key ideas and the potentially burgeoning trend of critical intercultural communication in the field of intercultural communication. It even predicted that critical intercultural communication, a minority approach once, might become the dominant approach in intercultural communication. Here, I would like to outline some of the main ideas from the essay. While the editors and contributors to The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication are communication scholars mostly based in the United States, the other books were authored by scholars of linguist backgrounds from other countries. For instance, Piller is an applied sociolinguist from Macquarie University in Sydney. Holliday, Hyde, and Kullman are applied linguists from Canterbury Christ Church University in the United Kingdom. As a result, the four books cover a multitude of concepts and theories. Yet, there were some overarching ideas, such as their common opposition to the functionalist approach. For instance, some dominant concepts under functionalist inquiry were questioned, such as high context/low context, individualistic culture/collectivistic culture, and uncertainty reduction theory. Challenging the functionalist approach that views culture and communication as variables that can be quantified and intercultural communication as an interaction between two different yet equal parties, critical intercultural communication scholars consider culture and communication as more fluid concepts and problematize power differentials and hierarchy in intercultural interactions. For instance, Holliday problematizes equal, neutral relationships between participants from different cultural groups as assumed in functionalist inquiry. He criticizes the functionalist assumption that intercultural communication problems can be solved by an investigation of the differences and a subsequent training of these differences. All authors are further opposed to the functionalist approach that focuses on cultural differences and tends to essentialize culture and people. These authors suggest a more nuanced understanding of culture and communication, moving away from essentialism and an overemphasis on cultural differences. For instance, Piller (2011) argues that the discourses on culture, cultural difference, and intercultural communication originally emerged during the height of imperialism and colonialism in



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the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and still play an important role in justifying today’s global inequality by masking power relationships and material inequality. Also, all the books question the tendency of the functionalist approach to equate culture with nation. For instance, Dreama Moon (2010), in her chapter in The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication analyzes intercultural communication articles that appeared between 1997 and 2007, noting that many of them continue to define culture as a nation, disregarding power dynamics, although she also detects positive influences of critical scholars’ contributions, such as “historicizing the field,” “critique of dominant ideologies,” and “pedagogy and the activist turn.” Some of the authors suggest alternatives to this approach of equating culture with nations. For instance, Holliday suggests the concept of small cultures, as opposed to a large, national culture. According to him, any socially cohesive behavior (e.g., a particular football team, a university department) can be regarded as a culture, resulting in dynamic micro cultures, with each of us belonging to a myriad of shifting, overlapping, small cultures. Moreover, all the books stress the importance of social justice and the achievement of an egalitarian society as a goal of critical intercultural communication research. They focus on marginalized perspectives that have been silenced and excluded in the dominant society, and they challenge questionable practices and ideologies such as stereotyping and liberal multiculturalism. Other common topics discussed in these books include the influence of ideologies on culture and communication, the importance of examining history, and researchers’ positionality when conducting intercultural communication research. As Piller, Holliday, Hyde, and Kullman are linguists, their work includes considerable discussion on languages. For instance, Piller (2011) discusses language politics, detailing language use as power-­laden, and arguing that the discourses of cultural differences and language proficiency, including accents, have served to mask discrimination. Similarly, Holliday, Hyde, and Kullman (2010) discuss linguicism as “the stereotyping of people according to their language use” (p. 282) and language proficiency (or lack of it), or that an accent can serve as a source of discrimination. By encountering such a wide range of research and topics in critical intercultural communication, I realized that it is unnecessary to worry whether my research topics are within “the boundaries.” As critical intercultural communication was originally initiated by scholars from marginalized communities whose experiences were excluded by traditional dominant studies using the functionalist approach, one of the features of critical intercultural communication is to be inclusive.

Transdisciplinary Turn Gaining confidence in my work being part of critical intercultural research through the process of writing the review essay, I wondered why I did not know some of the fascinating concepts discussed in the books written by Piller, Holliday, Hyde, and Kullman. These concepts are relevant and can be applied to studies in communication. With the view that topic expansion should also cross disciplinary boundaries, I propose a transdisciplinary approach. Brown et  al. (2010), environmental and sustainability studies scholars, in their chapter, “Towards a Just and Sustainable Future,” in Tackling Wicked Problems: Through the Transdisciplinary Imagination, define transdisciplinarity as “the collective understanding of an issue; it is created by including the personal, the local and the strategic, as well as specialized contributions to knowledge” (p. 4). Brown et al. note that imagination is necessary in transdisciplinary research, especially on wicked problems, which are explained citing Rittle and Weber as “a complex issue that defies complete definition, for which there can be no final

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solution,” such as social-­environmental issues, as opposed to “tame problems” that can be handled with existing methods (p. 4). Brown et al. argue that “[w]ithout exhausting the possibilities, imagination is associated with creativity, insight, vision and originality; and is also related to memory, perception and invention” (p. 5), and imagination is necessary because uncertainty is associated with wicked problems. They also suggest that imagination is important for anyone wanting to make a difference in society. Similarly, Kazubowski-­Houston and Magnat (2018), in referring to the transdisciplinarity of ethnography, explain transdisciplinary coalition and collaboration as “travel[ing] across disciplines and fields, and, conversely, what different disciplines and fields might contribute to the practice of ethnography” (p.  384). They further advocate “‘turf-­sharing’ through coalition and collaboration” to resist current university culture privileging profit driven market logic, which requires qualitative researchers to justify their “unscientific” methodologies (p. 389). Many scholars have attempted to distinguish between multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary. For instance, Roderick Lawrence (2004), an environmental scientist, explains multidisciplinarity as “research in which each specialist remains within her/his discipline and contributes using disciplinary concepts and methods,” whereas interdisciplinarity refers to “the bringing together of disciplines which retain their own concepts and methods that are applied to a mutually agreed subject” (p. 488). Lawrence argues that in interdisciplinary studies, one person usually coordinates and makes efforts to integrate contributions. While interdisciplinary may simply be the integration of disciplines, Lawrence suggests, borrowing ideas from Sommerville and Rapport, that transdisciplinarity “implies a fusion of disciplinary knowledge with the know-­how of lay-­people that creates a new hybrid which is different from any specific constituent part” (p. 489). To Lawrence (2010), transdisciplinary inquiry entails combining the works generated by academics with other forms of knowledge. As a result, he argues that transdisciplinary inquiry has practical implications while it can still lead to theoretical development. Lawrence further explains that transdisciplinarity refers to “the giving up of sovereignty of knowledge, the generation of know-­how of professionals and lay-­ people” (p. 489). He argues that transdisciplinarity allows us to be innovative and gain an in-­ depth understanding of issues. Similarly, Tierry Ramadier (2004), an environmental psychologist, distinguishes between multidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, and transdisciplinarity. He argues that multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity maintain disciplinary thinking. Ramadier explains that for multidisciplinarity, theoretical models from different disciplines are juxtaposed, whereas interdisciplinarity “constructs a common model for the disciplines involved, based on a process of dialogue between disciplines” and it attempts to create synthesis (p. 433). Ramadier further argues that both multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity avoid paradoxes, while transdisciplinarity accepts paradoxes “to preserve different realities and to confront them” (p. 434). He explains that transdisciplinarity is based on a conflict generated by paradoxes. Its goal is not “the search for consensus,” but “the search for articulations” (p. 434). He discusses that transdisciplinarity has borrowed ideas from multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity: From multidisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity has inherited its awareness of different realities. From interdisciplinarity, it has adopted the effort to reinterpret knowledge in order to readjust the ­different levels of reality. (p. 434)

While transdisciplinarity is based on multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity does not attempt to resolve paradoxes; rather, it searches for articulations, instead of unity. While there are clearly multiple ways to define transdisciplinarity, and there are similarities among the three modes of inquiry, I like Kazubowski-­Houston and Magnat’s idea of transdisciplinarity as ideas traveling across multiple disciplines, Lawrence’s idea of “a fusion of



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disciplinary knowledge” with knowledge generated by non-­academics, Ramadier’s idea of paradoxes and seeking articulation rather than consensus, and Brown, Deane, Harris, and Russell’s suggestions of inclusion of imagination, and personal and local understanding in transdisciplinary research. Combining their ideas, transdisciplinary research in intercultural communication to me, means ideas traveling across disciplines, including disciplines in and outside of communication and intercultural communication. Through the fusion of academic knowledge with the knowledge and know-­how created by non-­academics, celebrating paradoxes, we can creatively and imaginatively come up with ways to make a difference in society. Of course, for the purpose of topic expansion in critical intercultural communication, “ideas traveling across disciplines” may be enough, and collaboration with those outside of academics may be unnecessary. However, considering that a balance between academics and activism has been an important issue for many critical intercultural scholars, I believe it is worth exploring this fusion. I further believe that it may present more opportunities for expanding critical intercultural communication topics. Especially today, as we encounter news about police brutality against African Americans or hate crimes against Asians and Asian Americans, many of us feel the need to do something. As we discuss social justice, we may feel that activism is becoming increasingly necessary. As academics, most of us are expected to write and publish. Publishing works on social justice is also important in order to educate younger generations of college students on the topic. Most of us have difficulty finding enough time to do both. Combining both may alleviate this problem. Of course, many scholars have attempted to combine academic research with activism, particularly those conducting action research. The article, “Navigating with the Stars” by Kate G. Willink et al. (2014) discusses potential methods for critical intercultural communication, and Stein suggests activist/engaged methodologies for critical intercultural communication research, combining theory and action to “create change and agency” (p. 297). Also, María Elena Torre et  al. (2017) discuss their experiences of engaging in critical ­participatory action research to document state violence against African Americans in the South Bronx and Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. Citing Fine and Torre, they argue that critical participatory action research “insists on scientific self-­determination by and with historically oppressed communities, refracting ‘expertise’ so that those most adversely affected by structural violence are architects rather than objects of social inquiry” (p. 497). While action research scholars have successfully combined academic work with activism, I am hopeful that a transdisciplinary approach can offer another way to integrate academia with non-academic knowledge. Coincidently, I have recently become a member of a taskforce for social justice and inclusion on campus, for which we are tasked to come up with practical solutions to make a difference. The taskforce consists of faculty members and students from various academic divisions such as humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, as well as university staff. Although incorporating diversity related materials in the curriculum alone is not enough for the purpose of achieving social justice, I have realized that even that can present a significant challenge in science programs. While participation in a university taskforce is obviously different from activism, I have experienced the utility of collaboration with those from other academic disciplines and those outside of academics to explore creative solutions. This taskforce may be similar to transdisciplinary collaboration suggested by scholars from environmental or sustainability studies or urban studies such as Brown et  al. (2010) and Lawrence (2004, 2010). While this essay’s focus is to expand critical intercultural communication topics, the idea of collaboration with non-­academics is included because I believe it has great potential for future research to make a difference in society. In the following section, I would like to introduce a few theories/concepts from other fields I encountered, which can and should travel across disciplines, followed by my exploration of potentially including the knowledge generated by those outside academic research.

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Concepts/Theories Outside of Communication One of the concepts discussed by scholars outside of communication, which can be incorporated into communication research, is “communication relativity” discussed in Piller’s newer edition of the book, Intercultural Communication: A Critical Introduction (2017). Citing William Foley, a linguist, and Dell Hymes, Piller explains the relative nature of language and communication use, and “what chance the language has to make an impress upon individuals and behaviour will depend upon the degree and pattern of its admission into communication events” (Hymes, as quoted in Piller). Incorporating various examples, she illustrates the processes in which certain languages and communication become dominant over others, and how they are used to privilege dominant groups. For instance, she discusses how early European settlers considered Australia as terra nullius because Aboriginal people did not own written ownership records in a European sense; Europeans used this as a justification for their occupation of Australia, although Aboriginal people clearly did live in Australia before the European arrival, and owned the land. Aboriginal people expressed their rights to land using means other than written documents, such as songs, stories, dances, and paintings. Europeans ­consciously or unconsciously failed to recognize the communicative relativity of land rights being communicated differently. She also discusses the example of the Hornet Bank Massacre of 1857 in Queensland, Australia, in which the Yiman tribe attacked and killed 11 white residents, including six children. Although far more Yiman people were killed by European settlers before and after the event, the Hornet Bank Massacre has been more widely remembered, with a memorial erected at the site and even a separate Wikipedia entry. In contrast, there is no monument for the massacred Yiman people, and it simply appears in Wikipedia’s “list of massacres of indigenous people in Australia.” We can thus see how indigenous people’s suffering making an impress on society was influenced by the “degree of their admission” in society. Another concept that can be applied to communication research is “banal nationalism,” also discussed in Piller’s book. Citing Michael Billig, a social psychologist, the book explains that nationalism is enacted and re-­enacted on a daily basis in mundane, banal ways, rather than extremism, as commonly thought of. She explains that banal nationalism occurs in educational settings, where “[t]he induction into a national identity is part of the hidden curriculum” (p. 58), and uses examples such as the United States’ Pledge of Allegiance. As another example of banal nationalism, she discusses advertisements that use national imagery to create positive associations with products. One of her examples is a box of cereals that has poems including Australian national symbols such as kangaroos and the Barrier Reef. She also discusses TV weather forecasts with national maps (Billig, as cited in Piller), and sporting competitions (Bishop and Jaworski; Darnell; Koch, as cited in Piller) as examples of banal nationalism. Overall, Piller argues that national identity is a social construction just like many other identities: In sum, the discourses of banal nationalism socialize people into seeing themselves as members of a particular nation who live in a wider world of nation states. These discourses of banal nationalism train us to see ourselves in national ways and they become part of who we are to such a degree that they enter our emotional make-­up. (p. 60)

She warns that socialization into a national identity predisposes us to activities that fit the demands of a particular nation state. Another interesting concept that could be used in communication research is “linguicism” suggested by Holliday, Hyde, and Kullman. They define linguicism as “the stereotyping of people according to their language use,” explaining that “[t]he way language is used by groups of people may become connected with a judgement about the people of that group and certain



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values and characteristics may be ascribed to people in that group because of their language use” (p. 282). When we think about accents for instance, we can see how certain accents are connected to the stereotyping of the speakers. The Appalachian accent for example, is associated with “uneducated rednecks.” Likewise, certain foreign accents, especially European accents such as a French or Italian accent, are judged more favorably, while Asian accents are seen more negatively, just as Europeans are perceived more favorably in the United States than Asians. This is similar to “language ideologies” discussed by Piller (2017), understood as our “belief about language, the ideas we hold about what good language is and what ‘the right thing to do’ linguistically is” (p. 87). She argues that language ideologies dictate language use and “legitimate the social order,” and our beliefs about which language is good are not really about language, but about speakers (p. 87). This is similar to the “English hegemony” challenged by some critical intercultural communication scholars in communication (e.g. Tsuda 2010) because the language considered “good” in today’s world tends to be English. Piller also discusses the language ideology of English hegemony, especially privileging an American accent in non-­English speaking countries. She illustrates it using an example of Japan, arguing that “‘an American accent’ is a natural ingredient of professional and personal success” while speakers with other accents are excluded (p. 95). “Critical cosmopolitanism” is another useful concept, as suggested by Holliday et al. (2010), and Holliday (2011). Holliday, Hyde, and Kullman explain the critical cosmopolitanist discourse as follows: • Acknowledges a fluid cultural complexity with blurred boundaries, with diversity as the norm. • Recognizes a deep inequality between the Center and the Periphery. • Considers that Periphery cultural realities need to struggle for recognition, but have the potential to claim the world (p. 54). Holliday also explains that critical cosmopolitanism “insist[s] that Periphery cultural realities should be allowed room to express themselves in resistance to the dominant global cosmopolitan imagination” (p. 12). Critical cosmopolitanism is consistent with the ideas of critical intercultural communication. The final concept I would like to introduce here, which could be incorporated into critical intercultural communication research, is “culturism” as suggested by Holliday, Hyde, and Kullman. Similar to essentialism, they explain culturism as “[r]educing the members of a group to the predefined characteristics of a cultural label” (p. 26), based on a view that people have innate, essential traits that belong to them. If we fall into culturism, we may explain others’ behaviors solely based on their cultural background. Cultures can be nations as traditionally implied in intercultural communication, or many others such as race/ethnicity, gender, sexuality, socioeconomic classes, and abilities/disabilities. In this sense, culturism can be a broad, general term referring to essentialism and stereotyping based on various identities (e.g. essentialism based on race/ethnicity, sexuality, and socioeconomic classes). Holliday, Hyde, and Kullman explain that culturism, similar to racism and sexism, reduces and “Others” individuals. They write that Othering is about “imagining somebody as alien and different to ‘us’ in such a way that ‘they’ are excluded from ‘our’ ‘normal,’ ‘superior,’ and ‘civilized’ group” (p. 2). As a result, they argue that “our group” becomes more exclusive. This concept can be used similarly to other ism terms referring to discrimination or prejudice based on others’ identities, and culturism can also refer to discrimination and prejudice based on others’ cultures. Again, it can be a broad term encompassing many types of discrimination based on race, gender, abilities/disabilities, and so forth. Of course, in this case, since there are already terms referring to more specific types of discrimination such as racism, sexism, and classism, it may appear unnecessary to have a broader term.

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However, I argue that there are still benefits of having a general term for discrimination based on culture. First, by having the general term, we can more comprehensively ­promote that any type of discrimination based on culture is unacceptable. Among different types of discrimination, some are more acknowledged in society than others. For instance, although the existence of systematic racism was questioned under the Trump administration, the existence of racism, in addition to discrimination against people with disabilities, is still more acknowledged in society, compared to, for example, heterosexism or classism possibly based on an erroneous assumption that people’s sexual orientation and socioeconomic class are results of their choices, and marginalization based on sexual orientation and socioeconomic class stems from a lack of efforts and abilities. By having an overarching term such as culturism, we can emphasize that discrimination based on one’s culture, be it sexuality or socioeconomic class, is unacceptable. Another advantage of having culturism as a general term referring to discrimination based on one’s culture is that it can be inclusive of types of discrimination not yet named. For instance, discrimination based on one’s national background is yet to be named. There are terms such as nativism or xenophobia referring to discrimination or negative feelings toward foreigners. Yet, these do not refer to discrimination against specific nationalities. In the case of the United States, European immigrants have been favored because of their whiteness, and nativism and xenophobia tend to target non-­white immigrants. So, one could argue that it is racism. However, there were differences in treatment even among white immigrants in early US history, when supposedly “white immigrants” from Europe such as Irish immigrants, Italian immigrants, and German immigrants were discriminated against because they were not considered as “really white.” Culturism referring to discrimination based on one’s national background can also be found in other countries. For instance, in Japan, other Asians, especially Korean residents who are descendants of those who voluntarily or involuntarily migrated to Japan during Japan’s colonization of Korea (1910–1945), are discriminated against. Although discrimination against Koreans can be called racism, there is a dilemma in doing so. Emphasizing similarities between Japanese and Koreans seems to confirm the widely held Western stereotype of all Asians being the same. At the same time, emphasizing differences between Koreans and Japanese seems to confirm an unofficially held view in the Japanese Empire during Japan’s colonization of Korea, Korean “inferiority.” While the Japanese Empire officially adopted a policy of assimilating Koreans and Taiwanese into Japanese culture during colonization by making them adopt Japanese names and teaching the Japanese language in schools in Korea and Taiwan, unofficially, the difference between Japanese and Koreans (i.e. “inferiority of Koreans”) or Taiwanese was used as the justification for colonization and discrimination against them. Through my examination of works by Japanese nationalist historians and newspapers, I have learned that the Orientalist distinction between “irrational Koreans” and “rational Japanese” is still used to disparage Koreans while elevating the Japanese (Inuzuka 2021). This dilemma may be alleviated by adopting the term “culturism,” which affirms their national and cultural differences. While combining academic knowledge with the knowledge generated by those outside academia may be interesting, it is also likely to be difficult. However, for instance, we may apply culturism when analyzing discrimination against minorities in Japan such as Koreans or Chinese, or the Ainu people, an indigenous people living in the northern part of Japan. We may decide to examine media representations or news coverage of them, regarding explicit or implicit culturist attitudes toward them. When doing so, we may invite, for example, activists who have worked to promote equality for them or people who belong to the minority community as co-­authors to incorporate their interpretations and insights. Although this approach may have a stronger academic component, it has the potential to successfully generate solutions to make a difference in society.



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Conclusion In this essay, I have suggested transdisciplinary inquiry to broaden the scope of critical intercultural communication. While my suggested idea of transdisciplinarity as ideas traveling across ­disciplines and collaboration with those outside of academics may be different from transdisciplinary collaboration suggested by environmental and sustainability studies or urban studies scholars, I would argue that both approaches can yield important insights and can potentially make a difference in society. Both approaches can produce fluid and ongoing solutions. My hope is that this essay will serve as the beginning of numerous conversations on the transdisciplinary approach to critical intercultural communication, which can lead to a further expansion of topics. Although I have listed a few concepts and theories from linguistics (as well as environmental studies and urban studies in considering the transdisciplinary approach), I am certain that there are many other theories and concepts from other disciplines that can and should cross disciplinary b ­ oundaries. With numerous concepts crossing disciplinary boundaries, I hope that the “invisible boundaries” demarcating critical intercultural communication topics will disappear. In addition, by creatively combining our academic knowledge with knowledge generated by non-­academics, I am hopeful that we can make a genuine and effective difference in society.

References Brown, V.A., Dean, P.M., Harris, J.A., and Russell, J.Y. (2010). Towards a just and sustainable future. In: Tackling Wicked Problems: Through the Transdisciplinary Imagination (eds. J.A. Harris, V.A. Brown, and J.Y. Russell), 3–15. Routledge. Drzewiecka, J.A. (2010). Public memories in the shadow of the other: divided memories and national identity. In: The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication (eds. T.K. Nakayama and R.T. Halualani), 286–310. Chichester: Blackwell. Fassett, D. (2010). Critical reflections on a pedagogy of ability. In: The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication (eds. T.K. Nakayama and R.T. Halualani), 461–471. Chichester: Blackwell. Halualani, R.T. and Nakayama, T.K. (2010). Critical intercultural communication studies at a crossroads. In: The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication (eds. T.K. Nakayama and R.T. Halualani), 1–19. Chichester: Blackwell. Hasian, M. (2010). Critical intercultural communication, remembrances of George Washington Williams, and the rediscovery of Leopold II’s “crimes against humanity.”. In: The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication (eds. T.K. Nakayama and R.T. Halualani), 311–334. Chichester: Blackwell. Holliday, A. (2011). Intercultural Communication and Ideology. London: Sage. Holliday, A., Hyde, M., and Kullman, J. (2010). Intercultural Communication: An Advanced Resource Book for Students. Abingdon: Routledge. Inuzuka, A. (2013). When the periphery becomes the center: a critical turn in intercultural communication studies. Journal of Multicultural Discourses 8 (1): 86–92. Inuzuka, A. (2021). Non-­Western Colonization, Orientalism, and the Comfort Women: The Collective Memory of Sexual Slavery Under the Japanese Imperial Military. Lexington Books. Kazubowski-­Houston, M. and Magnat, V. (2018). Introduction to special issue: The transdisciplinary travels of ethnography. Cultural Studies < − > Critical Methodologies 18 (6): 379–391. Lawrence, R.J. (2004). Housing and health: from interdisciplinary principles to transdisciplinary research and practice. Futures 36: 487–502. Lawrence, R.J. (2010). Beyond disciplinary confinement to imaginative transdisciplinarity. In: Tackling Wicked Problems: Through the Transdisciplinary Imagination (eds. J.A. Harris, V.A. Brown, and J.Y. Russell), 16–30. Routledge.

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Mendoza, S.L. and Kinefuchi, E. (2016). Two stories, one vision: an plea for an ecological turn in intercultural communication. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 9 (4): 275–294. Nakayama, T.K. and Halualani, R.T. (2010). Conclusion: envisioning the pathway(s) of critical intercultural communication studies. In: The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication (eds. T.K. Nakayama and R.T. Halualani), 595–600. Chichester: Blackwell. Piller, I. (2011). Intercultural Communication: A Critical Introduction, 1e. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Piller, I. (2017). Intercultural Communication: A Critical Introduction, 2e. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Ramadier, T. (2004). Transdiciplinarity and its challenges: the case of urban studies. Futures 36: 423–439. Torre, M.E., Stoudt, B.G., Manoff, E., and Fine, M. (2017). Critical participatory action research state violence: bearing wit(h)ness across fault lines of power, privilege, and dispossession. In: The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research, 5e (eds. N.K. Denzin and Y.S. Lincoln), 492–516. Los Angeles: Sage. Tsuda, Y. (2010). Speaking against the hegemony of English: problems, ideologies, and solutions. In: The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication (eds. T.K. Nakayama and R.T. Halualani), 248–269. Chichester: Blackwell. Willink, K.G., Gutierrez-­Perez, R., Shukri, S., and Stein, L. (2014). Navigating with the stars: critical qualitative methodological constellations for critical intercultural communication research. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 7 (4): 289–316.

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“Other Bodies” in Interaction: Queer Relationalities and Intercultural Communication Gust A. Yep San Francisco State University

We stand at an important crossroads in the development of critical intercultural communication. We urge critical scholars not to think about crossroads as a singular moment through which we move and close off other options, or the other roads not taken. We will be faced with many, and unending, crossroads as we move ahead. We cannot always see the path clearly, nor ­foresee world events, but we must move forward with critical engagement of these issues. Nakayama and Halualani (2013, p. 595) One of the uncharted paths in critical intercultural communication was its lack of s­ ustained attention to sexuality (Collier et al. 2001; Eguchi 2021; Eguchi and Calafell 2020; Huang 2021; Yep et al. 2019, 2020). The publication of “Out of bounds? Queer intercultural communication,” a special issue of the Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, guest-­edited by Karma Chávez, propelled and forged a path for the study of sexuality, culture, and communication as an area of inquiry (Chávez 2013).1 “Located in the shadowy interstices between . . . academic, cultural, and political frameworks and emerging from unintelligibility, invisibility, and erasure,” queer intercultural communication brings together the theoretical orientations and tensions of two seemingly separate academic projects – intercultural communication and queer studies (Yep et al. 2019, p. 1). One of the earlier attempts, published in Chávez’s (2013) abovementioned special issue, called for a focus on the body in intercultural communication and queer and trans studies (Yep 2013). Highlighting its importance as a site for the production, maintenance, and contestation of difference in multiple cultural contexts and rescuing it from unintelligibility and erasure, the purpose of this chapter is to revisit the notion of “other bodies”  – those that are constructed and viewed as foreign – in current work on queer intercultural communication (Yep  2013, p.  119). To accomplish this, I first identify and discuss the main ideas advanced in my earlier article (Yep 2013). Second, I introduce the notion of queer relationalities to extend translations of “other bodies” to the exploration of “other bodies” in interaction. Next, I offer two examples of queer relationalities – sasso in neoliberal postcolonial Ghana and xinghun in contemporary mainland China – in intercultural communication. I conclude by exploring implications of queer relationalities for current theory and research in critical intercultural communication. The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication, Second Edition. Edited by Thomas K. Nakayama and Rona Tamiko Halualani. © 2024 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2024 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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“Other Bodies” in Intercultural Communication By bringing sexuality and its correlated vectors – such as race, class, gender, and nation, among others – to the study of intercultural communication, I proposed five ideas in the 2013 article. They are: (i) a focus on the body, (ii) the process of embodied translation, (iii) systems of cultural normativity, (iv) intersectionality and “thick intersectionality” (TI), and (v) new ways to engage in embodied translation in intercultural communication (Yep 2013). Highlighting the body as a sociocultural construction consisting of multiple signifiers, such as cultural meanings, orientation toward others, and gender performance, among many others, intercultural communication is, in many ways, about encounters with difference through the body. Such bodies take on fluid and shifting meanings based on particular cultural perspectives in time (i.e. history) and space (i.e. geopolitics). For example, the gender expression and cultural rituals performed by an effeminate same-­gender loving man in contemporary neoliberal Ghana might be understood as a member of the sasso community in Jamestown, a former colonial outpost in Accra, Ghana’s capital city (Otu  2019,  2022). Living and embodying “scrambled lives,” the sasso community is a constellation of self-­identified effeminate men closely connected with masculine women and even non-­effeminate men in its social orbit (Otu 2019, p. 214). The effeminate man’s body, however, takes on different cultural meanings in various contexts, such as between constituents of the sasso community, followers of the Anglican Church where the man sings and participates in religious service, and members of his own family (Otu  2019). In other words, his body is an embodied text with multiple local meanings and translations in Ghana. Intercultural communication in the United States tends to focus on encounters between different bodies, particularly with “other bodies” that are read and rendered as “foreign.” This involves, in Chávez’s (2009) words, an embodied translation, that is, the process of assigning meaning to “other bodies” from the perspective of the reader. For example, transnational lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) human rights organizations are likely to read the abovementioned effeminate same-­gender loving person as a “gay man.” The shift from multiple local meanings of bodily performances, as previously noted, to a transnational focus on sexual identity is imbued with relations of power. For this man to be “rescued” from national oppression (i.e. homophobia in Ghana) and to gain access to international aid, he must adopt an identity that is not of his own making (Otu 2019). While these organizations offer important relief, such as access to health care, they also impose embodied translations that make members of sasso communities more vulnerable, including exacerbation of homophobic repression and violence by the nation-state (Otu 2022). More simply put, the politics of rescue of international LGBT organizations are entangled with the politics of survival and vulnerability of local communities. As such, embodied translation is an instrument of power with many symbolic and material consequences for the bodies that are being translated, ranging from the alteration and erasure of local cultural meanings to potential diminishment of life chances, violence, and physical death. Embodied translations are influenced by systems of cultural normativities, that is, ways of viewing and defining bodies in terms of social and cultural expectations and desirability. Such systems become the standards through which bodies and bodily performances are assessed and declared to deviate within and across cultural systems (Yep 2019). Although there are differences in cultural manifestations and expressions, several normativities are particularly salient: heteronormativity, cisnormativity, homonormativity, transnormativity, and Western cultural normativity (Yep 2017). The normalization of heterosexuality as the unquestionable standard of sexual relations and relational arrangements in society (heteronormativity), the privileging of the apparent match between gender assignment, presentation, performance, and identity (cisgenderism), the elevation of “right” ways to perform lesbian or gay identities and embodiments (homonormativity), the expectation and visibility of certain bodily performances for



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gender non-­conforming people (transnormativity), and the hegemony of cultural meanings, values, bodily, and identity performances from the West and Global North (Western cultural normativity) are all implicated, in various ways, in embodied translations. For example, the notion of the “global gay” in post-­socialist China  – showcasing gym-­toned bodies in tight designer clothes, flaunting their economic and cultural capital, traveling to international gay destinations, and speaking Chinese and English proficiently  – embodies cisgenderism, homonormativity, and Western cultural normativity (Bao  2018). Similarly, the practice of xinghun, a new marriage arrangement between a gay man and a lesbian for social and cultural survival in mainland China, reproduces heteronormativity and cisgenderism (Huang 2018). Intersectionality is critical for examining the body, embodied translation, and systems of cultural normativity. By focusing on how various vectors of difference, such as race, gender, sexuality, class, and nation, among others, are read and rendered meaningful through bodily performances, intersectionality offers an important conceptual tool for understanding and unpacking embodied translation. Urging scholars to engage intersectionality in more nuanced, complex, and embodied ways, Yep (2010) introduced the notion of “thick intersectionality” (p. 173). TI highlights the importance of viewing identity as struggles against coherence to avoid premature closure, embracing the messiness of everyday experiences, exploring affect and affective investments of identity performances, and examining identity as lived and embodied rather than abstract social categories (Yep 2016). More simply put, TI emphasizes the need to pay closer attention to multiple bodily signifiers of difference and their complexities in the process of cultural translation. Finally, it is critical to examine the process of translation of bodies in intercultural communication by attending to its underlying relations of power. In particular, I suggested that “other bodies” should speak for themselves as subjects – and not simply serve as objects of knowledge for the researcher (Yep 2013). To honor their embodied voices is to recognize them as living and breathing authors of cultural knowledge. When these bodies articulate their experiences and realities – indeed their lives – in all their messy and glorious complexities, intercultural communication, in my view, becomes richer, more nuanced, and intricate renderings of their interactions and relations within and across differences in time and space. Taken together and illustrated with more current research, the 2013 article invites queer intercultural communication researchers to focus on “other bodies” and the process of embodied translation by paying attention to systems of cultural normativity, intersectional vectors of difference, and ways to engage in such translations to honor the historical context and cultural particularities of these bodies. After reflecting on and revisiting the original invitation, I encourage queer intercultural communication scholars to continue focusing on embodied translation of “other bodies” and to start exploring and examining “other bodies” in interaction, particularly how culturally unintelligible bodies relate to each other. I turn to the notion of queer relationalities next.

Queer Relationalities and “Other Bodies” in Interaction “Other bodies” have been relating, engaging, and connecting – indeed interacting – with each other for perhaps as long as normativities and othering processes have existed in and across cultures. For example, non-­normative sexual subjects in various cultures have developed ways of recognizing and connecting with each other in a sociocultural context of stigma, discrimination, exclusion, and danger. Such practices and communication activities are largely unintelligible in the mainstream cultural imagination  – locally and globally (Muñoz  2009; Weeks et al. 2001; Yep 2020a; Yep et al. 2022). Although cultural unintelligibility is critical for survival and community building for sexual minoritarian subjects in a culture, it also creates and spreads epistemic injustice – a harm perpetrated against these subjects in terms of their capacity

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as knower and legitimate source of their own lived experiences (Martínez 2013). Queer relationality mitigates epistemic injustice by centering the lived experiences of sexual minoritarians. By making these practices and communication activities visible and legitimate for exploration, queer relationality, as a theoretical concept and a political tool, challenges the dehumanization (e.g. the view that same-­gender loving people are less than human) and derealization (e.g. the view that gender non-­conforming people are not “real” in the cultural imagination) of sexual minoritarians by highlighting normative cultural violence (e.g. how certain bodies are devalued) and developing different modes of relating and interacting (e.g. how devalued bodies interact and thrive) (Yep et al. 2022). In short, queer relationality offers the promise for “other bodies” to be culturally legible and a source of valuable cultural knowledge. Inspired by José Esteban Muñoz’s (2006, p. 825) “thinking beyond antirelationality” in queer studies and focusing on queerness “as always on the horizon,” a fluid and emerging space of possibilities and potentialities, Yep (2017, pp. 119–120) started exploring queer relationality in communication. Framed as a preliminary conceptualization, he writes Queer relationality entails modes of recognition, systems of intelligibility, cultural expressions, affective articulations, encrypted sociality, embodied relations, forms of belonging, community formations, and collective histories of oppression that circulate outside of regimes of heteronormativity – but frequently in relation to it – characterized by potentiality and becoming as individuals inhabiting intersectional cultural non-­normativities negotiate and navigate their social worlds. Queer relationality involves spheres of intimacy, such as closeness, deep knowing, mutual attunement, sensuality, and eroticism that could range from fleeting to enduring, and spheres of desire, such as wishes, longings, needs, affinities, and yearnings that could range from internally held to externally articulated.

In a later rendering, Yep et al. (2022) further highlight the importance of culture, particularly when “other bodies” circulate and travel, physically and symbolically, in multiple cultural contexts, and the urgent need to examine these bodies outside of Western/Eurocentric worldviews. In the above conceptualization, queer relationality is a complex assemblage of communicative actions and cultural practices arising from individual and collective responses to the myriad manifestations of cultural normativity (e.g. heteronormativity, cisnormativity) and their related social arrangements and structural oppression (e.g. lack of cultural recognition and legal protection for same-­sex intimacies, violence against non-­normative bodies). As such, it encompasses multiple domains, spheres, and contexts. Domains refer to the breadth and scope of queer relationality. They include ways of seeing (e.g. recognizing that another person might be sexually non-­normative), frameworks of interpretation (e.g. recognizing a couple as practicing xinghun), cultural expressions (e.g. enacting relations in “families of choice”), affective exchange (e.g. expressing homoerotic sentiments), coded relations (e.g. a knowing glance of acknowledgement between non-­normative sexual subjects), embodied connection (e.g. a subtle intimate touch between two strangers), affinity and belonging (e.g. social support among members of the sasso community), community assemblies and collective arrangements (e.g. a physical and/or digital gathering space for sexual dissidents), and group histories of suffering and oppression (e.g. collective experiences of disenfranchisement and violence). Although these domains exist and function outside of regimes of heteronormativity, they exist in relation to it (e.g. xinghun in mainland China involves a same-­gender loving man and a same-­gender loving woman in a marriage without sex that reproduces the heteronormativity of the institution). Spheres refer to the sites and affective spaces of queer relationality. Although there are potentially numerous spheres, two are highlighted in the initial conceptualization – intimacy



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and desire (Yep 2017). Intimacy includes feelings of closeness and connection, deep knowing and understanding, mutual attunement, and sensuality and eroticism, among others. It can range from evanescent and fleeting (e.g. a powerful moment of deep connection) to enduring and lasting (e.g. an ongoing sensual and erotic charge). Desire encompasses wishes and aspirations, longings, needs and wants, affinities and attractions, and yearnings ranging from internal and subjectively experienced (e.g. deeply felt) to external and overtly articulated (e.g. shared and expressed). Desire can be an amalgamation of cognitive, ­affective, and bodily dimensions and components (e.g. a complex assembly of thoughts and images, intensity of feelings and emotional registers, and bodily sensations and expressions). Context refers to the situation, social climate, and cultural landscape of queer relationality. Culture – with its associated discourses (e.g. histories), representations (e.g. communication systems), structures (e.g. social institutions), ideologies (e.g. economic), and governance (e.g. politics) – is a critical context for the emergence and proliferation of queer relationalities. Research on queer relationalities has focused on various cultural contexts. Some have explored such relationalities in the United States. For example, Sachs (2022) – being born to lesbian parents from a gay male sperm donor with his daughter being born to lesbian parents using his sperm – explores queer relationality in his own family as multiple generations engage US cultural discourses of biology and history and idiosyncratic family relational narratives to define their current and anticipated future relationships and individual and group identities across time. Exploring queer relationalities in contemporary US family memoir, Carrillo Rowe (2022) examines alternative models of connection and kinship that render the equation of heterosexual coupling with reproduction unnatural through “a kind of haunting that cites, reverses, and defers the demands of [cultural] normativity” (p. 6). Continuing the investigation of queer relationalities and highlighting race, whiteness, homonationalism and failure in US culture, Eguchi and Calafell (2022) explore the gay male relationships in the first season of LOGO’s Fire Island. Further expanding queer relationalities to “other bodies” beyond materiality and toward virtual reality, Alaoui (2022) analyzes desire, connections, Blackness, and queer worldmaking in Black Mirror, a British series that explores the collisions of technological innovations with contemporary culture. Research on “other bodies” has also investigated queer relationalities in international and transnational cultural contexts. Focusing on queer Iranian Americans, Abdi (2022), for example, deploys the cultural construct of aberoo – the process of saving face for family and community  – to explore queer familial relationalities and critique white normativities in queer intercultural communication. Using autoethnography, Asante (2022) investigates queer relationality as a mode of interacting and a space that allows for spontaneous desires and pleasures that blurs the boundaries of normativity and non-­normativity in postcolonial Ghana. Through the analysis of his own lived experiences, Asante notes that queer relationality in the Ghanaian cultural context challenges Western cultural normativities around sexuality and the body. In sum, queer relationality is vast, intricate, and dense. As modes of interacting and connecting at the edges of mainstream cultural unintelligibility, queer relationality, as a theoretical construct and a political device, offers ways to recover these communication activities and cultural practices from delegitimization and erasure and to mitigate the ongoing epistemic injustice perpetrated against “other bodies.” As an emerging area of research in communication, more generally, and critical intercultural communication, more specifically, it can advance new possibilities for the exploration of “other bodies” in interaction. I discuss two examples of these relationalities in the next section.

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Queer Relationalities in Intercultural Communication: Two Examples To illustrate the exploration of queer relationalities in intercultural communication, I provide two brief examples – sasso and xinghun relationalities – emerging and circulating in two distinct cultural contexts. As such, they differ in terms of the domains, spheres, and contexts of queer relationality discussed in the previous section. Regarding spheres, or the affective sites of queer relationality, for example, sasso relationality, as explained by Asante (2022), is relatively ephemeral and temporary. Xinghun relationality, on the other hand, is much more enduring and stable (Huang  2018; Kam  2013). Sasso and xinghun emerge from different sociocultural, historical, and geopolitical circumstances – Ghana and China, respectively – and they circulate as culturally specific forms of queer relationalities and responses to the powerful transnational reach of Western and Eurocentric views of sexuality and the body.

Sasso Relationality Sasso is a polysemous term. According to Otu (2022), it refers to a diverse “community of [predominantly] self-­identified effeminate men . . . [and] part of a constellation of mostly gender non-­conforming subjects” (p. 2) in present-­day postcolonial Ghana. These subjects, irrespective of their gender presentation, have a tendency for homoerotic desires and engagement in same-­sex erotic activities. Linguistically, sasso emerged as a “tactic of language” commonly used by same-­gender-­loving-­men to manage sexual discretion, create interpersonal connection, and escape social recognition in their communication encounters (Asante 2022, p.  8). The term, however, is much more flexible and capacious. In his ethnography, Otu (2019) writes about a birth ceremony organized by a heterosexual couple – an effeminate man and a masculine woman – for their third child where the couple, the orchestration of the ceremony, and the people running the event were sasso. Using the event as an illustration, Otu (2019) notes that the linguistic universe of sasso, as an indigenous label, can signify people (e.g. a gender non-­conforming heterosexual couple), practices (e.g. ways of recognizing other people as sasso), relationships (e.g. connections between same-­gender loving people), and ideas (e.g. a particular type of sensibility in the organization and implementation of a birth ceremony). In other words, sasso, as a term, takes on different local meanings depending on context and event. Similarly, when referring to people, sasso implies multiple denotations and connotations. Such meanings are influenced by local and transnational contexts. Characterizing sasso as “amphibious subjects” to articulate the complexity of their lives to challenge the homogenizing impulses of the heterosexual investments of the Ghanaian nation-state and the anti-­ homophobic projects carried out by LGBT human rights organizations, Otu (2022, p.  9) highlights their sexual subjectivity and self-­making practices. More specifically, sasso subjects challenge the homogenizing conception that Ghana is a heterosexual nation and the contention that non-­heterosexual people as “foreign” to Ghana. Further, they contest the homogenizing agenda of LGBT human rights groups that attempt to reduce sasso subjectivity to sexual orientation categories such as lesbian, gay, and queer. In the ongoing contestation and resistance to these homogenizing forces, sasso subjectivity is “at once African and non-­African, colonial and anti-­colonial, nameable and unnamable, heterosexual and non-­heterosexual, visible and invisible, known and unknown, Western and non-­Western” (Otu 2022, p. 6). To put it differently, the complexity of sasso lives question the heterosexualization of sexual citizenship and the homogenization and imposition of sexual identity. Given the diversity, intricacy, and heterogeneity of sasso lifeworlds, there are numerous manifestations and expressions of queer relationalities. Focusing on the transient and temporary,



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and using his own embodied experiences as a source of knowledge, Asante (2022) defines sasso relationality “as a framework for making sense of the intimate moments where ­heteropatriarchal commitments . . . fail to reproduce its normative mandates on the body, thus allowing for alternative modes of relating and of experiencing pleasures to emerge in particular heteronormative spaces” (pp. 2–3). For example, Asante recounts moments of sasso relationality with another man while attending church, a space that epitomizes heteropatriarchy and demonizes gender non-­conforming individuals with same-­sex desires. Such moments, he notes, include touching, holding hands, looking deeply into each other’s eyes, and tight embraces, all performed in public view in a cultural context that allows the expression of closeness between men. In this sense, heteropatriarchy not only fails to produce heteronormativity but enables queer relationality in the process. In another narrative, Asante identifies similar moments of closeness – cuddling and falling asleep on a friend’s chest, a divorced man with two children  – in the man’s family home, a “space habituated by heteropatriarchal surveillance” (p. 14). Such moments allow for pleasure and healing and offers the potential to experience and imagine, in Muñoz’s (2009) words, “a restructured reality” (p. 7). Sasso relationality, according to Asante (2022), has three distinguishing features. First, it relies on nuances and subtleties, such as the domains of queer relationality discussed previously including modes of recognition, cultural expressions, encrypted sociality, embodied relations, among others. As such, sasso relationality does not rely on stable identity (e.g. lesbian, gay, straight) or the Western sexual binary system (e.g. homosexual/heterosexual) as the foundation for same-­sex intimacy. Second, it is highly contingent and contextual; it depends on time, place, and event. For example, a birth ceremony, a highly ritualized heteronormative event, can provide opportunities for sasso connection, intimacy, sharing of pleasure, and community building (Otu 2019). Finally, sasso relationality emerges in the liminal spaces between homoeroticism and heteroeroticism. In Asante’s (2022) narrative of visiting and engaging in an intimate connection with a friend (e.g. two adult men cuddling) in his family home signals the possibilities and potentialities of queer relationality, such as the spheres of intimacy and desire, discussed in the previous section.

Xinghun Relationality Xinghun is an increasingly popular relational form in urban China (Wang 2019). It refers to a marriage arrangement between a gay man and a “lala” – a woman with same-­sex desires and non-­normative gender – that allows Chinese queer subjects to remain in the family kinship system (Huang and Brouwer  2018; Kam  2013). Western representations have labeled this relational form as “fake marriage” or “sham marriage” (Huang and Brouwer 2018, p. 140). To avoid the problematic imposition of Western values and worldviews on non-­Western cultures, I, following Kam (2013), use “cooperative marriage” to refer to xinghun. As Wang (2019) points out, xinghun “is not merely functional without sustenance, but is contingent on the cooperation and negotiation between multiple parties in the relationship” (p. 13). Such cooperation and negotiation are indeed forms of queer relationality. Xingun emerges in a cultural context where the self exists in a web of social and familial relations in a kinship system where everyone is defined as a relational being in a hierarchical structure (Chou 2000). In this structure, the happiness of the parents is more important than of the adult child; in other words, family love (i.e. love between parent and offspring) is valued more than romantic love (i.e. love between intimate partners). The tension between these two types of love is exacerbated by the circulation of transnational LGBT discourses that positions the family against same-­ sex sexuality where the family is presented as “traditional” and “Chinese” (read “pre-­modern and backwards”) and same-­sex love as “modern” (Huang 2018). Xinghun surfaces as a queer relationality and an experimental relational form to alleviate some

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of the tensions (Kam  2013). It prioritizes family love for Chinese queers to remain in the ­kinship system while creating and negotiating spaces for sexual freedom to lead “a livable queer life” (Huang 2018, p. 139). As a form of queer relationality, xinghun is a site of “creative negotiation and practice of queer kinship” (Huang and Brouwer 2018, p. 146). These negotiations include gender presentation, gendered labor, children, finances, and living arrangements, among many others. The practice of queer kinship ranges from personal sexual freedom to endorsement and social support for same-­sex coupling within the xinghun structure. To perform “realness,” a number of negotiations, both episodic and ongoing, take place in xinghun (Huang and Brouwer 2018, p. 149). Gender presentation is important before individuals enter into a cooperative marriage and critical in sustaining its public appearance after marriage. Normative and recognizable performances of femininity and masculinity are expected so that the relationship is legible in heteronormative society (Huang and Brouwer  2018; Liu 2013). Once individuals enter into the marital union, there is negotiation about gendered labor, which falls heavily on the lalas. The women are expected to provide care and affective labor for the family home and extended kin (Liu and Tan 2020; Wang 2019). The decision to have children, how they are to be conceived and taken care of, and who pays for the expenses are areas of creative negotiation (Huang and Brouwer 2018; Liu and Tan 2020). Financial (e.g. separation of monetary resources, financial stability) and living arrangements (e.g. conditions of living together, ways of living apart) are important negotiations for the success and stability of the relationship (Liu  2013; Liu and Tan  2020). To put it differently, xinghun involves a multitude of negotiations and relationalities that, at the cultural level with its hegemonic patriarchal ideology, favors men over women. In addition to the performances of “realness,” xinghun relationality also involves practices of care. One such practice involves what Liu (2013) calls “commitment to homosexuality” to refer to being comfortable with one’s own sexual non-­normativity and understanding that the cooperative marriage partners are in same-­sex committed relationships of their own (p. 504). Compared to monogamous unions, xinghun partners accept and embrace these extramarital relationships openly and explicitly (e.g. a lala in a xinghun has her own committed same-­sex partner with whom she shares her life). Building camaraderie, another practice of care, is about providing support for each other in the marital union as gay men and lalas in a social world of tongzhi – a polysemous term used to refer to same-­sex affinities without denouncing a Chinese familial-­cultural identity (Chou 2000) – stigma, marginalization, and hardship. Such support involves an active process of sharing, listening, and respecting each other; honoring secrets and commitments; and having common goals. In short, it is about building solidarity between gay men and lalas, within their own xinghun structures and in the larger tongzhi communities (Wang 2019).

Contesting Western Views of Sexuality and the Body Although sasso and xinghun relationalities are distinctively different ways of relating, engaging, connecting, and interacting in a social world that renders non-­normative sexual and gender subjects’ experiences and lives invisible, marginal, and unintelligible in their own cultural systems and on a transnational stage, they challenge Western views of sexuality and the body. Sasso relationality, as noted earlier, contest the homosexual-­heterosexual binary that serves as the foundation of Western sexuality by highlighting the cautious, covert, subtle, and coded forms of same-­sex intimacy and desire (Asante 2022; Yep et al. 2020). In addition, it challenges Western conceptions of a stable and coherent sexual identity by focusing more on actions and communication practices than processes of self-­identification.



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Similarly, xinghun relationality questions the separation between sexuality and the biogenetic family and the assertion that they are incompatible by showcasing a relational form incorporating both (Huang 2018, 2022). Further, as Huang (2018) argues, “Chinese culture does not view same-­sex romance as inherently incompatible with heterosexual union. Xinghun [relationality] exemplifies how a heterosexual relationship does not necessarily exclude same-­ sex desire” (p. 144). Indeed, xinghun queers conventional notions of marriage by transforming the structure of marital relationships between a man (a gay man) and a woman (a lala) and expanding it to include their own same-­sex relationships (Huang 2018; Wang 2019). Calling cooperative marriage a form of “culturally specific resistance,” Huang (2018, p. 148) reflects on its queer potential by shifting the Western discourse of sexual rights, based on individualism, to a politics of a livable life in community. Sasso and xinghun showcase the rich and complex world of relationalities arising out of resistance to systems of cultural normativity, such as heteronormativity. Together, they provide culturally specific manifestations of queer relationalities and dispute the universality of Western views of sexuality and “other bodies” in interaction.

Theoretical and Methodological Implications After reflecting on and revisiting Yep’s (2013) article, this chapter invites critical intercultural communication scholars to expand their investigation of “other bodies” to the exploration of these bodies in interaction. To do so, I introduced the notion of queer relationality. As a theoretical concept, queer relationality focuses on “other bodies” relating, engaging, connecting, and interacting that are frequently unintelligible within and across cultural contexts. As a political tool, queer relationality insists on epistemic justice by centering the experiences of these bodies as authors of queer intercultural communication knowledge. After a discussion of some of the preliminary features of the vast landscape of queer relationalities, I offered two brief examples – sasso and xinghun – circulating in different geopolitical and cultural contexts and how they subvert dominant Western views of sexuality and the body. In this final section, I explore some of the theoretical and methodological implications of queer relationalities in critical intercultural communication research. Theoretically, I continue to call for a focus on the body and the process of embodied translation by being acutely attentive to the dynamics of power, particularly unmarked systems of cultural normativity. In addition, I suggest a focus on thick intersectionality, the messy and unruly experiences and realities of “other bodies” in the cultural domain, and the ways such bodies interact – locally and transnationally. Further, I call for the decentering of hegemonic views of sexuality and the body that are based on Western and Eurocentric assumptions by engaging in two simultaneous moves – one constructive and one deconstructive. As a constructive move, it is critical that queer intercultural communication theory building attends to cultural specificities and dense particularities of “other bodies,” including their spatial, political, and historical contexts. Dense particularities, according to Alexander (2021), refer to the constellation of lived and imagined differences, complexities of identity and their intersections, interlocking oppressions, community formation and organizing, and lived and historical cultural experiences in and of the body. Xinghun relationalities, for example, provide dense particularities of this new relational form in modern China arising out of the tensions between Chinese and transnational discourses of sexuality and the ways Chinese queer subjects negotiate sexual freedom within a kinship system and heteropatriarchal culture to create and sustain a livable life. These explorations of queer relationality offer new insights into how marginalized and invisible cultural groups engage in the politics of survival to exist, live, and thrive. Such insights can provide detailed accounts of “other bodies” in interaction

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and further enhance our understanding of the dynamics of power in critical intercultural communication. As more queer relationality research expands our understanding of unintelligible bodies and marginalized communities, a culturally specific corpus of intercultural communication knowledge is generated. The dense particularities of this work will, in many ways, continue to ­challenge universal Western discourses of sexuality and the body. For example, sasso relationality provides a view of sexuality and eroticism that is not based on a stable sexual identity and its concomitant politics of visibility, recognition, and contestation. As such, it gestures to different ways of organizing for social, cultural, and political change that are simultaneously local and transnational – that is, attentive to particular community conditions in Ghana and responsive to global LGBT discourses. As a deconstructive move, it is critical that queer intercultural communication theory and research be profoundly self-­reflexive and deeply attentive to its politics, such as reification of Western and Eurocentric views in their projects that can serve as weapons of colonialism and imperialism under the guise of cultural “progress” (Yep et al. 2020, 2022). For example, the performance of “coming out”  – the revelation of one’s same-­sex affinities and desires  – in intercultural communication, might be consciously, and perhaps less consciously, elevated as universal and celebrated as a sign of advancement, sexual freedom, and cultural progress by not attending to its cultural assumptions and particularities (e.g. Western values of individualism and personal autonomy, personal and collective economic privileges and advantages that other cultural communities do not have). In so doing, it celebrates the authority and dominance of the West. The performance of coming out becomes “hardened” through processes of sedimentation, calcification, and ossification in research (Yep 2020b). When coming out is normalized as more desirable in a cultural system (sedimentation), when it becomes taken-­for-­ granted in a culture (calcification), and when it becomes unquestionable in a global system (ossification), the cultural practice of coming out becomes universal and the standard through which all cultures are judged, compared, and declared to deviate. Since same-­gender loving people in post-­socialist China, for example, are not readily coming out  – compared to the United States – these communities are deemed “traditional,” “less advanced,” and perhaps “pre-­modern” and tacitly celebrate the superiority of the West as modern, liberated, and culturally “advanced.” In the process, “other bodies” and their cultures become marginalized and pathologized, which underscores the importance of self-­reflexivity and attention to the politics of the research. Methodologically, it is critical to focus, as discussed earlier, on the experiences of “other bodies.” Critical ethnography, personal narratives, performance ethnography, autoethnography, oral histories, and performative writing, among others, seem to be particularly suitable – supple and sensitive to dense cultural particularities – for the exploration and examination of “other bodies” in interaction (Yep et al. 2020). Focusing more specifically on queer relationalities, Lescure (2022) suggests going beyond normative data based on “observable materiality,” such as cultural texts, interviews, and behavioral observations, and attending to the ephemeral and the less tangible, such as memory, sensation, and affect, to narrate the experiences and lives of “other bodies” disciplined, surveilled, erased, and rendered unintelligible by systems of cultural normativity (p. 3). In this sense, there is a lot of room for methodological development, experimentation, expansion, and innovation. As Nakayama and Halualani (2013) note, there are multiple and unending crossroads that could be taken as critical intercultural communication grows and develops. Attention to sexuality and its correlated vectors has led to the emergence and establishment of queer intercultural communication as a vital area of inquiry. As we move forward on this path, exploring the “vast lifeworld of queer relationality” (Muñoz 2009, p. 6) in multiple cultural contexts offers, in my view, the promise to expand critical intercultural communication, theoretically, and politically.



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Note 1 It is important to acknowledge that communication research “dealing with both queer and intercultural communication has existed for a long time. However, these works did not receive recognition as intercultural because of their ‘queer’ elements” (Eguchi and Calafell 2020, p. 3). By explicitly connecting intercultural and queer and giving it a recognizable name, Chávez’s (2013) special issue of a leading disciplinary journal, published by the National Communication Association, (re)invigorated and strengthened the focus and direction of queer intercultural communication. I dedicate this essay to Pierre Lucas, my furry bodhisattva, for teaching me about love, connection, and communication across differences. Finally, I thank Drs. Halualani and Nakayama for their patience and understanding during the preparation of this essay.

References Abdi, S. (2022). Worldmaking with aberoo: queer familial relationality with/for Iranian Americans. Journal of Homosexuality. https://doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2022.2103878. Alaoui, F.Z.C. (2022). “You know it’s different in the game man”: technodesiring, technorelating, and technoBlackness as analytical modes of queer worldmaking in Black Mirror’s, “Striking Vipers”. Journal of Homosexuality. https://doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2022.2103876. Alexander, B.K. (2021). Dense particularities: race, spirituality, and queer/quare intersectionalities. In: The Routledge Handbook of Gender and Communication (eds. M.N. Goins, J.F. McAlister, and B.K. Alexander), 18–44. London: Routledge. Asante, G. (2022). Unexpected intimacies: exploring sasso relationality in postcolonial Ghana. Journal of Homosexuality. https://doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2022.2121193. Bao, H. (2018). Queer Comrades: Gay Identity and Tongzhi Activism in Postsocialist China. Copenhagen: NIAS Press. Carrillo Rowe, A. (2022). Akin to kin: queer relationalities in contemporary family memoir. Journal of Homosexuality. https://doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2022.2103877. Chávez, K.R. (2009). Embodied translation: dominant discourse and with migrant bodies-­as-­text. The Howard Journal of Communication 20 (1): 18–36. https://doi.org/10.1080/10646170802664912. Chávez, K.R. (2013). Pushing boundaries: queer intercultural communication. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 6 (2): 83–95. https://doi.org/10.1080/17513057.2013.777506. Chou, W.-­S. (2000). Tongzhi Politics of Same-­Sex Eroticism in Chinese Societies. New  York: Haworth Press. Collier, M.J., Hegde, R.S., Lee, W. et al. (2001). Dialogue on the edges: ferment in communication and culture. International and Intercultural Communication Annual 24: 219–280. Eguchi, S. (2021). On the horizon: desiring global queer and trans* studies in international and intercultural communication. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 14: 275–283. https://doi.org/10.1080/17513057.2021.1967684. Eguchi, S. and Calafell, B.M. (2020). Introduction: reorienting queer intercultural communication. In: Queer Intercultural Communication: The Intersectional Politics of Belonging in and Across Differences (eds. S. Eguchi and B.M. Calafell), 1–16. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Eguchi, S. and Calafell, B.M. (2022). Queer relationalities, impossible: the politics of homonationalism and failure in LOGO’s Fire Island. Journal of Homosexuality. https://doi.org/10.1080/00918369. 2022.2103873. Huang, S. (2018). Beyond the sex-­love-­marriage alignment: Xinghun among queer people in mainland China. In: Queer Families and Relationships after Marriage Equality (eds. M. Yarbrough, J.N. DeFilippis, and A. Jones), 136–149. New York: Routledge. Huang, S. (2021). Why does communication need transnational queer studies? Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 18 (2): 204–211. https://doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2021.1907850. Huang, S. (2022). Reclaiming family, reimagining queer relationality. Journal of Homosexuality. https:// doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2022.2106466.

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Huang, S. and Brouwer, D.C. (2018). Negotiating performances of “real” marriage in Chinese queer xinghun. Women’s Studies in Communication 41 (2): 140–158. https://doi.org/10.1080/074914 09.2018.1463581. Kam, L.Y.L. (2013). Shanghai Lalas: Female Tongzhi Communities and Politics in Urban China. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Lescure, R.M. (2022). (Extra)ordinary relationalities: methodological suggestions for studying queer relationalities through the prism of memory, sensation, and affect. Journal of Homosexuality. https://doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2022.2103872. Liu, M. (2013). Two gay men seeking two lesbians: an analysis of xinghun (formality marriage) ads on China’s Tyanya.cn. Sexuality & Culture 17: 494–511. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-­ 012-­9164-­z. Liu, T. and Tan, C.K.K. (2020). On the transactionalisation of conjugal bonds: a feminist materialist analysis of Chinese xinghun marriages. Anthropological Forum 30 (4): 443–463. https://doi.org/ 0.1080/00664677.2020.1855108. Martínez, E.J. (2013). On Making Sense: Queer Race Narratives of Intelligibility. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Muñoz, J.E. (2006). Thinking beyond antirelationality and antiutopianism in queer critique. PMLA 121 (3): 825–826. https://doi.org/10.1632/S0030812900165885. Muñoz, J.E. (2009). Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. New  York: New  York University Press. Nakayama, T.K. and Halualani, R.T. (2013). Conclusion: envisioning the pathway(s) of critical intercultural communication studies. In: The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication (eds. T.K. Nakayama and R.T. Halualani), 595–600. Malden, MA: Wiley. Otu, K.E. (2019). Normative collusions and amphibious evasions: the contested politics of queer self-­ making in neoliberal Ghana. In: The Routledge Handbook of Queer African Studies (ed. S.N. Nyeck). London and New York: Routledge. Otu, K.E. (2022). Amphibious Subjects: Sasso and the Contested Politics of Queer Self-­Making in Neoliberal Ghana. Oakland, CA: University of California Press. Sachs, A.D. (2022). Family pictures: the queer relationalities of multigenerational queer family. Journal of Homosexuality. https://doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2022.2121194. Wang, S.Y. (2019). When tongzhi marry: experiments of cooperative marriage between lalas and gay men in urban China. Feminist Studies 45 (1): 13–35. Weeks, J., Heaphy, B., and Donovan, C. (2001). Same-­Sex Intimacies: Families of Choice and Other Life Experiments. London: Routledge. Yep, G.A. (2010). Toward the de-­subjugation of racially marked knowledges in communication. Southern Communication Journal 75 (2): 171–175. https://doi.org/10.1080/10417941003613263. Yep, G.A. (2013). Queering/quaring/kauering/crippin’/transing “other bodies” in intercultural communication. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 6 (2): 118–126. https://doi.org/10.1080/17513057.2013.777087. Yep, G.A. (2016). Toward thick(er) intersectionalities: theorizing, researching, and activating the complexities of communication and identities. In: Globalizing Intercultural Communication: A Reader (eds. K. Sorrells and S. Sekimoto), 86–94. Los Angeles: Sage. Yep, G.A. (2017). Further notes on healing from “The violence of heteronormativity in Communication Studies”. QED: A Journal of GLBTQ Worldmaking 4 (2): 115–122. https://doi.org/10.14321/ qed.4.2.0115. Yep, G.A. (2019). Becoming a bridge in/through critical communication scholarship: meditations on the affective afterlife of cultural normativities. In: This Bridge We Call Communication: Anzaldúan Approaches to Theory, Method, and Praxis (eds. L.H. Hernández and R. Gutierrez-­Perez), 335–355. Lanham, MD: Lexington. Yep, G.A. (2020a). Queer relationalities in the era of social distancing. QED: A Journal of GLBTQ Worldmaking 7 (3): 167–173. https://doi.org/10.14321/qed.7.3.0167. Yep, G.A. (2020b). Towards a performative turn in intercultural communication. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research 49 (5): 484–493. https://doi.org/10.1080/17475759.2020.1802325. Yep, G.A., Lescure, R.M., and Russo, S.E. (2019). Queer intercultural communication. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.170.



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Yep, G.A., Alaoui, F.Z.C., and Lescure, R.M. (2020). Relationalities in/through difference: explorations in queer intercultural communication. In: Queer Intercultural Communication: The Intersectional Politics of Belonging in and across Differences (eds. S. Eguchi and B.M. Calafell), 19–45. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Yep, G.A., Alaoui, F.Z.C., and Lescure, R.M. (2022). Mapping queer relationalities: an exploration of communication at the edges of cultural unintelligibility. Journal of Homosexuality. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/00918369.2022.2103875.

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Theorizing at the End of the World: Transforming Critical Intercultural Communication S. Lily Mendoza Oakland University, Rochester, MI

To understand the present contingently . . . always requires grasping it in its conjunctural specificity, in terms of the new problem-­space of questions it poses, and the possibilities it both lays open and shuts down. (Scott 2005, p. 5)

Impetus for Disciplinary Transformation The stakes have never been higher. A catastrophic climate change. An ongoing pandemic. Ecosystems collapsing. The earth’s carrying capacity stretched to the limit. Economies stalling. “Alternative facts” replacing the knowledge commons. Democratic institutions (or what’s left of them) fraying. Fascism on the rise. And as the situation gets more dire, without clarity on the narrative, the scapegoating of the most vulnerable – the poor, the marginalized, Black, Brown, Indigenous, Trans, the differently-­abled, the old, and other “disposable” populations – is certain and, in fact, is already here. This is no longer a future scenario, but a very present and already ongoing predicament. In a letter warning on “climate and the risk of societal collapse” over 500 scientists and scholars from more than 30 countries (and representing dozens of academic disciplines) call for an open, honest and “[r]esponsible communication of research [on climate change] and its implications for policy dialogue”1 (Bendell 2021). And in this regard, we are well reminded by the eminent cultural theorist Stuart Hall (1988) of our task as scholars when he writes: The purpose of theorizing is not to enhance one’s intellectual or academic reputation but to e­ nable us to grasp, understand, and explain – to produce a more adequate knowledge of – the historical world and its processes; and thereby to inform our practice so that we may transform it. (p. 36)

And what more urgent time than this moment (of existential precarity) to take seriously this work of transformation! Academic disciplines, as systems of representation, have been (and are) powerful producers of authoritative knowledge, serving an iterative/reproductive (i.e. constitutive) function in the material world when adopted as viewing lenses. In their hegemonic formations, they have The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication, Second Edition. Edited by Thomas K. Nakayama and Rona Tamiko Halualani. © 2024 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2024 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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tended to rationalize the status quo, preserve elite advantage, and support ideological projects in service of the ruling order. In a lot of ways, they can be said to have been complicit with the thinking that has led to the multi-­pronged crisis we are currently facing today. To argue then for disciplinary transformation particularly in such a time as this is simply to state the obvious. Indeed, over the course of their respective histories, whether speaking of anthropology, philosophy, sociology, psychology, communication, or the humanities, the disciplinary canons have been called to task repeatedly for their arbitrary foreclosures, challenged by marginalized voices (BIPOC, LGBTQ, and scholars from the Global South) and their foundational knowledge-­claims shown to be shot through with subjective assumptions and presuppositions, inchoate political calculations and investments, and default (Enlightenment) epistemological biases and prejudices, contrary to earlier claims of being mere transparent and “objective” accounting of the world “as it truly is.” The rise of the critical tradition in the various disciplines is paradigmatic of this kind of self-­ interrogation – one that has seen currency in the last five or so decades beginning with what has been called variously as the “linguistic,” “interpretive,” “narrative,” and, more recently, the “post-­theory discursive,” turn (of poststructuralism, postmodernism, and postcolonialism) in the theoretical literature that focused on the constitutive function of the disciplinary viewing lenses contrary to positivism’s presumption of a transparent and unmediated access to knowledge about the world. Consequently, Truth (with a capital T) began to be recast more modestly as “truth-­claims” or “regimes of truth,” calling attention to the inevitable i­ mbrication of all claims to knowledge in the exercise of disciplinary power (Foucault 1972). Intercultural communication (IC), a discipline concerned with the dynamics of communicative encounters between people groups, is no exception in regard to this historical disciplinary trajectory. To briefly rehearse that history as a way of mapping such a similar critical turn in the IC discipline, I set out the following overview summary. Intercultural historian Wendy Leedz-­Hurwitz (1990) tracks the originary impetus of the IC discipline to the Foreign Service Institute, i.e. the need to train foreign service personnel in cross-­cultural competency for their prospective assignments abroad in the aftermath of World War II. Much of the motivation that undergirded such a project, however, was not so much the fostering of intercultural understanding as the servicing of the U.S.’ Cold War priorities during this period. As intellectual historian Carl Pletsch (1981) notes in his essay, “The Three Worlds, or the Division of Social Scientific Labor, circa 1950–1975,” the Cold War did not only divide the globe into three conceptual worlds (the so-­called First World or capitalist nations of the West, Second World, or socialist nations of Eastern Europe/USSR, and the Third World, or the “underdeveloped” nations), it cast the last of the three, i.e. the so-­called “Third World,” consisting of (yet) unaligned countries, as nothing more than booty – up for grabs between the first two. To name only one of the profound consequences of this conceptualization of the globe regarding social scientific labor, one may note the naturalization of the modernization paradigm that assumed the linear progression from a state of so-­called “underdevelopment” to “modernity” as the logical, even inevitable, trajectory for all societies the world over, auguring Stuart Hall’s (1992) later reference to the regnant discourse of the “West and the Rest” (where the idea of the West, far from signifying merely as a geographic category, is made to serve as a standard or “criteria of evaluation by which other societies are ranked and around which powerful positive and negative feelings cluster, e.g. ‘the West’ = developed = good = desirable; or ‘the non-­West’ = under-­developed = bad = undesirable” (p. 186)). Harboring a logic of conquest, progressivism, and endless advancement and expansionism, such paradigmatic conceptualization is one that led to a quest for military power and the placing of social scientific knowledge in service of the attempts of the First and the Second World to expand their respective spheres of influence  – a devastating project that led to the widespread destruction of all local autonomy and the inevitable pull toward corporate colonization ­ and dependency particularly in the ensuing era of intensified globalization.



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Intercultural Communication as a discipline was not inured to this paradigmatic formation given its provenance in the post-­World War II politics of the Cold War era, as already mentioned. However, with the rise of the Civil Rights Movement and the postwar decolonization movements that swept much of the world through to the 1960s and the 1970s, particularly in Africa and Asia, a new concern for representing oppressed and minoritized voices and perspectives (in regard to race, class, gender and other categories of difference) began to be articulated in the IC literature (cf. Moon  1996). But by the 1980s, this nascent turn to critical inquiry suffered a serious setback with the return to dominance of conservative politics in the form of Reaganomics in the United States and Thatcherism in Great Britain – a backlash seeking to overturn the gains of the protest movements of the decolonization era. Furthermore, pressure for the young field of intercultural communication to qualify itself as a true “science” compelled it to turn its focus during this time to securing disciplinary legitimation through the adoption of nomothetic2 statistical and mathematical models borrowed mostly from the more “established” discipline of psychology (that treated culture mainly as a fixed variable tested largely within acontextual interpersonal contexts). Although some pushback from scholars coming from non-­Western traditions also began in earnest even during this time period, it was not until the mid-­1990s that IC scholars trained in critical theory began raising serious concern about the power effects of such ahistorical and decontextualized accounting of intercultural interactions. Moreover, the new context of corporate globalization and the imposition of neoliberal policies on struggling economies not only intensified privileged travel such as tourism and business, but more significantly, also saw the forced migration of impoverished populations as capital searched for ever cheaper labor in service of the bottom line and continuously pulled resources northward from the South decimating those countries’ economies. Over time, the contexts of intercultural encounters became those of poor migrant workers, domestic help, so-­called “mail-­order brides,” overseas contract workers, refugees, slave laborers in sweat shops, and, as a result, more recently, the spectacular “terrorism” of the weak3 in response to the prosaic everyday terrorism of state and corporate-­ sponsored immiseration of those often treated as “disposable populations” (Bales  2012). Thus, critical scholars keenly attuned to social justice issues increasingly began to emphasize the importance of theorizing not just from the vantage point of interpersonal dynamics in intercultural encounters but from the larger macro socio-­historical-­political-­economic structural formations framing such, which then ultimately resulted in alternative sense-­making analysis tempered by the view from below (the power divide) (cf. Collier et al. 2001; Gonzalez and Peterson  1993; Halualani  1998; Martin and Nakayama  1999; Mendoza  2001,  2005; Mendoza et al. 2003; Moon 1996, 2002; Starosta and Chen 2001, among others). Important as these critical theoretical moves were beginning in the mid-­1990s, today, we are faced yet again with the challenge of addressing what may now be the most pertinent context for all intercultural encounters: the context of climate change driven by corporate extractivist logic that has been ravaging ecologies around the globe, causing massive social dislocations and forced migrations, and escalating global and local inter-­group conflict as the mad scramble for the earth’s last remaining “resources” intensifies. This is a context threatening not just economic, but wholesale civilizational, collapse,4 not to mention the renewed threat of nuclear war.5 How respond to such a new theoretical imperative while continuing to grapple with the stubbornly persistent issues of our time that continue to plague our everyday inter-­group relations (e.g. racism, classism, gender discrimination, etc.) is the question we find staring us in the face as critical IC scholars. I would say that such becomes a conundrum only when the two sets of concerns are treated as competing or separable rather than connected and intricately interwoven. This is what happened at a conference when, in consideration of the challenge of climate change, I, as a panelist in a critical IC session, critiqued the field’s exclusively anthropocentric orientation, arguing that what is going on ecologically is perhaps the most critical context for theorizing IC phenomena and another panelist (most concerned with race and LGBTQ issues), visibly agitated, reacted strongly, protesting in anger and saying, in effect,

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“How can you even suggest focusing on other creatures when the concerns of people getting shot (e.g. Black Lives Matter) aren’t even being addressed?” In a journal essay I co-­wrote with critical IC scholar, Etsuko Kinefuchi, titled “Two Stories, One Vision: A Plea for an Ecological Turn in Intercultural Communication” (2016), we intimated that far from having to choose among competing demands, what is being asked of us at this moment of our species’ history is precisely to do what I always thought we do best as IC scholars – to connect the dots, to stand in the interstices (of social, political, and historical formations) and find the interconnections between worlds (the “inter” in “intercultural communication” denoting the critical bridging work we do in the field [cf. Mendoza  2006, p. xxv]). Comfortable analyses circumscribed within narrow, well-­boundaried research areas will no longer (if they ever did) suffice (life, after all, is not lived sliced up into neat disciplinary domains); we survive or perish based on the adequacy of our explaining narratives. For this, we are being called to reclaim the staunchly interdisciplinary roots of our field and to become bricoleurs, that is, using whatever tools and insights are available from anywhere and everywhere to draw those interconnections and explore the boundaries and interstices between bodies of knowledge. As Argentinian semiotician Walter Mignolo reminds us, “[T]heory is wherever you find it” (in Yako 2021). More importantly, our challenge is to strive to move from exclusively deconstructive modes of theorizing (critique of what is wrong) to more reconstructive visions of the possible (what ought to be), which seems clearly now the call of the hour if we are to make meaningful interventions in the ongoing planetary crisis. In this chapter, I outline what I see are important theoretical moves in urging our field to go beyond critique toward a place of transformative analysis that might open up new vistas of creative engagement with a world that in a very real sense is “coming to [some kind of] an end.” In this, the goal is not merely disciplinary survival, but placing whatever unique tools and perspectives developed in our field in service of birthing a new, hopefully more habitable and more beautiful world. The following theoretical moves are by no means exhaustive, but meant to provide an alternative ground for re-­theorizing some of the field’s key concepts – a project I personally find exciting and hopeful.

Keeping Grounded: Holding Theory Accountable to the “Least of These” “When a culture is in crisis, genius comes not from the center, but from the edge,” says British mythologist Martin Shaw.6 I have found this to be true in my own experience as a scholar. Key to keeping myself responsive (and responsible) to the critical project is having one leg outside of academe, namely, learning from marginalized communities (e.g. Indigenous peoples fighting development aggression and land dispossession both at home7 and on Turtle Island, diasporic Filipinos and other BIPOC coping with historic and ongoing trauma of colonial and racial oppression, and poor folk in the city where I live),8 most of whom will never darken the hallowed halls of our institutions of learning. It is these kinds of on-­the-­ground involvements that have been the source of theoretical insight for me. For one, they allow me to hear an alternative report on the world than that broadcast on the mainstream press. For where does one go to have one’s eyes opened to see the cracks and seams of the reigning ideology if not to those for whom the dominant ideology does not work? Shaw (2011) calls this the gift of “edge-­seeing,” one requiring capacity for “tremendous subtlety” of analysis and vision (p.  77). Likewise, Hall (1997) sees this work (of learning to locate the cracks and suturings of ideology) as imperative, noting the way symbolic hegemonic power attains efficacy precisely by “declar[ing] itself to be universal and closed.” Purporting its boundaries to be “coterminous with the truth,” its aim is to attain the coveted “moment of naturalization” (p. 68) – when its contingent oeuvre is able to be seen



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merely as a “given” (i.e. “natural,” given in nature), thereby rendering critique or i­ nterrogation superfluous, if not impossible. The task of the critical scholar then is to track the aberrant, the anomalous, that which escapes ideology’s disciplining and defining conditionalities. It is here, in the fugitive occurrences, that Hall rests whatever optimism he has. He says, “That’s my hope. Something had better be escaping [hegemony’s boundaries]” (p. 68). Thus, our task is to seek those places of anomaly that belie the dominant regime’s truth-­ claims and hallowed promises (e.g. meritocracy’s dictum: “If you work hard enough, you can be whomever and do whatever you want”). And where might we find such places if not in the margins – in the cries of the disempowered, the so-­called “misfits,” the impoverished, those whose bodily groanings mark a differently animated speech, dismissed conveniently (and ­predictably) within the reigning ideology as nothing more than the disgruntled grumblings of “lazy losers,” “welfare queens,” or “free loaders,” never the righteous cries of the dispossessed and laboring masses, unjustly put in early graves by systems of oppression whose long historical pedigree in the modern world has yet to be fully reckoned with.9 It is this unlanguaged groan of the oppressed and marginalized – and I argue, not just that of human but of the more-­than-­human beings – that must be allowed its own mode of articulation and paid attention to by us, scholars and theorists of this late hour. And the task before us is, first of all, that of “bearing witness,” not simply writing on or studying about “them.” To bear witness is to be in actual presence, body-­to-­body with the suffering, relating long enough to see not only such sufferers’ victimhood and oppression (which too easily only leads to patronage, not alliance) but their beleaguered potential, capacity for life, survivance, and gift of insight. Self-­interested advocacy deriving from our place of settled comfort will not do. As medical anthropologist Paul Farmer (2005) quotes a paraphrase of a warning issued by Laura Nader years ago: “Don’t study the poor and powerless, because everything you say about them will be used against them” (p. 16). In other words, “the poor” should not be studied as a “specimen,” but engaged as colleagues and even tutors whose particular genius and vulnerability must not be unthinkingly exhibited in an extractive and surveilling world. For another, on-­the-­ground involvement with the margins helps open us up to other ways of knowing and engaging (besides conscious cognition and verbal expression), introducing us to such modes of communication as affective, inchoate, intuitive, tacit, bodily modes of knowing and energetic exchange (what Australian-­born American feminist philosopher and social-­ political theorist Teresa Brennan (2004) calls, “the transmission of affect” [from the book title]), “the study of the energetic and affective connections between an individual, other people and the surrounding environment” (p.  10). As well, it may acquaint us with older modes of communicative transaction facilitated, for example, by what Czech-­born psychiatrist Stanislav Grof and author, writer, teacher, psychiatrist Christina Grof (2010) calls “technologies of the sacred”10 – shamanic and other holotropic practices11 often pathologized, if not demonized, by the rationalistic Christian West but an important resource for thriving and survival especially among folk not yet reduced into dissociated, citified, individuals abstracted from land, community, and the spirit world. And here, I’m already hinting at one helpful theoretical move, and that is, to understand that what we have valorized in our Western academic training as typical modes of communicative exchange (i.e. verbal, rational, conscious) are only a fraction of the whole repertoire of available communicative capacities when we begin to allow ourselves (and our bodies) to be hailed by other worlds, in particular, the more-­than-­human worlds of nature and spirit beings often precluded from consideration or engagement within the monocultural discourse of Western Enlightenment rationality.12 My own radical transformative experience in this regard came not through the instrumentality of conscious cognition but in a profoundly epiphanic experience of sensation and “body-­ wisdom,” provoked by my first-­time encounter with the world of the Indigenous and the differing subjectivity of our still land-­based peoples in my home country, the Philippines – one

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that never previously entered my conscious awareness except as a remnant of “primitivism,” a pitifully unevolved comportment or subjectivity which the likes of me (urbanized, educated, and Christianized) had been fortunate enough to escape and leave behind. It is a pivotal moment that served as a fundamental break in my colonial ideological subjection. The occasion was a graduate seminar in the Humanities at the University of the Philippines titled, “The Image of the Filipino in the Arts” (or perhaps more aptly monikered “Filipino ‘Indio-­Genius’” in the vernacular savvy of a native person’s mispronunciation of the word “Indigenous” taken up subsequently by independent filmmaker, Kidlat Tahimik, as a favorite descriptor). Here (in the seminar) was an ethnomusicology professor, known for his first-­hand research among our various Indigenous communities, least penetrated by the civilizing mission of modern schooling and Christianization, regaling us with such communities’ cultural creations and what they expressed by way of a different mode of being in the world. Here were land-­taught cultures with their dizzying array of rhythmic dances, mellifluous singing, traditions of dreamweaving and trance-­induced techniques of embroidery, complex cosmologies encoded in mythic stories and epic chants, and lessons for living well “in place” taught to generations and kept alive through ritual ceremony and deep listening to the land. I describe that momentous epiphany as my most consequential intercultural encounter thus far, as I write at length in an essay (Mendoza 2020): That first-­time encounter with indigenously-­authored beauty opened me up to a whole new world – one only peripherally glimpsed in my colonial upbringing as a world we, Filipinos, had to leave behind if we were ever to “advance” and come into our “full humanity.” . . . In that class, however, I was smitten. I fell in love, awestruck not only by the beauty of Indigenous design, but by the ritual subtlety and cosmological complexity of the worlds that gave birth to such brilliant artistic creations. Here were peoples whom I had only heard talked about previously as “napag-­iwanan ng panahon,” “left-­behind by the times.” Yet, the effect of that first-­ time encounter with their different way of being as revealed through their works of art was a quickening of what British mythologist Martin Shaw calls “bone memory.” Like a lab-­raised chick shuddering when a hawk-­shaped shadow is passed overhead in the lab when it has never seen a hawk before and does not shudder at other shadows, I, too, responded with bodily tremor. But from recognition the opposite of fear! Walking out of every class session, heaves of emotion and copious tears would overwhelm me, flooding me with homecoming relief after what had seemed like an interminable exile from my own Indigenous soul – the consequence of years of unrelenting psychic disconfirmation through colonial tutelage growing up. (p. 16)

That experience of encountering the stark otherness of Indigenous subjectivity, on all counts now serving as the only remaining cultural “other” of modernity, I would consider as my first introduction to the concept of bodily knowing – a mode of perception and comprehension that seldom, if ever, receives serious uptake in the Western academy (although interdisciplinary scholar James Clifford, in his 2013 book, Returns: Becoming Indigenous in the Twenty-­First Century–now intimates “indigeneity” and “Indigenous difference” as today’s fruitful sites of theorizing). What my modernized cognition could not comprehend, my body understood, and understood most eloquently and clearly. In time, I began to see the tears and tremors as not only eloquent communication, but as a site of fracture – a case of the fugitive “anomaly” escaping subjection despite the mind’s total epistemic capitulation, creating a rip (for me) in modernity’s narrative of progress and advancement foisted on my people by the Eurowestern colonial project. One, after all, is not supposed to fall in love with the “primitive”  – that abjected figure of the historical past whose destiny, “as we know,” is to vanish and to be superseded by superior, more evolved (i.e. “civilized”) humans (cf. Mendoza 2019). That is what colonial ideology portends. And, indeed, all my life up to that point had been about striving to become a “good subject”13 of empire – contorting my tongue to speak the colonial language, mastering the colonial master’s literature, adopting its religion, and, in my social



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comportment, assiduously following its manners and prescriptions of civility. Prior to that ­fateful encounter with the differing subjectivity of our Indigenous peoples, whatever was not working in my performance of the civilizational script I took merely as my own failure  – modernity’s individualizing dynamic disallowing the locating of blame elsewhere. But thanks to the liberating report from my bodily encounter with the abjected “other,” communicated wordlessly, yet compellingly, through copious tears and awakened feelings of (self-­)love provoked by the Indigenous reconnection, the normativity of the established narrative (of our native people’s supposed “inferiority” vis-­à-­vis the West) was exploded, the monopolization of the space of discursive representation no longer possible with the irruption into the space of the previously repressed alternative subjecthood of our people. To me it signaled the possibility of exiting my originary ideological formation as a colonized subject, through the provision of an alternative subjectification process. That alternative subjectification process for me consisted of the fugitive world of still land-­based and land-­taught peoples whose differing cultural logic I realized I still carried in my bone memory, albeit repressed and disallowed in my conscious awareness in my process of becoming a modern, civilized human being. Now that world serves as my new pedagogy, triggering a hunger to access more and more of the forbidden archive of experiences and wisdom of such peoples, refracted no longer through the ­colonizing gaze of the civilizational narrative, but through a new way of seeing. Besides the experiences of women, people of color, LGBTQ folk, the poor, the differently-­ abled, I suggest it is those who still know the lost languages of the land, the waters, the mountains, the forests, and all the other more-­than-­human beings – the ones author Scott Wallace (2012) ended up calling “the unconquered” in his chronicle of the last uncontacted tribes of the Amazon forest and their likes – that we need to learn from the most. Indeed, it is to such subjects that we must turn to if we are ever to find resources for envisioning a radically different future and way of continuing to live on a planet that in many ways today, has been speaking to us in no uncertain terms through water-­, drought-­, fire-­, and lately, virus-­speak. As Dine activist writer and artist Pat McCabe (in Wisdom of Trauma Talk Series 2021) put it succinctly in an interview: If sustainability is the highest and most sought-­after technology on the planet – who should we be talking to? We should be talking to those peoples who knew how to live in one place over an extended period of time – a thousand years, 5,000, 10,000 years, 20,000 years, in one place in relative health and harmony and happiness. So, it matters to all of us, how Indigenous cultures, the  people who hold the really deep science of sustainability, it should matter to all of us how they’re doing. How are their languages doing? How are their elders doing who are keeping the knowledge?

In other words, what is required for us would-­be transformative intercultural theorists, is to learn to decipher such other languages  – both human and non-­human  – and to let them rupture and re-­ ­ configure our conventional academic arrogance (i.e. immersing our own ­sensibilities in their contexts, historicities, and materialities to such a degree that our own body-­ grammar is broken open to wonder and wisdom heretofore eclipsed). Thus, when the voice of dominant ideology thunders, “There is no alternative!” we can laugh and say with conviction, “Oh, yes, there is!”

De-­naturalizing Modern Culture and Civilization Communication scholar Robert Jensen writing in 2008 offers a profound (tongue-­in-­cheek) theoretical insight: “(i) We live in a system that, taken as a whole, is unsustainable, not only over the long haul but in the near term, and (ii) unsustainable systems can’t be sustained”

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(p.  2). “The old future’s gone,” he writes, echoing singer John Gorka, yet the system has momentum and durability that is hard to halt like a runaway train barreling down its tracks. Likewise, in a New Year op-­ed piece, titled, “The Ends of the World as We Know Them,” American geographer and evolutionary biologist, Jared Diamond (2005), working off his book published the previous year (2004), talks about the leading causes of civilizational collapse, noting as a major factor: environmental degradation by people: deforestation, soil erosion and water management problems, all of which resulted in less food. Those problems were exacerbated by droughts, which may have been partly caused by humans themselves through deforestation. Chronic warfare made matters worse, as more and more people fought over less and less land and resources. (p. 2)

Although the historical record is clear that no civilization, whether ancient or modern, has ever been known to last forever – and ours no exception – he remarks on “a unique advantage that we (those of us living today) enjoy.” He says that unlike any previous society in history, “our global society today is the first with the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of societies remote from us in space and in time” (p. 8). The big question is, will we? Do we have capacity to learn from the lessons of history and avert a likely ecosystem collapse that, based on all evidence, is already underway?14 Ecophilosopher Derrick Jensen (2004a, pp. 264–265; 2004b, p. 364) offers a key to understanding our dire predicament. He notes the impossibility of either decisive action or radical transformation without first engaging cultural desire.15 And we know that part of the work of ideology in capturing desire is in precluding the possibility of asking fundamental questions about its closed-­loop logic, depicting whatever system is in place as “necessary” and “inevitable,” i.e. “natural,” and therefore nothing more to be done about it than to accept the state of things as a given. There is no more naturalized narrative in our world today than that of modern culture and civilization. It is what has given us (and what has made possible) such distinctive human inventions as monocrop agricultural settlements, city-­building, nationstates, taxation, hierarchies, standing armies, large-­scale warfare, slavery, privatization, capitalist and industrial production, linear narratives of progress and advancement, the “American Dream,” and globalization – all taken-­for-­granted markers of “civilized” life. Kremer (in Kremer and Jackson-­Patton 2013) calls it “the prize winning story” (pp. 212–217), namely, “the story of how humanity has at last conquered the world in civilizational triumph, of humans having wrested their fate from the maw of barbarism, backwardness, and precarious living (unlike those that cannot but bow to the will of the gods)” (Mendoza 2020). And whatever regrettable consequences there are become simply the price worth paying for the attainment of progress and evolutionary advancement (Wolloch 2013, p. 108; Gilley 2018). I suggest that the way this story – though fraying at the edges – has been kept (and is being kept) securely in place is the key problematic that needs urgent wrestling in our discipline, given that its regnant cultural logic is what has brought us to the dire planetary catastrophe bleakly staring us in the face today.

Two Theoretical Moves: Re-­embedding “Culture” in “Nature” and Expanding Our Historical Lens Crucial to the task of breaking open the totalizing foreclosures of modern culture and civilization are two theoretical moves that I deem absolutely necessary. The first has to do with the need to re-­embed “culture” in “nature” in our theoretical conceptualizations, as my co-­author and I have argued in an earlier essay (Mendoza and Kinefuchi 2016).16 To quote Terry Tempest Williams in her Preface to Thomas Berry’s book, The Dream of the Earth (1988), “We are



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Nature, not just human nature . . .” (p. ii). (Here, it is instructive to note that within Indigenous cultures, there is no such separation between “humans” and “nature”; the understanding is that nature is not “out there,” but that humans themselves are nature, with bodies made up of, and dependent on, the same elements as those found in the rest of the biosphere – water, phosphorus, potassium, sodium, chloride, magnesium, iron, zinc, iodine, chromium, copper, fluoride, molybdenum, manganese, selenium, and an entire internal microbiome of bacterial and viral co-­dwellers.) “Culture” in such an understanding does not primarily reference essential differential characteristics of various people groups, as previously depicted in traditional IC literature (cf. sample discussion of worldview differences in Guirdham  1999 and Samovar et al. 2016), but adaptive strategies for surviving and thriving developed over epochal time spans in symbiotic reciprocity with particular given ecologies; in other words, the bloodstream of cultures derives from the geographic particularities of the places that such people groups inhabit.17 Such an approach likewise requires recovering a sense of human subjectivity as fundamentally continuous with that of animal being  – as dependent on soil, air, water, plant, insect, and other living beings, as any other creature on the planet (if not more so, given that humans sit at the top of the food chain). In the words of Berry (1988) one more time: We talk about ourselves as nations. We think of ourselves as ethnic, cultural, language or economic groups. We seldom consider ourselves as a species among species. (p. 21, emphasis added)

Donna Haraway (2016) and Clark and Haraway (2018) similarly call for the recovery of kinship relationship with other living beings with the provocative meme, “make kin, not babies,” compelling us to consider “identity” and “subjectivity” not just in purely human terms and as circumscribed in skin-­and body-­boundary limits but within a multispecies world. Contrast this with the later emergence of the norm of the closed off individual (or homo clausus) as Norbert Elias (1978) theorized as arising from the civilizing process – the artificially individualized body sealed off (notwithstanding its orifices) and made autonomous from culture and environment. This theoretical move carries within it an implicit critique of the default assumption of human supremacy given warrant through the notion of the Great Chain of Being (originating in Plato’s Academy and continuing to inform early modern perceptions of cosmology and ontological hierarchy), and issuing in a dominating and utilitarian cultural logic vis-­à-­vis the natural world that denies sentience and right to autonomous existence to all but humans.18 Returning human life and culture back to its originary roots in the natural world and in community with all other plant, animal, mineral, water, tree, insect, and microbial, beings, along with locating human thriving only within the co-­thriving of all is the project advocated here. The second theoretical move calls for the expansion of the historical analytical lens to encompass a much longer view of history – not just beyond the last 200 years of industrial civilization, or even the last 500 years of modernity, or, for that matter, the last 5000 years of settled monocrop agriculture, but to the hundreds of thousands of years, if not 2 to 3 million years of human thriving on the planet (depending on what is considered as human being)19 when our ancestors lived very differently, as hunter-­gatherers. This is a time period constituting the majority (95–99%) of our time on the planet and, thus far, the only lifeway on earth with any known record of sustainability. When we first began to domesticate plants and animals in small-­scale village-­agriculture with accompanying animal husbandry 10,000 years ago, much of subsistence wisdom and attention to reciprocity of our deep herder history remained intact, I submit that this past (which is not really past, given that there are still remaining hunter-­gatherer tribes and subsistence farming communities today, albeit fast being made to disappear with the unrelenting expansionist push of urban development and corporatist takeover of their lands) is often the unnamed backdrop against which the supremacist discourse of civilization is built. Long overdue but still an auspicious development, increasingly today, in

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light of the ongoing ecological crisis, there has been a revisitation and re-­examination of the different worth of this long history and the varied human cultures it gave rise to as more conducive to long-­term thriving not just for our species but for the entire planet.20 For our purposes here, in the very least, what this long view of history enables is the sparing of cultural critique from the pitfall of essentialist analysis (i.e. the notion of cultural differences as simply the given idiosyncratic characteristics of differing groups). For instance, in the following diagram (in Kremer and Jackson-­Paton 2013, p. 44) depicting the differences in the sense of self based on the particular type of society one is embedded in (whether “individualistic” or “sociocentric”), rather than seeing the categorizations as simply given, we can begin to do an alternate mapping that understands that, within the long view of history, sociocentrism has always been the optimal norm for human thriving (i.e. no privatized “self” separate from the collective) and individualism as the anomaly, arising only in the recent past as a likely epiphenomenon of the invention of private ownership that, in turn, was made possible only with the closure of the commons (cf. Linebaugh 2014) and as part of the developing regime of accumulation and the ratcheting up of colonial expansionism (thus, the acronym WEIRD seems an apt reference, Figure 8.1). We also learn that all cultures and people groups alike – including those centered in Europe – started out Indigenous, in other words, knowing how to live on the land and organizing human life in an honoring relationship with the natural ecology. The middle column ­(“collectivist” or “communal” societies), I would suggest, represents societies in transition, with the collectivist orientation being more a remnant of the former Indigenous orientation when the given society was still mostly land-­based and living communally, with the increasing loss of reciprocal connections indicative of it being no longer “Indigenous.” Given the expansion-­deliriums of colonization and (now) corporatist globalization as such societies move toward modernization and begin organizing human life in urbanized structural arrangements, the pressure to adopt individualism as a norm invariably increases. Regardless of any remaining surface cultural differences, the movement is always toward the cultural logic of

Individualistic Societies

Sociocentric Societies

Collectivist or Communal Societies

Indigenous Societies

Independent view of self Priority of self goals and traits

Interdependent view of self

Interdependent view of self

W = Western E = Educated I = Industrialized R = Rich D = Democratic

Priority of group goals

Priority of group goals

Normative Dissociation Sense of self in Eurocentered cultures

Figure 8.1  Three different perspectives on the self.

Self embedded in: place myth ritual ancestors spirits



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individualism and privatization of the self as such societies take on increasingly non-­land-­based modes of subsistence.21 How cultures of subsistence are talked about within the unexamined discourse of modernity might give us a deeper clue as to the stubborn persistence of the dynamics of marginalization and minoritization subsuming modernity’s “others.” Ultimately, what the expansion of our historical lens allows us to do is to comprehend “modern civilization” as an arbitrary/contingent social, cultural, and discursive formation, albeit presented as an evolutionary “necessity.” The reason for its durability is that, as Mignolo (March/May 2007) puts it, modern rationality encodes a “totalitarian notion of Totality . . . that negates, excludes, and occludes difference and the possibility of other totalities” (p. 451). To historicize modern culture and civilization then is to track the seemingly ubiquitous indicators of its appearance not as inevitabilities of evolution, but as contingent conditionalities  – a ­routinization of coercion and violence, objectification and domination of nature and women, dispossession of Indigenous populations, and slave labor (both human and non-­human) that could have been otherwise. Such conditionalities are evident in each of the following markers of civilizational “achievement”: (i) city-­building – a project of violent appropriation of resources from the countryside to the city center (as no city feeds or clothes its own population); (ii) state formation with its coercive taxation, control, and surveillance of its subject population, and its arrogation to itself of a “monopoly right” in the use of violence (as “policing” or “militarism”); (iii) wealth concentration for the benefit of the propertied class; (iv) large populations (enabled by the expansionist logic inherent in settled monocrop agriculture where increasing (surplus) food production leads to a commensurate increase in population, requiring more takeover of land for food production, and so on in an endless spiraling cycle of growth and expansion); (v) ­permanent settlements (that disallow land renewal and regeneration); (vi) commitment to surplus production (vs. subsistence which is delegitimized in modern discourse as no better than living an animal-­ like existence); (vii) organized warfare and standing armies; (viii) hierarchically-­promulgated religion which often requires demonization of more locally-­ focused and land-­taught forms of spirituality; (ix) the enshrining (in liberal ideology) of ­individualism, dispassionate reason, aggressive pursuit of material wealth, and private ­ownership as the defining measures of human being, disallowing all other forms of human subjectivity; and (x) the invention of linear time, vectored “progress,” and limitless advancement, working through rabid notions of supremacy and unbridled accumulation that has ­underpinned all kinds of genocidal (and ecocidal) projects around the globe. The task then is to expose the arbitrary naturalization of this singular vision of what it means to be a human being on the planet and to historicize the discourse of modern civilization with its foundations in human supremacist, racist, expansionist, conquering, dominating, cultural priorities as a key problematic in intercultural relations. And such a task will be impossible for as long as we confine our historical framing merely to the last 500 years of modern history, discounting the long record of human thriving on the planet prior to the advent of civilization-­ building. Without opening up our field to the vast expanse of history (spanning at least h ­ undreds of thousands of years if not 2 to 3 million years), our vision of the “good life” will remain overdetermined by the prejudices of “civilized” living as extolled in the dominant discourses of modernity, keeping the production of “others” and the dynamic of “othering” stubbornly entrenched in intercultural relations regardless of intention and efforts to the contrary.

Reclaiming the “Unspeakable” I suggest that in order to give an adequate account of what has gone awry in our world and in intercultural relations, our discipline not only has to do the deconstructive work of exposing the supremacist discourse of “civilization,” but to create space for an alternative vision of

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human life and human ways of being on the planet that bear witness to a very different cultural logic than what we have so far outlined in the foregoing. I call this alternative vision the “unspeakable” in the discourse of modernity, given that it is forbidden from even being imagined at this late hour when the project of civilization-­building is patently unraveling on every side (with the corporatist state mobilizing ever-­more invasive technologies of surveillance and militarized control to deal with the anticipated chaos). Anymore, rather than having everyone vie for qualification as “civilized” subjects, I suggest that we sit as apprentices of the alternative vision – of Indigenous life – refusing its disparagement and erasure by contemporary modern discourse by opening the archive of heretofore “forbidden” knowledge. Such is possible given that there is now a vast literature we can access to educate us under the rubrics of “Indigenous/ Native studies,” “Indigenous science,” “Indigenous resurgence,” “Indigenous governance,” “anarcho-­primitivism”22 and the many writings on the epochal transformations that occurred in human societies over time with the shift from hunting and gathering to what is called the Neolithic “revolution” or the turn to settled monocrop agriculture, this latter marking a watershed moment that ushered in fundamental changes in human-­ nature relationship (cf.  Scott  2017; Manning  2004). More importantly, there remain 350  million Indigenous peoples around the globe still living in their traditional homelands and determined to carry on their land-­based cultures and traditions who stand as living witnesses to that older, more earth-­ honoring way of life (a witness that our dominant culture seeks to snuff out in its limitless search for more and more resources and expansion of its territory). From experience, what I have found most educative is doing our own work of Indigenous reclamation (reconnecting with our own historically eclipsed Indigenous lineages)23 as well as seeking tutelage to contemporary Indigenous communities  – whether through activist participation in Indigenous-­led actions and political initiatives or respectful relationship-­building with native folk in our respective dwelling places. To provide just a glimpse of the repressed record of Indigenous thriving that has radically transformed my own understanding of the work I do as an IC scholar, let me do a brief rundown of the set of shared characteristics of such land-­based/land-­taught societies that I have culled from literature and participation alike.24 1 Because they depended for their survival on their particular habitat, they developed intimate knowledge of their environment that mostly kept them from decimating their land bases; 2 They saw themselves as only one species among many, and as such, understood other beings’ right to exist and to share in the resources of their common habitat; 3 They related to all of nature  – including plants, rocks, mountains, clouds, rivers, wind, etc.  – as animate beings (or persons) with a right to their own existence and not mere objects for humans’ disposition; 4 They understood reality as fluid and not fixed, developing complex cosmologies to make sense of their world; 5 In most of their cosmologies, there was no necessary separation between “good” and “evil”; life was understood as always mixed and complex, and struggle and suffering as just part of the fabric of life.25 6 They observed a strict ethic of reciprocity that demanded that they not take anything from the earth without giving something back – an ethic that limited unnecessary taking not just to avoid heavy indebtedness, but also to insure that other beings – and life, in general – could continue in perpetuity; 7 They employed “unlimited means to meet limited wants” (Gowdy 1998) – a remarkable condition that led one anthropologist to call them “the original affluent society” (Sahlins 1998);



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8 They performed activities that we typically call “work” for only three to five hours a day; the rest of the time they spent resting, socializing, ritual-­making, celebrating, and so on; 9 They found no need to engage in surplus production but gathered or hunted only for immediate consumption within a taken-­for-­granted logic of abundance (versus the scarcity assumed in competitive modern economics); 10 They lived a nomadic way of life within a circumscribed local ecosystem that discouraged hoarding and that allowed for the regeneration of life in a given area; 11 They were strictly egalitarian and non-­hierarchical (including in terms of gender relations); and to make sure they maintained these values; 12 They evolved complex social arrangements to discourage bullying and subjugation of the weak by the strong (Woodburn 1982) and innovated conflict-­resolution techniques and strategies designed to prevent escalation and warfare. Such a profile may seem romantic, but as I noted in an earlier essay (Mendoza 2019): . . . [O]ne reason it is hard to imagine that such a witness to a radically different way to live once existed and still exists today is that the majority of these cultures have now been put in jeopardy – if not utterly decimated and struggling to survive – by the onward push of modern culture’s ­civilizing mission. Their means of subsistence severely undermined (primarily through land dispossession and other mechanisms of marginalization), they are now forced to live lives of misery, desperation, and impoverishment that then, within the [prevailing] narrative, marks them further as failed if not maladaptive cultures (p. 137).

But I conclude, speaking from my own first-­hand encounters with the still living Indigenous peoples in my home country: Yet, even among the most impoverished of these communities, those who spend long enough time to immerse themselves report glimpses of an alternative cultural logic at work. (Mendoza 2019, p. 137)

Conclusion I have always contended that intercultural relations need not be inherently problematic; difference, after all, is the template for health and wholeness given to us in nature. Rather they become so only when there is the element of power domination by one group over another, and here, we are referring to power that operates not only administratively (e.g. through state violence and coercion) but, first and foremost, in the realm of the symbolic – in the making of subjects – in the internalization of all of us of civilization’s subjectifying processes that divide, separate, isolate, coerce, and insist on producing sameness and annihilating true otherness. Horrifyingly, its homogenizing logic is now effectively globalized, engulfing and transforming all into one devastating global monoculture (cf. Shiva 1993). Ultimately, the stakes here are not just about finding relevance for our discipline in the face of overwhelming ecological catastrophe but being able to make sense of how it is that a solipsistic human-­made, human-­centered cultural logic is being allowed to run an entire planet off a cliff’s edge. The civilizational experiment, largely built on the enslavement of nature and “others,” has had a long run (roughly 5000 years), but within the vast expanse of human history (200,000 to 2 to 3 million years) and the far longer history of the planet (4.5 billion years) it constitutes but a blip in the overall calculus of time, with its arrogant logic now meeting with the hard, non-­negotiable reality of the earth’s planetary limits. And unless we can create space in our disciplinary discourse for the fugitive report coming out of this much

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broader sweep of history, we can expect to remain mystified by the seeming insolvability of the usual juggernauts of difference that have plagued intercultural relations, namely, the problematics of race, class, gender, ability, age, sexual orientation, and so on, whose roots reach far deeper than just the last 500 years of modern history. The archive opened up here (providing a glimpse of modernity’s ultimate “other”) presents a mirror, an alternative cultural logic of connection, cooperation, community, reciprocity, mutual thriving, and the embrace of limits that can guide us on a way forward. To point to its significance, I take inspiration from the words of Indian writer, Arundhati Roy (2012): The first step towards reimagining a world gone terribly wrong would be to stop the annihilation of those who have a different imagination . . . an imagination which has an altogether different understanding of what constitutes happiness and fulfillment . . . who may look like the keepers of our past but who may really be the guides to our future. (p. 214, emphasis added)

Notes 1 https://jembendell.com/2021/03/05/launching-­a -­s cholars-­w arning-­i nitiative/?fbclid= IwAR0u1dY_w_yAPHCWBy68lOQWnc4KE7YQEJohztNhS7-­pXMAWy5HXPJxyx98 (accessed 3 March 2021). 2 Interested mostly in formulating generalizable “scientific” laws. 3 See “terrorism of the weak” (Ahmad, May–June, 1986, p. 4). 4 Cf. Rockstrom et al. (2021), film documentary version available on Netflix. 5 What with the United States and Britain continuing to beef up their nuclear weapons production in direct contravention of the Nuclear Disarmament Treaty. Cf. 10 June, Democracy Now on nuclear proliferation. 6 Full quote from Shaw (2016): We’re living in a time where we’re heavily defended against experiences of our own beauty. What’s going on with the laptops and the screens and everything, it means that our gaze is becoming compromised. We no longer feel the 10,000 trembling secrets at the edges of our vision. But go to any indigenous hunter and say, “Where is your vision most potent, and it is on the edge of things. When a culture is in crisis, genius comes not from the center, but from the edge.” 7 The Philippines. 8 Wawiyatanong, aka Detroit, Michigan. 9 See filmmaker Raoul Peck’s (2021) devastating exploration of colonialism and the origins of White supremacy in his four-­part documentary series, Exterminate All the Brutes. 10 See also “techniques of ecstasy” in Eliade, Trask, and Doniger (2004). 11 Non-­ordinary states of consciousness such as meditative, mystical, or psychedelic experiences. See Grof and Grof (2010). 12 See, for example, area studies scholar Noah Theriault (2017) where he bemoans as “a lingering ethnocentrism” the failure even of posthumanist and political ecologists to open their accounts of “more-­ than-­ human assemblages to what have conventionally been termed ‘supernatural’ or ­‘metaphysical’ forms of agency” (p. 1). 13 “Accepting the premises of the modern West without much question” (Buffalo and Mohawk in Esteva and Prakash, 1998, p. 45). 14 As early as 2015, Stanford biologists have declared that the sixth mass extinction is already in progress (Jordan 2015). 15 A quintessential understanding not lost on Freud’s nephew, propagandist Edward Bernays – one that allowed him to launch his career as a pioneer of the public relations industry – through linking commodity consumption with people’s deep desires, needs, and fantasy life. 16 According to Guirdham (1999): Worldview refers to a “culture’s orientation toward such things as God, humanity, nature, the universe, and the other philosophical issues that are concerned with the concept of being.” An example often used is a comparison between Euro-­American and Native American relationships to nature.





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While the Native American views the human relationship to nature as one of unity (being at one with nature), the Euro-­American views the world as human-­centered. (p. 50) And in Samovar, Porter, McDaniel, and Roy (2016): “The West emphasizes control of nature; the East emphasizes harmony with nature” (p. 105). Without historicization, such depictions unwittingly portray the cultural differences noted as just given, the essential characteristics of the differing people groups, rather than sedimented traditions and ways of being evolved over a long period of time through intimate relationship to place and the particular given ecology. It is what gives rise to the particular shape, unique teachings, knowledges, and practices of any given tribe (e.g. the bear ceremonies of the Ainu peoples, the bean and corn dances of the Tzutujil Mayans, the elaborate ritual food offerings among devotees of Voudun in Haiti, the binanog/eagle dance among the Panay Bukidnon in the Philippines, etc.). Giving rise to both civilizational and racial supremacy. Whether one’s reckoning includes only Homo sapiens sapiens, or also encompasses australopithecus, Homo erectus, Homo habilis, and Homo sapiens. See the return to “paleo” diet (Cordain,  2010), the re-­evaluation of child-­rearing practices in ­hunting and gathering societies as optimal for healthy child development (Mate, 2012), the health consequences of the turn from nomadism to sedentism (Page, et al., 2018), the lack of coercive hierarchical relations (Woodburn, 1982), and so on. As writer Daniel Quinn (1997) notes, referring to the way both East and West now live largely urbanized/citified modes of existence largely dependent on industrial monocrop agriculture:It’s become a solid part of our cultural mythology that a profound gulf separates East from West, “and never the twain shall meet,” and this causes people to be disconcerted when I speak of East and West as a single culture. East and West are twins, with a common mother and father, but when these twins look at each other, they’re struck by the differences they see, not the similarities, just the way biological twins are. It takes an outsider like me to be struck by the fundamental cultural identity that exists between them (p. 248). Re-­evaluating the different worth of hunting-­gathering societies. Cf. Kremer’s and Jackson-­Paton’s (2013) workbook. The use of the past tense here references a time when this alternative way of life that encodes a very different cultural logic held the majority sway around the globe (up until before the advent of colonial expansion in the fifteenth century when roughly three quarters of the world’s population was still known to live subsistence lifestyles outside of city centers) and doesn’t negate the contemporaneous reality of such among the remaining Indigenous communities in the world today. As I’ve often heard from Indigenous elders, “We are here to learn from our struggles.”

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Mendoza, S.L. (2001). Nuancing anti-­ essentialism: a critical genealogy of Philippine experiments in national identity formation. In: Between Law and Culture: Relocating Legal Studies (eds. D.T. Goldberg, M. Musheno, and L.C. Bower), 224–245. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Mendoza, S.L. (2005). Bridging paradigms: how not to throw out the baby of collective representation with the functionalist bathwater in critical intercultural communication. In: International and Intercultural Communication Annual, Vol. 28: Taking Stock in Intercultural Communication: Where to Now? (eds. W.J. Starosta and G.-­M. Chen), 237–256. Washington, DC: National Communication Association. Mendoza, S.L. (2006). Between the Homeland and the Diaspora: The Politics of Theorizing Filipino and Filipino American Identities. Manila: UST Publishing. Mendoza, S.L. (2019). Promises of the “vanishing” worlds: re-­storying “civilization” in the Philippine National Imaginary. Canadian Journal of Native Studies XXXIX 1: 119–143. Mendoza, S.L. (2020). Hope summons: meditations on an-­other world seeing. ReVision, A Journal of Consciousness and Transformation 33 (3): https://revisionpublishing.org/ (accessed 19  June 2021). Mendoza, S.L. and Kinefuchi, E. (2016). Two stories, one vision: a plea for an ecological turn in intercultural communication. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 9 (4): 275–294. Mendoza, S.L., Halualani, R.T., and Drzewiecka, J.A. (2003). Moving the discourse on identities in intercultural communication: structure, culture, and resignifications. Communication Quarterly 50 (3/4): 312–327. Mignolo, W.D. (2007). Delinking. Cultural Studies 21 (2): 449–514. Moon, D. (1996). Concepts of “culture”. Implications for intercultural communication. Communication Quarterly 44 (1): 70–84. Moon, D. (2002). Thinking about “culture” in intercultural communication. In: Readings in Intercultural Communication: Experiences and Contexts (eds. J. Martin, T. Nakayama, and L. Flores), 13–21. Boston: McGraw-­Hill. Page, A.E. et al. (2018). Hunter-­gatherer health and development policy: how the promotion of sedentism worsens the Agta’s health outcomes. Social Science and Medicine 197: 39–48. Peck, R. (2021). Exterminate all the brutes. Film documentary available on HBO. Pletsch, C.E. (1981). The three worlds, or the division of social scientific labor, circa 1950–1975. Comparative Study of Society and History 23 (4): 565–590. Quinn, D. (1997). The Story of B. New York: Bantam Books. Rockstrom, J., Gaffney, O. et  al. (2021). Breaking Boundaries: The Science of Our Planet. London: Dorling Kindersley. Roy, A. (2012). Walking with the Comrades. London: Penguin Books. Sahlins, M. (1998). The original affluent societies. In: Limited Wants, Unlimited Means (ed. J. Gowdy), 5–42. Washington, DC: Island Press. Samovar, L., Porter, R.E., McDaniel, E., and Roy, C.S. (2016). Communication between Cultures. Australia: Cengage Learning. Scott, D. (2005). Stuart Hall’s ethics. Small Axe 9 (1): 1–16. Scott, J.C. (2017). Against the grain: A deep history of the earliest states. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Shaw, M. (2011). A Branch from the Lightning Tree: Ecstatic Myth and the Grace of Wildness. Ashland, OR: Whitecloud Press. Shaw, M. (2016). Trailing the gods back home: An interview with Dr. Martin Shaw. www.youtube.com/ watch?v=g28G7GOym_I (accessed 19 June 2021). Shiva, V. (1993). Monocultures of the Mind: Perspectives on Biodiversity and Biotechnology. London: Zed Books. Starosta, W.J. and Chen, G.M. (2001). A fifth moment in intercultural communication?A dialogue. Paper presented at the meeting of the National Communication Association, Atlanta, GA. Theriault, N. (2017). A forest of dreams: ontological multiplicity and the fantasies of environmental government in the Philippines. Political Geography 58: 114–127. Wallace, S. (2012). The Unconquered: In Search of the Amazon’s Last Uncontacted Tribes. New  York: Broadway Paperbacks.

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Part II

Critical Theoretical Dimensions in Critical Intercultural Communication Studies

Introduction to Part II In critical intercultural communication studies, similar to critical fields within and beyond the communication discipline, theories (those that have had more time to develop within a context) and/or theorizings (those that form in the process, performativity of the doing, and in constant motion) emanate from the specific structural-­cultural and political project of focus and its larger cultural, historical, and intellectual context. These serve as loosely structured and held frames to guide our analytical studies of key problematics that constitute the relationship between culture and power in intercultural communication relations and settings. Such guides provide insight, meaning, and incisive focus to our political projects and yet are permeable enough to be informed by new and emerging perspectives and histories that are deeply embedded in the cultural contexts. Theories of the “flesh” and of performativities, intersectionalities, experience, indigeneities, localities, identities, and decolonialities stand as vibrant and powerful theoretical frames for many political projects. The rich multitude of what critical intercultural communication studies mean by “theory” and “theorizing” can be seen in this section’s chapters by scholars such as Yoshitaka Miike, Crispin Thurlow, Bernadette Calafell and Nivea Castaneda Acrey, Yukio Tsuda, Aimee Carrillo Rowe, Shinsuke Eguchi, Kathryn Sorrells, Jolanta A. Drzewiecka, Miriam Shoshana Sobre, Jing Yin, and Antonio Tomas De La Garza and Kent A. Ono. We invite you to engage the following questions that emerge from this section’s chapters: • How do we position the role of theory/theorizing in critical intercultural communication studies in terms of a larger critical commitment to radical contextualization and situatedness? • How might the varied range of theories, theorizings, and frameworks embraced in critical intercultural communication studies help to reconfigure how we understand the relationship among theory, power, context, and culture? • How does critical intercultural communication work re-­assemble the notion of “theory” and the knowledge-­use value of our projects and studies? • How should critical intercultural communication studies incorporate theory/theorizings without being suffocated by them and or worse, not allowing localized, indigenous, or community knowledges to breathe through and take shape?

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Culture as Text and Culture as Theory: Asiacentricity and Its Raison D’être in Intercultural Communication Research Yoshitaka Miike University of Hawai‘i at Hilo

The wealth of a common global culture [is] expressed in the particularities of our different languages and cultures very much like a universal garden of many-­ ­ colored flowers. The “­flowerness” of the different flowers is expressed in their very diversity. But there is cross-­fertilization between them. And what is more they all contain in themselves the seeds of a new tomorrow. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (1993, p. 24) Daisetsu Suzuki (1870–1966), who is perhaps the foremost interpreter of Zen Buddhism for the West, considered himself “a Japanese as a world citizen” and published his last book, Toyoteki na Mikata [The Eastern Outlook] (Suzuki  1963/1997), at the age of 93. In this book, he ardently advocated something Eastern that must be preserved for a world culture (see Ueda  1999,  2007). Yet Suzuki (1964) acknowledged the predicament of articulating what is Eastern: “The thing is there before our eyes, for it refuses to be ignored; but when we endeavor to grasp it in our own hands in order to examine it more closely or systematically, it eludes and we lose its track” (p. 35). Culture is deeply felt, but it is inherently elusive. Here lies the challenge of indigenous theorizing. Alternative theorizing today is further complicated by the seemingly excessive politics of representation. Any characterization would be put under close scrutiny and immediately prosecuted by postmodernists and poststructuralists for its essentialism. Moreover, sophisticated theorizing ought to evince global concerns such as feminist sensitivity, ecological consciousness, religious pluralism, and humanistic visions. Cultural re-­theorizing, which entails historical collectivity and internal diversity, appears to be too controversial to be undertaken. Nevertheless, the field of intercultural communication is entering a new phase of cultural re-­interpretation, re-­description, and re-­vision. As we are increasingly aware that deconstruction alone cannot bridge differences, we come to the realization that the reconstruction of cultural knowledge is an inescapable mission of interculturalists. It is in this intellectual milieu that centricity and centric paradigms will emerge as a vital metatheoretical notion and powerful metatheories. For the past two decades, intercultural communication scholars (e.g. Asante and Miike  2013; Dutta and Martin  2017; Holliday et  al.  2021; Jackson  2014; Lawless and Chen 2021; MacDonald 2020; Martin et al. 2020; Miike 2013, 2022b; Miike and Yin 2015; Rao 2021) have formulated critical reflections on the field’s knowledge production process. Some (e.g. Halualani et al. 2009; Yep 2014) interrogated postpositivist theory and research, The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication, Second Edition. Edited by Thomas K. Nakayama and Rona Tamiko Halualani. © 2024 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2024 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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while others (e.g. Martin and Nakayama 2015, 2022; Nakayama and Martin 2014) integrated traditional and nontraditional approaches. These metatheoretical debates, however, have not sufficiently addressed the role of culture in alternative theory building, which is a key to reconstructing new knowledge about culture and communication. The objective of this chapter is, then, to make a plea for the centrality of culture in ­re-­interpreting, re-­describing, and re-­envisioning indigenous communication in global and local contexts while elaborating specifically on Asiacentricity and its intellectual necessity in intercultural communication research. The essay first contextualizes the need of Afrocentric, Asiacentric, and other non-­ Western centric approaches by critiquing the hegemony of Eurocentrism in contemporary research on culture and communication. The essay then clarifies the idea of Asiacentricity by highlighting its major dimensions and dispelling its common misconceptions. The essay finally adumbrates three aspects of culture as a central resource for alternative theorizing and suggests possible Asiacentric innovations in the study of Asian ­cultures and communication. The underlying premise of the present chapter is that it is imperative for interculturalists to view cultures not merely as texts for knowledge deconstruction but also theories for knowledge reconstruction in the age of “the crisis of representation.”

Eurocentrism in Intercultural Communication Scholarship Eurocentrism as intellectual imperialism has been problematized in communication studies as well as in other disciplines (e.g. Ani 1979; Asante 1999, 2006; Chu 1988; Fals-­Borda and Mora-­Osejo  2003; Fields  1981; Jackson  1999,  2014; Joseph et  al.  1990; Mazrui  2002; Miike  2003,  2010,  2014,  2022b; Quijano  2000; Sardar  1999; Wallerstein  1997; Wong et al. 1995). According to Joseph et al. (1990), Eurocentrism has had three undesirable effects on academic pursuits: (i) it has made non-­Western intellectuals unthink imitation of Western theory and research; (ii) it has made Western intellectuals remain unaware of alternative sources of scholarship; and (iii) it has functioned to legitimate and perpetuate unequal international systems of knowledge production, dissemination, and evaluation. Wallerstein (1997) succinctly summarized that Eurocentrism manifests itself in the social sciences in five respects: (i) its self-­serving historiography, (ii) its presumed universalism, (iii) its idea of civilization, (iv) its otherizing Orientalism, and (v) its ideology of progress. Eurocentrism is a term that admits a plurality of definitions. I define Eurocentrism as an ideology of ethnocentrism, exceptionalism, and expansionism based on the European visions of universalism, evolutionism, and developmentalism. This ideology has turned space-­bound and time-­bound cultural views and values from continental and diasporan Western Europe into spaceless and timeless universal ideas and ideals for the entire world. Eurocentrism should not be confused with Eurocentricity. Eurocentrism as a universalist ideology refers to an e­ thnocentric approach to non-­Western worlds and people of non-­Western heritage, whereas Eurocentricity as a particularist position refers to a legitimate culture-­centric approach to cultural Europe and people of European descent (Miike 2019b). Eurocentricity, nonetheless, becomes Eurocentrism when the provincial masquerades as the universal. That is, as Asante (2006) commented, Eurocentricity is “a normal expression of culture but could be abnormal if it imposed its cultural particularity as universal while denying and degrading other cultural, political, or economic views” (p. 145). Academic Eurocentrism is a complex phenomenon historically embedded in Western ­colonialist and racist ideologies and political and economic dominance. As a hidden worldview, in Ani’s (1979) words, it upholds a set of organizing schemes that “are intimately related to the Western European attitude towards, and the perception of, other peoples, and imply a particular relationship to them” (p.  4). In this section, despite its conceptual complexities, I  will specify three pillars of Eurocentrism in intercultural communication scholarship: (i)  ­ theoretical Eurocentrism, (ii) methodological Eurocentrism, and (iii) comparative



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Eurocentrism. In my view, these three pillars have shaped the Eurocentric structure of ­knowledge in the field of intercultural communication not in an independent way, but in an ­interactive manner (Miike 2003).

Theoretical Eurocentrism The first pillar of Eurocentrism in intercultural communication scholarship is theoretical Eurocentrism. In a plethora of books and articles in the intercultural field, theoretical frameworks grounded in Western intellectual traditions are employed to observe and describe, analyze and interpret, and evaluate and criticize non-­Western cultures and communication. Shuter (2014) lamented that culture, the heart and soul of intercultural communication studies, had been neglected by social scientific cross-­ cultural investigators who published theory-­ validation research without exhibiting any passion for culture. In their published research, he cogently argued, culture has served as a “laboratory” for testing the generalizability of US Eurocentric interpersonal and organizational communication theories. The same hierarchical arrangement of “Western theories” and “non-­Western texts” has also been equally pervasive in interpretive and critical approaches to cultural communication and critique. With regard to the cultural approach to communication, Shuter (2000) postulated that “the approach is so linked to ethnography that it is more a methodological alternative than a new model for theorizing about communication in cross-­cultural or intracultural contexts” (p.  3). Wong et  al. (1995) also posited that “the current fascination with postmodernism and post-­structuralism is in continuity with the domination of Western perspectives in theory building” (pp. 138–139). Non-­Western cultures, more often than not, remain peripheral targets of Eurocentric analysis and critique in intercultural communication research. They are treated as mere texts for deconstruction from Eurocentric theoretical viewpoints. Bryant and Yang (2004), who conducted a content analysis of articles on Asia in nine “mainstream” communication journals, detected that all the theories adopted by the 65 articles in question were of Western origin. Bryant and Yang (2004) contended: With this seemingly wholesale adoption of theories from the West comes tacit acceptance of the sorts of epistemological and metatheoretical intellectual infrastructure that has been derived from philosophers and theorists with Western mindsets. Implicit within any epistemological perspective are major assumptions that supposedly represent the essential elements of a culture, such as the foundational view of human beings that is represented, the nature of causality that is inherent in the model, the perception of the locus of control of the individual (i.e. determinism, free will, and the like), the essential nature of political reality, the relative importance of individuals versus community, the relationship between thought and action, and manifold other considerations that are part of the foundations of our ways of knowing. These assumptions creep, often unwittingly, into all of our theories. If you compare and contrast the essential philosophical and theological works, the arts and crafts, and the great literature of the East and the West, a substantial number of obtrusive differences routinely occur. This would seem to speak against wholesale adoption, without essential modification, of many communication theories. [We should] routinely challenge the adoption of communication theories derived from Western mindsets without reconciliation of any parts of the theory or model that are not concordant with Eastern ways of knowing, thinking, symbol making, and action. We know that this is a “tall order,” but this is the true challenge of multiculturalism, and nowhere is such diversity more acutely needed than in our essential theory construction. (pp. 145–146)

Theoretical Eurocentrism in intercultural communication scholarship parallels the larger ­intellectual structure of “academic dependency” and the “global division of labor” in the human sciences. The West (primarily, European America and Western Europe) is perceived as producers of theoretical knowledge, and it is the mission of non-­Western intellectuals as its

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consumers to do empirical research. This division of theoretical and empirical intellectual labor deters non-­Western social scientists from learning and theorizing from their own intellectual legacies. A number of communication scholars in both Western and non-­Western worlds including Barnett and Jiang (2017), Chu (1988), Craig and Xiong (2022), Gordon (2007a, b), Ishii (2004, 2007), and Li (2020) have voiced their perennial concern over such an academic climate. Babbili (1988) was especially astute in his observation that “the s­ o-­called safari scholars whose contributions provided an impetus, the theory builders who studied as many cultures as possible on a summer stint to arrive at generalizations, and the instant experts who took excursions into the unknown lands, could not possible till the theoretical barrenness” (p. 17). When and how can intercultural communication specialists stop talking forever about certain Eurocentric theoretical constructs (e.g. individualism-­ collectivism, independent-­ interdependent construals, and high-­context and low-­context communication) and move beyond these sweeping overgeneralizations that occlude cultural and communicative comlanguage-­ based concepts, plexities? Current theoretical Eurocentrism along with English-­ although possibly opening the first door to new cultures, does not advance culturally situated and resonating knowledge. The time is long overdue for the field of intercultural communication to disallow Eurocentric theoretical concepts to totalize or “essentialize” all human beings as people of European heritage and to reduce a wealth of human experiences to the particular experiences of the West.

Methodological Eurocentrism The second pillar of Eurocentrism in intercultural communication scholarship is methodological Eurocentrism. Three longstanding academic issues are germane to this pillar: (i) the Eurocentric method-­driven research; (ii) the presumed universality of Eurocentric methodology; and (iii) the neglect of non-­Eurocentric indigenous literature. A heavy emphasis on methodology in the social sciences is a representative of Eurocentrism. Implicit in methodological Eurocentrism is the assumption that a researcher cannot explore a topic if they cannot find a “correct” method. A method is correct, however, only when it complies with data collection and analysis protocols established by European (American) scholars. Hence, the problem with such a way of narrowing down research topics in terms of the availability and feasibility of a certain Eurocentric method is that it has encouraged academic dependence on mainstream Eurocentric theories that are already congruent with Eurocentric methods. For so long, in the intercultural communication field, and in the communication discipline in general, the statistical method has been deemed as the most “sophisticated” and “appropriate” mode of inquiry (Tanno  2007). Widespread obsession with quantification, objectivity, value freedom, replicability, generalizability, and predictability is very much predicated on Western ontological, epistemological, and axiological assumptions. As Gordon (2007b) attested, “the need to constantly define our terms tightly, and numerically measure and manipulate our variables, has stunted and dwarfed our thinking as to what “communication” is and can be” (p.  52). Such a functionalist methodological bias has tremendously disadvantaged alternative theorizing about non-­Western premises and practices of communication. Moreover, there is a measure of truth in the claim of the non-­Western academy that the dominance of quantitative (cross-­cultural) communication research is primarily responsible for the proliferation of “safari scholars,” “penny collaborators,” “data exporters,” and “instant experts” in the non-­Western region (Chu 1988). Another issue with reference to methodological Eurocentrism is the deep seated belief that methods and ethics of research are universally applicable across national borders and cultural boundaries. Even those non-­Western cross-­cultural researchers who recognize that Western theories are biased may not question whether Western methods are just as biased. Methods



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refer to appropriate procedures of data collection and analysis and ethical guidelines for doing research. As such, they are necessarily culture-­bound, if not context-­bound. For it is the ­cultural context and the people that determine what is appropriate and what is ethical. In this respect, methodological recipes and regimens developed in Western contexts for Western ­participants cannot be equally appropriate and ethical for non-­Western respondents in non-­ Western settings without modifications. In fact, those intercultural investigators who are not mindful of methodological Eurocentrism run the risk of providing woefully inaccurate empirical proof and trivialize alternative theoretical ideas for the reason that they are not in accord with their “hard data.” After looking into Rogelia Pe-­Pua’s Filipino research method of pagtatanong-­tanong, Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s Maori research code of honor, and Joan E. Sieber’s US Eurocentric norms of research, Tanno (2007) emphatically asserted: The important idea here is that in all these cases the good intercultural, multicultural, and international researcher–the ethical researcher–must have a very good understanding of cultural assumptions (his/her own as well as those of the culture being studied) and also have an appreciation of the fact that one method cannot, should not, be used across cultures. (p. 248)

Still another issue linked with methodological Eurocentrism is the neglect of indigenous literature published outside the Western academy. By indigenous literature, of course, I do not mean mere translations or empirical replications of Eurocentric scholarship in non-­Western local languages. What I have in mind is indigenous scholarship that contains original and creative theoretical ideas. Ishii (2004) castigated both Western and Asian intercultural communication professionals for their inclination to engage in research and education by referring exclusively to the English-­language literature. He gathered that it is due to this inclination that “their customary research has inevitably become for the most part Westcentric, distorted, stereotyped, superficial, and duplicative” (p. 65). The advent of the age of multicultural scholarship impels us to rectify the methodological bias that academic literature in Western languages, particularly in English, is superior to that in non-­European languages. The time is right for us to take advantage of indigenous scholarly literature for alternative theory construction and refinement.

Comparative Eurocentrism The third pillar of Eurocentrism in intercultural communication scholarship is comparative Eurocentrism. There are countless cross-­cultural communication research reports whose focus centers on US Eurocentric comparisons. Many intercultural communication researchers, albeit unwittingly or unintentionally, normalize and naturalize US European American cultural values and communication styles and compare them with other dissimilar ones, notably ­ Northeast Asian counterparts. This comparative Eurocentrism hinders the intercultural field from (i) demonstrating internal diversity and complexity within a non-­Western region or nation; (ii) exploring links and interconnections, and identifying collective identities and common values, among neighboring non-­Western cultures; (iii) examining similarities and differences from non-­Eurocentric perspectives; and (iv) projecting non-­Western visions of the global village. Alternative non-­Eurocentric comparisons then will be able to change the cartography of intercultural knowledge in communication studies. They include (i) continent-­diaspora comparisons (e.g. Japanese culture and communication in Japan and Brazil), (ii) within-­region comparisons (e.g. Indian and Sri Lankan cultures), (iii) non-­Western comparisons (e.g. Latin American and Asian cultures), (iv) diachronic comparisons (e.g. precolonial and postcolonial African cultures), and (v) cocultural domestic comparisons (e.g. Native American and Native Hawaiian cultures). Yin’s (2017, 2018) non-­Western comparative study, for instance, d ­ issected

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selfhood in the Kemetic and Confucian traditions in order to grasp what it means to be human in African and Asian communities. Her theoretical investigation is an innovative attempt to probe into the African and Asian concepts of humanity as they relate to cultural worldviews and communicative interactions (see also Asante 2018; de la Garza 2018). Non-­Eurocentric comparisons of this kind will yield rich and refreshing insights into cultural similarities and differences and result in mutual referencing and learning in the global society. Radhakrishnan (2003) advised cross-­culturalists and interculturalists to direct their greater attention to whose images the comparison is initiated in, to who is honored by the ­comparison, and to whose values, standards, and criteria are deemed universal, unmarked, and transcultural (e.g. Telugu as “the Italian of the East” instead of Italian as “the Telugu of the West”). He instructed them to be vigilant against hierarchical assumptions behind the comparison. Radhakrishnan (2003) posed a thought-­ provoking question relevant to comparative Eurocentrism in intercultural communication scholarship: In a world structured in dominance, clearly modern values seem more worthwhile than say communal or ethnic values. But this is the story of value as rendered by the victor. What about a multi-­ valent and multi-­temporal valorization of the multiplicity of values and their historical development in different cultures, philosophies, and worldviews? These questions immediately land us in the problematic arena called “the politics of comparison.” What kinds of comparisons are possible in a multicultural world that intends to honor difference without objectifying it or without resorting to a hierarchical calculus? (p. 72)

It should be stressed at the end of this section that the troubling Eurocentric regime of knowledge exists not only in cultural Western Europe but also in other non-­Western territories of the world. Non-­Westerners as well as Westerners have thoroughly participated in hegemonic Eurocentrism. If one counts the number of translations of Western books published in non-­Western nations, it is abundantly clear that Eurocentrism thrives beyond cultural Western Europe. This debilitating problem with knowledge production and consumption compels us all to be critical of Eurocentrism in intercultural communication scholarship. Who is learning about whose culture from whose perspective? As Tanno (2007) lucidly stated, “The knowledges we pursue about intercultural communication have a variety of impacts. It affects how members of various cultures view themselves and how others view them” (p.  240). Theoretical, methodological, and comparative Eurocentrism has precluded us from seeing ourselves and others from truly diverse cultural locations. From a Latin American viewpoint, Quijano (2000) cautioned us about the real consequences of Eurocentrism on cultural identities and mindscapes in the non-­Western world: The Eurocentric perspective of knowledge operates as a mirror that distorts what it reflects, as we can see in the Latin American historical experience. That is to say, what we Latin Americans find in that mirror is not completely chimerical, since we possess so many and such important historically European traits in many material and intersubjective aspects. But at the same time we are profoundly different. Consequently, when we look in our Eurocentric mirror, the image that we see is not just composite, but also necessarily partial and distorted. Here the tragedy is that we have all been led, knowingly or not, wanting it or not, to see and accept that image as our own and as belonging to us alone. In this way, we continue being what we are not. And as a result we can never identify our true problems, much less resolve them, except in a partial and distorted way. (p. 556)

Dimensions and Misconceptions of Asiacentricity Joseph Mitsuo Kitagawa (1915–1992), then Dean of the Divinity School at the University of Chicago, once said in his 1971 Convocation Address entitled, “The World Has Many Centers” (Kitagawa 1987): “To be fully human means to be able to shape one’s own structure of meaning, through association and imagination, through education and effort, regarding things we observe and experience” (p. 162). Given the ascendancy of theoretical, methodological, and



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comparative Eurocentrism in the field of intercultural communication, I share Ngũgĩ’s (1993) sentiment that the time is ripe for us to “discuss the possibility of moving the center from its location in Europe towards a pluralism of centers, themselves being equally legitimate locations of the human imagination” (p. 8). The purpose of this second section is twofold: (i) to explicate the notion of Asiacentricity as a metatheoretical concept by stipulating its major dimensions; and (ii) to further clarify Asiacentricity as a key to alternative knowledge by debunking its myths and misconceptions. Asiacentricity, as I have proposed and developed it in culture and communication studies (see Miike  2003,  2008b,  2010,  2014,  2017a,  2019b,  2022a), owes its intellectual debt to Molefi Kete Asante’s (2003,  2006,  2007,  2008,  2015, 2017) enduring legacy of Afrocentricity. I will therefore make reference to the conceptual significance and paradigmatic development of Afrocentricity wherever appropriate and relevant.

Dimensions of Asiacentricity Afrocentricity is, etymologically speaking, a simple combination of the two words, Africa and center. However, as a metatheoretical, methodological, and actionable concept, its meaning has evolved across disciplines for the past several decades. Afrocentricity is polysemic and multi-­dimensional in the intellectual landscape today. Asante has proffered many definitions of Afrocentricity over the years. In one of his writings, for example, Asante (1998) defined Afrocentricity with particular attention to subject-­position, agency, and an orientation to data: Afrocentricity is the theoretical notion that insists on viewing African phenomena from the ­standpoint of Africans as subjects rather than objects. It is therefore a rather simple idea. The insistence on seeing African phenomena from the perspective of African people is neither novel nor extraordinary. What makes this view of reality so awesome for many people is the fact that it is stated in a way that suggests Africans have been viewed in the past as tangential to Europe, as peripheral to Eurocentric views, and as spectators to others. To theorize from the vantage point of Africans as centered is to provide a new vista on social, cultural, and economic facts. Thus, it is the orientation to data, not the data themselves, that matters. (p. vii)

My close reading of Asante’s numerous essays highlighted six major dimensions of Afrocentricity for the sake of conceptual clarification: (i) Africans as subjects and agents; (ii) the centrality of the collective and humanistic interests of Africa and Africans; (iii) the centrality of African indigenous values and ideals; (iv) groundedness in African historical experiences; (v) an African theoretical orientation to data; and (vi) an African corrective and critique of dislocation (see Miike 2008a). In accordance with these six interrelated constituents of Afrocentricity, then, I define Asiacentricity as (i) an assertion of Asians as subjects and agents, (ii) placing Asian interests at the center of an approach to knowledge reconstruction about Asia, (iii) placing Asian cultural values and ideals at the center of inquiry into Asian thought and action, (iv) being grounded in Asian historical experiences, (v) an Asian theoretical orientation to data, and (vi) an Asian ethical critique and corrective of the dislocation and displacement of Asian people and phenomena. Asiacentricity hence demands that (i) Asian peoples or texts are viewed as subjects and agents in their narratives, (ii) Asian interests, values, and ideals are prioritized in discussion and discourse on Asians and their experiences, and (iii) an Asian person, document, or phenomenon is located in the context of their or its own culture and history. When Asiacentricity is applied to theorizing activities of cultural re-­interpretation, re-­description, and re-­vision, then, it invites us to view Asian cultures as central resources for Asiacentric insight and inspiration, not peripheral targets for non-­Asiacentric analysis and critique. In other words, Asiacentricity insists that Asian cultures should be viewed as theories for Asiacentric knowledge reconstruction, not as texts for non-­Asiacentric knowledge deconstruction. This idea of “culture as theory” has profound implications for intercultural communication research in the midst of Eurocentric

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intellectual imperialism. It urges us to locate a culture in its own context, recognize its collective subject-­position and agency, approach the culture in a way to fully appreciate, not merely analyze, its unheard and silenced voices, and learn from their visions of humanity by centering its traditional values and ideals. It enjoins us to go beyond mere description of the culture, rediscover and recover positive elements of its heritage, and project its new future (Asante and Miike 2013; Miike 2014, 2019b, 2022a). Asiacentricity pinpoints the pivotal role of Asian cultures in theorizing Asian thought and action. People in different cultures engage in communication activities in different linguistic, religious-­philosophical, and historical contexts. Their thoughts and feelings in day-­to-­day life are expressed not through abstract universals but through concrete particulars. Accordingly, if we wish to understand and appreciate their cultural locations and communicative perspectives, we ought to theorize as they speak in particular languages, as they are impacted by particular religious-­philosophical foundations, and as they struggle to live in particular historical experiences. Our theoretical accounts will be akin to their experiential perspectives when we theorize from their linguistic, religious-­philosophical, and historical resources. This centrality of culture in theorizing endeavors is the overriding premise of Afrocentric, Asiacentric, and other non-­ Western centric scholarship. It is noteworthy that centric scholarship strives to take into due consideration abiding traditions, collective memories, and primordial ties. In the age of postmodern, poststructural, and postcolonial thinking, ancient traditions of thought, classical texts, and concrete cultural practices especially in the nonmetropolitan areas of the non-­Western world are downplayed. But centrists are as discontented with such an intellectual orientation as Tu (1998) was: In fact, many of the postmodernists have informed us that boundary crossing, along with the continuous, restless, redefining of boundaries, and the ideal of the self, nation, or community have been deconstructed; if we try to essentialize any of them, we are merely modern and not postmodern. But if we focus our attention on some of the very powerful so-­called macro trends that have exerted a shaping influence on the global community since the end of the Second World War – science, technology, communication, trade, finance, entertainment, travel, tourism, migration, and, of course, disease  – we may be misled into believing that the human condition itself has been structured by these newly emerging global forces without any reference to our inherited historical and cultural practices. (p. 6)

As Ngũgĩ (1993) noted, “knowing oneself and one’s environment was a correct basis of absorbing the world; there could never be the only center from which to view the world but different people in the world had their culture and environment as the center” (p. 9). The idea of cultural “center” in Afrocentric and Asiacentric projects should not be misunderstood as the pure “essence” of an African or Asian culture or African and Asian cultures. Afrocentrists or Asiacentrists have no intention of creating one center in Africa or Asia. Furthermore, the idea should not be confused with the meaning of center in the center-peripheral model of the structural imperialism theory and the world systems theory. The terms, subject and agency, are also used in a specific manner in Afrocentric and Asiacentric discourse. They signify “self-­definition,” “self-­determination,” and “self-­representation.” The subject-­object distinction concerns the question of how we approach a person, text, and document. Rather than scrutinizing the person, text, and document and treating them as if they were objects of analysis and critique, we must attend genuinely to them as subjects of voices as they tell their own stories about their cultural worlds. The concept of agency brings our attention to the activeness-­passiveness distinction. It raises the question of uncovering the activeness and actor-­ness of a person or a person in a text and document instead of its passiveness and spectator-­ness. Perhaps suffice it to say here that Asiacentricity is fundamentally about shared identities and collective representations. It does not subscribe to the Eurocentric view of the privileged that a totally “fluid” identity is, and will be, merely “performed” by “free will.” As an Afrocentrist,



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Asante (2005) opposed “the notion of ruin,” namely, “the idea that it is necessary to fragment the world in order to interrogate phenomena” (p. 11). He did not buy into the postmodern thinking of “unadulterated individualistic narcissism that undermines the human capacity to feel solidarity with others” (p. 11). Asante (2005) proclaimed: Life as a random collage or free association of images may invoke an isolationist individuality, but it is never cohesive enough to deal with the reality of community and communities, that is, groups of people who are bound together by similar historical experiences and who are developed by common phenomenological responses. (p. 11)

From an Asiacentric standpoint, Dissanayake (2006) also opined: The production of identities in the present world is often discussed in terms of axiomatics of ­postmodern theory, which valorize such phenomena as fragility, instability, and a multiplicity of identities. The very notion of identity has been characterized as illusory. It is argued that identities are constructed through role-­playing and appropriation of images; identity is matter of leisure and playacting. People are able to pick and choose their identities at will. Against this approach to identity, one has to counterpose the very real need that people, say, in Asia feel for a sense of collective belonging and group agency. Instead of the disappearance of identity, what one perceives is an attempt to recognize its centrality and to redefine and resituate it in newer social contexts. The need for identity is very real, and for most people living in Asia today, one important aspect of their identity is that they are victims of neocolonialism and global capitalism. (p. 43)

Misconceptions of Asiacentricity Both Afrocentricity and Asiacentricity have been subjected to destructive criticisms. Some critics, whether intentionally or unintentionally, misread a growing body of Afrocentric and Asiacentric work and generated problematic discourse about centricity (Asante  1999; Jackson  1999; Miike  2019b,  2022a). I have already responded to five major myths of Afrocentricity elsewhere: (i) Afrocentricity is a Black version of Eurocentrism; (ii) Afrocentricity essentializes Africanness and ignores the diversity of Africa; (iii) Afrocentricity rejects hybridity and ignores the dynamic nature of Africa; (iv) Afrocentricity is always the opposite of Eurocentricity; and (v) Afrocentricity is still confined by Eurocentrism (see Miike 2008a). I will herein address a few common misconceptions about Asiacentricity as a way of further clarifying this paradigmatic concept. One widespread misconception about Asiacentricity is that to be Asiacentric is to be ethnocentric. Asiacentricity is neither a hegemonic Asiacentrism nor an Asian version of ethnocentric Eurocentrism. Asiacentricity is not a universalist position but a particularist stance. Asiacentricity does not present the Asian worldview as the only universal frame of reference and impose it on non-­Asians. It is the argument of Asiacentrists that to theorize from the vantage point of Asians as centered is the best way to capture the agency of Asian people and the cultural world of Asia. They do not deny the value of other non-­ Asiacentric perspectives on Asians. Nevertheless, they reject the hegemonic ideology that non-­Asiacentric theoretical standpoints are superior to Asiacentric ones and therefore can grossly neglect the latter in the discussion and discourse surrounding Asian people and phenomena (Miike 2008b). It is often assumed that, if they are Asiacentric, one is against other centers. But one can be Asiacentric and also Afrocentric, for example. Afrocentricity and Eurocentricity (not Eurocentrism) can enrich each other’s knowledge especially in intercultural studies. Afrocentric and Eurocentric theorizing about intercultural communication between Africans and Europeans can complement each other. As Ngũgĩ (1993) aptly pointed out, “the question was not that of mutual exclusion between Africa and Europe but the basis and the starting point of their interaction” (pp. 8–9). Asante (2017) is of the opinion that centricity provides the

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basis of intercultural equality. He avowed that “recognition of one’s cultural heritage and ­origin allowed a communicator on a level of respect that would not happen if one communicator was ‘taken over’ by another” (p. 208). If they are dependent on other cultures to define their own culture, Asante (2017) asseverated, one will never have subject-­subject intercultural ­relationships for mutual dialogue on an equal footing. Another prevailing misconception about Asiacentricity is that to be an Asiacentrist is to be an essentialist. By implications, according to the critics, Asiacentricity also ignores the internal diversity, hybridity, and fluidity of Asian cultures. First of all, like Afrocentricity, Asiacentricity as a metatheory concerns itself more with how we theorize than with what we theorize. Karenga (2010) maintained that Afrocentricity is “a quality of thought and practice rather than thought and practice themselves” (p.  42). What he meant is that Afrocentrists can debate over the content of African values and ideals and yet remain committed to the metatheoretical idea of the centrality of African values and ideals in their academic pursuits about African thinking and behavior. Asante (1998) also made it explicit that “being Afrocentric in one’s analysis does not mean conforming to the one ‘doctrine’ of Afrocentricity – there are many ways to discuss the centeredness of a text, document, or person” (p. ix). Likewise, centering Asian values and ideals in an Asiacentric inquiry is not the same as essentializing Asianness. Some Asiacentrists are often mistaken as essentialists because they take intense interest in commonalities among Asian cultures and continuities between Asians on the continent and in the diaspora. To be sure, Asiacentrists presuppose that some common aspects of Asian cultures exist due to their geographical closeness and subsequent intercultural exchanges. Asiacentrists and other centrists also believe that there are relatively stable aspects of a culture. However, this intellectual stance does not deny diversities among and within Asian cultures. As a matter of fact, following the principle of Asiacentricity, Asiacentric approaches can promote the most detailed and nuanced understanding of within-­ Asia cultural differences (Miike  2010). Furthermore, taking a centric position does not lead to immutablism, which is “the belief that there can be no change, no influence, and no impact on cultures from outside” (Asante, personal communication, 26 November 2001). Being “Asiacentric does not mean that there is no possibility of influence from outside Asia, but simply that the Asiacentric perspective relates fundamentally to cultural, not racial, attitudes, responses, and behaviors that have developed over time” (Asante, personal communication, 26 November 2001). Still another pertinent misconception about Asiacentricity is that being Asian is equated with being Asiacentric. The underlying logic is that non-­Asians cannot become Asiacentric. It is repeatedly made clear in Afrocentric and Asiacentric writings that being centric is a matter of consciousness (Miike 2017a). Non-­Asians can be Asiacentric if they develop their Asiacentric consciousness by gaining a culturally centered location through culture learning. On the other hand, the fact that one was biologically born as a person of Asian descent does not guarantee that they are Asiacentric. No centrist presumes the direct link between biology and ideology. However, it may be the case that an Asian identity and cultural familiarity can foster the Asiacentric consciousness. Asian researchers, for example, may find it easier to be Asiacentric in scholarship because of their cultural familiarity with Asian languages, religious-­philosophical traditions, and histories. Tanno (2007) mentioned that we cannot assume insider researchers are culturally sensitive while outsider researchers are culturally insensitive, but we can generally surmise that insider researchers have more “intimate” cultural knowledge and understand “sometimes double or triple meanings of words used in different contexts” (p. 242). Insiders in Asian communities thus may be more equipped to theorize and research culture and communication from Asiacentric perspectives. I wish to emphasize once again before closing this section that neither Afrocentrists nor Asiacentrists are cultural chauvinists and separatists. They are indeed humanists. As Karenga (2012) encapsulated, “Afrocentricity [or Asiacentricity] does not isolate itself or place itself above others, but instead coexists with other-­centric pluralism without being hierarchical or



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subversive” (p.  73). Afrocentrists and Asiacentrists are simply protesting that Eurocentric ­perspectives are too narrow to account for the richness and complexities of human, not European, experiences, and that there are different perspectives, expressed through different particularities, based on different cultural locations. Their thesis is that hearing all voices from all cultural locations is humane. Asante (2003) eloquently remarked: We all possess the cultural capacity to see, explain, and interpret from the vantage point of our existential location. In the West and elsewhere, the European, in the midst of other peoples, has often propounded an exclusive view of reality; the exclusivity of this view creates a fundamental human crisis. In some cases, it has created cultures arrayed against each other or even against themselves. Afrocentricity’s response certainly is not to impose its own particularity as a universal, as Eurocentrism has often done. But hearing the voice of African culture with all of its attendant parts is one way of creating a more sane society and one model for a more humane world. (p. 51)

Asian Cultures for Asiacentric Communication Theorizing The first section of this chapter problematized theoretical, methodological, and comparative Eurocentrism. The second part of the chapter then clarified Asiacentricity by identifying its major dimensions and addressing its common misconceptions. This last segment of the chapter maps out three content dimensions of an Asiacentric metatheory that I have propounded (Miike 2003, 2008b, 2010, 2014, 2019b) and discusses the possibility of Asiacentric comparisons based on indigenous theorizing attempts from these dimensions. I have elsewhere delineated other components of the metatheory of Asiacentricity (i.e. metatheoretical assumptions, research objectives, and methodological considerations). I will thus focus mainly on the content dimensions because they constitute the core idea of culture as theory. It must be kept in mind that I am not proposing the Asiacentric metatheory of communication. There may be other ways of metatheorizing based on the principle of Asiacentricity.

The Linguistic Dimension The first dimension of culture as a resource for theory building is language. According to Ngũgĩ (1986), “Language, any language, has a dual character: it is both a means of communication and a carrier of culture” (p. 13). He held the view that “a specific culture is not transmitted through language in its universality but in its particularity as the language of a specific community with a specific history” (p. 15). Theorizing with key concepts in different languages is, therefore, one of the important steps toward diversifying analytical tools in intercultural communication research. Indigenous concepts inscribed in local languages open up different pathways to the nuanced understanding of cultural values and communication behaviors. As Mendoza (2006) tersely put it, language itself is “a powerful system of representation” (p.  169). Overviewing the Filipino practice of indigenous theory building called Pantayong Pananaw (a “for-­us” perspective), she contended that “the shift from English to Filipino is here viewed to be more than a mere formalistic gesture avowing (guaranteeing) national sentiment. Rather, it is seen as facilitating transformation of the very structure of knowing” (p.  169). Indeed, each language serves as an excellent theoretical window from which we can look at each cultural world (Miike 2010). Theorizing from Asian linguistic resources will invigorate our thinking toward an Asiacentric terrain of intercultural communication research when we undertake three essential tasks: (i) to valorize and vitalize as many Asian concepts in Asian languages as possible as they relate to human interaction; (ii) to locate those Asian concepts in relation to one another so that one can see how they intersect; and (iii) to speculate on the deep structure of communication that

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is unfolding (Miike 2008b; Miike and Yin 2015). Of prime importance is a thoroughgoing examination of indigenous communication-­equivalent terms in Asian languages. There is a dire need to explore what “communication” means in an Asian sense by consolidating communication-­equivalent terms in Asian languages. Chen (2002), for example, isolated eight communication concepts in traditional China: 1 Chuan means “to turn [or] to revolve,” referring to delivering or forwarding a message, teaching knowledge and skills, recording a person’s life, and orally distributing information. 2 Bo means “to sow seed,” referring to spreading or disseminating messages. 3 Yang means “to rise up and flutter (as a flag), to flourish, [or] to manifest,” referring to consciously making a message or person flourish or manifest in public. 4 Liu means “to flow (like water),” referring to a process in which one’s reputation or virtuous message is disseminated naturally and unintentionally. 5 Bu means “the woven cloth,” referring to the downward process of announcing or disseminating organized information or government order to the public. 6 Xuan means “the emperor’s room or the imperial decree or edict,” referring to the dignified declaration or proclamation of the emperor’s order. 7 Tong means “unobstructed,” referring to the free flow of oral communication. 8 Di means “to deliver or [to] exchange,” referring to the exchange or delivery of materials via, for example, the courier system. (pp. 256–257) For another example, Nakazawa (2000) traced the history of the Japanese communication concept of hanashiai (mutual talk). This word, which is in everyday use in Japan today, connotes conversation, discussion, consultation, accommodation, negotiation, and resolution. According to Nakazawa (2000), hanashiai as a feeling-­oriented mode of interaction was developed in farming villages during the Edo period (1603–1868). It was used in village meetings in order to resolve individual differences to reach a group consensus. Villagers needed to help one another for their survival but always had all sorts of conflict as any human community would. Thus, they had to develop a system of communication leading to mutual understanding and cooperation. Hanashiai aimed to avoid direct confrontation between villagers and required them to share a particular space and spend a certain amount of time, talking over things together. This practice helped them to develop a group identity. The role of the harmonizer in hanashiai was to listen very well, and very patiently, ask villagers to meet halfway, and propose to make a decision when the mood of consensus is beginning to emerge. Nakazawa’s (2000) theoretical excursion reveals how Japanese hanashiai communication was, and still is, conceptualized in terms of its forms and functions.

The Religious-­Philosophical Dimension The second dimension of culture as a resource for theory building is religion and philosophy. As Yum (2015) noticed, most US Eurocentric cross-­cultural studies of communication simply discern and describe cultural patterns in other countries and then compare and contrast them to those of the United States, rarely going beneath the surface to explore the source of such differences. This tendency is particularly strong in a number of cross-­cultural research reports on Asian communication. It must not be forgotten that, whether it is good or bad, religious-­ philosophical foundations have been institutionalized in Asia for centuries and have impacted the way Asian societies and communication systems are structured. Theorizing from religious-­ philosophical traditions as intellectual resources, therefore, will help us understand how the current presuppositions and postulates of Asian cultures and communication have come into shape and why. It will also demystify the broader sociocultural contexts of communication in



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Asia. Chang (2014), who carefully read Confucian teachings about speaking in the Analects, concluded: To appropriately theorize about the Confucian view of language – and perhaps more importantly, how language is used in modern-­day Confucianist cultures – one must appreciate the full scope of Confucian perspectives on human emotion, the role emotion plays in different orders of relationship, the cultivation of virtue and moral character, the coordination of form and substance, the establishment of society, and the overall view of the universe. It is only through such in-­depth understanding of the philosophical roots and worldviews of Asian cultures that one can come to understand the meaning of Asian communication. (p. 269)

Dissanayake (2003) elucidated the Buddhist teaching of samma vaca (right speech) and discussed its moral implications in Asian verbal communication. There are four primary guidelines for right speech: (i) it should be de-­linked with falsehoods of any sort; (ii) it discourages slander and calumny leading to friction and hostility among people; (iii) it presupposes the absence of, and the refraining of, harsh language; and (iv) it encourages speakers to desist from frivolous and idle chatter and to embrace purposeful and productive speech. In a nutshell, right speech addresses “all such precautions that should be taken for not hurting others by one’s speech. On the other hand, speaking the truth cannot be compromised” (Verma 1997, p. 31). It would be commendable to perform an Asiacentric rhetorical analysis to comprehend to what extent “good” speeches of contemporary Asian public speakers are compatible with the Buddhist ethics of right speech. There have not been many theoretical investigations that draw out communicative ideas and insights from Asian classical literature in order to account for current patterns and practices of Asian communication. This present paucity of theory construction from Asian canonized treatises leads us to prematurely conclude that Asian religions and philosophies are “past things” and “totally irrelevant” to contemporary research on Asian cultures and communication. If we do not know anything about Asian traditions of thought, then, how can we see its enduring influence on present-­day Asian communication? For example, Bharat Muni’s monumental book, The Natyashastra, is said to be the earliest work on communication philosophy in India and used an indigenous communication-­equivalent term Sadharanikaran (Yadava 1987). Informed scholars alluded to intriguing similarities and differences between Bharat’s concept of Sadharanikaran and Aristotle’s concept of rhetoric. To this date, however, The Natyashastra has not received the prominence it deserves among Asiacentric communication thinkers. Although Chen and Miike (2003), Craig and Xiong (2022), Dissanayake (1988), Kincaid (1987), Li (2020), Miike (2009, 2017b), Miike and Chen (2007, 2010), Nordstrom (1983), and Tian and Yu (2022) assembled many religious-­philosophical inquiries into Asian communication, much remains to be done to theorize the nature and ideal of communication from Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Shinto, and Taoism as central resources of Asiacentric insight.

The Historical Dimension The third dimension of culture as a resource for theory building is history. Traditional Eurocentric cross-­cultural communication specialists, either social scientific or interpretive, have paid scant attention to Asian histories of domestic, within-­regional, and cross-­continental intercultural encounters. Eurocentric intercultural communication critics are predisposed to interrogate them only as targets of deconstruction through their Western theoretical lenses. Consequently, it is hardly surprising that there are few Asiacentric inquires in intercultural communication research that illuminate the rich histories of Asia as theoretical resources despite the fact that Asian historical struggles have much to offer in theorizing about intercultural communication problems, ethics, and competence. Throughout their long ­

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­histories, Asians have had intercultural contacts with different peoples, ideas, and products from different neighboring communities. All Asian nations have extensively experienced the aggression and colonization of Western empires. Furthermore, Japan invaded other Asian nations under the highly politicized slogan of the “Greater East Asia Coprosperity Sphere.” It behooves Asiacentric communication historians to hark back to historical events in Asia with the aim of theorizing Asiacentric ethics and competence toward global and local harmonious communication (Miike 2008b, 2017a, 2019a). It would prove to be of immense value for Asiacentrists to tap into many biographies of outstanding Asian individuals who lived multicultural lives in order to theorize about the profile of an intercultural person from Asian perspectives. Gu Hongming (1857–1928) serves as an illustrative example. He was the first Chinese professor of English at Peking University. He was born in Malaysia, went to Europe to receive education, and married a Japanese woman by the name of Sadako Yoshida. He then settled in China – his cultural home. He called himself Dongxi Nanbei (East-­West-­South-­North). He had an excellent command of English and was well versed in Western civilization. Nonetheless, he deployed neither his English competence nor his knowledge of Western intellectual traditions for the Westernization of China. Instead, he was determined to expound on Chinese traditions of thought in English so as to further the understanding and resilience of Chinese ancient wisdom abroad (Hirakawa 2005). His life was intercultural, but he chose to be rooted in Chinese cultural heritage. What kind of Asiacentric philosophy of multicultural life can we construct from biographical narratives of such Asian intercultural women and men as Gu? Reading through cumulated voices of Asians who went to the West and returned to Asia would render it compelling to build an Asiacentric theory of identity transformation and intercultural competence. Even in a speculative estimate, four stages may be identifiable: (i) the yearning stage where one is so fascinated with Western languages, values, and lifestyles and tries to absorb everything Western; (ii) the reflection stage where, after their certain exposure to the West, one is beginning to become reflexive and critical of the West and recognizes the limit of imitation; (iii) the returning stage where one ruminates on their cultural roots and learns to embrace their heritage; and (iv) the integration stage where, in one’s mind, there is neither a blind superiority complex nor a blind inferiority complex toward the West. Those Asians who reached the final stage know how to extend their own cultural heritage and what aspects of their culture should be changed. They can be critical of both their own and other cultures. They can assess strengths and weaknesses of their own cultures in global and local contexts. They demand that the West understand Asia more while they also tell other Asians that Asia needs to change for a better Asia. They are deeply rooted in their own cultures and yet have global visions.

Asiacentric Assumptions and Propositions I have thus far sketched the three content dimensions for Asiacentric theorizing in intercultural communication scholarship. One may be under the impression that they are still very broad domains of theoretical inquiry. Through my extensive review of literature, I formulated philosophical assumptions and communication propositions from Asiacentric perspectives. These assumptions and propositions may be taken as points of departure for advancing Asiacentric theorizing from the above three dimensions. Miike (2003) spelled out three philosophical assumptions for an Asiacentric paradigm of communication. Ontologically, everyone and everything are interrelated across space and time. Epistemologically, everyone and everything become meaningful in relation to others. Axiologically, harmony is vital to the survival of everyone and everything. There are three implications for theorizing communication: (i) Communication takes place in contexts of multiple relationships across space and time; (ii) The communicator is perceptually and behaviorally active and passive in a variety of contexts; and (iii) Mutual adaptation is of central importance in harmonious communication processes.



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Featuring the five main elements of an Asian worldview (i.e. circularity, harmony, other-­ directedness, reciprocity, and relationality), Miike (2015) also laid out five propositions on human communication from an Asiacentric perspective: (i) Communication is a process in which we remind ourselves of the interdependence and interrelatedness of the universe; (ii)  Communication is a process in which we reduce our selfishness and egocentrism; (iii) Communication is a process in which we feel the joy and suffering of all sentient beings; (iv) Communication is a process in which we receive and return our debts to all sentient beings; and (v) Communication is a process in which we moralize and harmonize the universe. In light of these aforementioned broad philosophical assumptions and communication propositions, Asiacentric communicologists may be able to embark on theorizing about deep and surface structures of communication in a specific Asian culture or coculture.

Asiacentric Comparisons and Visions On the basis of indigenous theories from Asian linguistic, religious-­philosophical, and historical cultural resources, Asiacentrists are prodded to engage in Asiacentric and non-­ Eurocentric comparisons so that they can overcome the foregoing theoretical, methodological, and comparative Eurocentrism in intercultural communication research. How do the Chinese concept of keqi and the Thai concept of kreng jai differ? How do the Korean concept of nunchi and the Filipino concept of pakikiramdam differ? How differently do Hinduism and Buddhism see silence? How differently do theories out of Sri Lankan and Indian colonial histories tell about the problems and ethics of intercultural communication? How were gaman and shikataganai used among Japanese Americans before World War II? How did their meanings change after World War II? Interestingly enough, for instance, both the Indian rasa theory of communication (see Kirkwood  1990; Yadava 1987) and the Confucian ideas about communication (see Tu 1991, 2002) recognized the primacy of emotion in human interaction and enunciated the sympathetic heart (sahridaya) and ego-­detachment in order for communicators to share commonness and realize the undivided nature of the cosmic world. According to both theories, poetry is highly regarded as an important tool in understanding the true nature of the world around us. Curiously, the communication concept of Sadharanikaran, briefly touched on earlier, accentuates the simplification and exemplification of ideas, which parallels the Zen Buddhist view of communication. By assessing which aspect of culture should be embraced as globally significant local knowledge, Asiacentric lines of communication inquiry hold great promise for presenting viable cultural visions for a new Asia. Furthermore, Asiacentric theories and comparisons make possible context-­ sensitive Asiacentric critiques of Asian cultures and communication. They can reconstruct open-­ minded Asianness by deconstructing closed-­minded Asianness. Hence, there is the possibility of Asiacentric critical intercultural communication studies (Miike  2014). Conventional Asian communication scholarship is very much male-­centered, heterosexual-­oriented, urban-­biased, and nationalistic. Past Asiacentric theoretical investigations have concentrated on Northeast Asian cultures and communication. The Asiacentric scholarly enterprise must make concerted efforts to redress this imbalanced focus of theoretical exploration. Asiacentrists will widen their theoretical discourse by illuminating Asian women’s languages, interpretations of religious-­philosophical traditions, and historical voices. In this regard, Yin’s (2009, 2022) Asiacentric womanist theory of communication based on the ontology of interrelatedness and collectivity, the epistemology of complementarity and harmony, and the axiology of duty and responsibility is worthy of attention. Future Asiacentric theorizing activities will also benefit a great deal from Central Asian, South Asian, Southeast Asian, and West Asian input (e.g. Mowlana 2021). There is no reason to conceive that the principle of Asiacentricity is only applicable to the Northeast Asian region. Critical intercultural communication scholarship focuses on issues of identity, power, ­privilege, and structural forces in reconceptualizing the nature and complexity of culture and

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in reconsidering the past and future of intercultural relations (Folb  2015; Halualani  2022; Kelly 2014; Lawless and Chen 2021; Yep 2014). The primary locus of its inquiry is macro-­/ meso-­contexts (i.e. historical, institutional, economic, political, and ideological factors) that frame the conditions of (inter)cultural communication and the positions of (inter)cultural communicators. Critical studies of culture and communication aim to uncover and eliminate contextual constraints and hegemonic practices toward more equal and mutual relations within and across cultures. Critical interculturalists are, therefore, committed to more contextualized, historically situated, and politicized scholarship about culture and communication (Halualani et al. 2009; Martin 2015a, b; Nakayama and Martin 2007; Xu 2013). The Asiacentric approach is in agreement with this general agenda of critical intercultural communication studies. However, two important points can be made as to what it means to be a critical intercultural communication researcher, particularly in an Asiacentric sense. First, to be critical in theory and practice requires critical consciousness regarding the Eurocentric structure of cultural and comparative knowledge. We cannot be truly critical when we are blind imitators and perpetuators of Eurocentric theoretical knowledge and not original thinkers and theorists of our own communication realities. As the title of the present essay implicitly suggests, we cannot be ­critical, in the Asiacentric sense of the word, if we refuse to abandon the ideological structure of the hierarchical relationship between Western theories and visions (or ideas and ideals of humanity) and non-­Western texts and realities, even when we are addressing social justice and global ethics in the postcolonial world. Second, because knowledge reconstruction as well as knowledge deconstruction is an overriding goal of the Asiacentric project, the language of criticism, resistance, and prospect must be captured and theorized in Asian cultural specificities and particularities. The three content dimensions of the Asiacentric metatheory can not only describe and interpret Asian communication realities, but also critique and transform them from the perspective of Asian communicators. From an Asiacentric vantage point, the role of critical interculturalists is to pluralize and localize theoretical lenses and political issues that are central to critical scholarship. The very notions of “power” and “equity,” for example, should be conceptualized in multiple languages, within multiple national contexts, and between multiple international relations. Asiacentric critical studies need to delve into power as responsibility rather than as rights, power from relationships rather than from individual achievement and status, and power in the private sphere rather than in the public sphere (Miike 2017b). We ought to reevaluate and enrich the unitary and de-­contextualized discourse on identity and hegemony in intracultural and intercultural interactions.

By Way of Conclusion: On Being Rooted and Open Kumaravadivelu (2008) compared and contrasted the intercultural lives of two Indian historical figures, Jawaharlal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi. They both encountered the colonizing West but dealt with its cultural impact in different ways. Nehru developed his peculiar hybrid identity and suffered from his feeling of belonging nowhere throughout his life. Gandhi, on the other hand, always remembered where his roots were and embraced the best of his own heritage without closing his windows to other cultures. Unlike Nehru, Gandhi felt neither culturally alienated nor psychologically ambivalent. Wherever appropriate, he was not reluctant to pronounce his debts to Western traditions and other non-­Western philosophies in his own identity development. Kumaravadivelu (2008) observed that it is this “Gandhian view of cultural growth, with its twin pillars of rootedness and openness, that  .  .  .  offers a strong ­foundation for the construction of global cultural consciousness in the contemporary world” (p. 169). Sparrow’s (2014) recent research findings on multicultural identities seem to espouse Kumaravadivelu’s (2008) observation that “Gandhi’s thoughts on cultural consciousness have a greater relevance today than they had in his time” (p. 169).



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The next phase of intercultural communication research exhorts us to face up to the c­ hallenge of finding a balanced way to re-­describe culture and communication in context and re-­interpret positive elements of all cultural traditions for both global and local communication in the contemporary world. It is self-­evident that this task of theoretical re-­articulation must rise above simple-­minded cultural generalizations and cannot end in cultural criticism. It is the central contention of this chapter, as implied in Ngũgĩ’s (1993) remark at the outset, that Asiacentricity, which views Asian cultures as central resources for theory building, is intellectually necessary not only to re-­describe and re-­articulate the contours and dynamics of Asian communication in concrete living, but also to re-­interpret and re-­envision the best of Asian cultural heritage. The Asiacentric idea is not an ethnocentric metatheoretical position, but a humanistic and humanizing stance. To be rooted in Asian cultures is not the same as to be against other non-­Asian cultures (Miike 2019b, 2022a). Rootedness in the genuine sense requires a vision of pluralism (Tu 1991). To be rooted is not to say that what is best for me is best for my neighbor. As Tu (2002) shrewdly pointed out, “the deeper you dig into our own ground of existence, the nearer we come to the common spring of humanity” (p. 88). We often presume that “universality is only attainable through abstraction, but . . . it is through the ‘lived concreteness’ that we are in touch with the most universalized transcendence” (p.  88). Hence, abstract individualism and universalism will never work, and they will only damage human collectivity and diversity. We need to transform, not escape from, our embedded heritage to be a global citizen and have a cosmopolitan spirit (Tu 2014). Both conventional and critical intercultural communication scholarship ought to take this point very seriously. Tu (2014) noted that equality and distinction are two complementary wheels of intercultural communication because “without equality, there would be no common ground for communicating; without distinction, there would be no need to communicate” (p. 504). Centricity provides a basis of equality and a mirror of distinction.

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Radhakrishnan, R. (2003). Theory in an Uneven World. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Rao, R.N. (2021). Is this not racism, religious supremacy, and ethnocentrism? An analysis of two editions of an intercultural communication textbook. China Media Research 17 (1): 74–97. Sardar, Z. (1999). Development and the locations of Eurocentrism. In: Critical Development Theory: Contributions to a New Paradigm (eds. R. Munck and D. O’Hearn), 44–62. London: Zed Books. Shuter, R. (2000). Linking theory to practice in intercultural communication: intracultural theory and research. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the National Communication Association, Seattle, WA. Shuter, R. (2014). The centrality of culture in the 20th and 21st centuries. In: The Global Intercultural Communication Reader, 2e (eds. M.K. Asante, Y. Miike, and J. Yin), 48–57. New York: Routledge. Sparrow, L.M. (2014). Beyond multicultural man: complexities of identity. In: The Global Intercultural Communication Reader, 2e (eds. M.K. Asante, Y. Miike, and J. Yin), 393–414. New York: Routledge. Suzuki, D.T. (1963/1997). The Eastern Outlook (in Japanese). Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Suzuki, D.T. (1964). An Introduction to Zen Buddhism. New York: Grove Press. Tanno, D.V. (2007). Intercultural communication: its theories, its practices, its value. In: The Media and International Communication (eds. B. Lewandowska-­Tomaszczyk, T. Płudowski, and D.V. Tanno), 239–251. Frankfurt-­am-­Main: Peter Lang. Tian, D. and Yu, H. (2022). On the construction of indigenous Chinese communication theories: an analysis of the cultural roots. Communication Theory 32 (1): 116–141. Tu, W. (1991). A Confucian perspective on global consciousness and local awareness. International House of Japan Bulletin 11 (1): 1–5. Tu, W. (1998). Mustering the conceptual resources to grasp a world in flux. In: International Studies in the Next Millennium: Meeting the Challenge of Globalization (ed. J.A. Kushigian), 3–15. Westport, CT: Praeger. Tu, W. (2002). Confucianism and civilization. In: Dialogue of Civilizations: A New Peace Agenda for a New Millennium (eds. M. Tehranian and D.W. Chappell), 83–89. London: I.B. Tauris. Tu, W. (2014). The context of dialogue: globalization and diversity. In: The Global Intercultural Communication Reader, 2e (eds. M.K. Asante, Y. Miike, and J. Yin), 496–514. New York: Routledge. Ueda, S. (1999). Zen and the modern world: D.T. Suzuki on the Eastern way of seeing things. Journal of Japanese Trade and Industry 18 (2): 8–13. Ueda, S. (2007). “Outwardly, be open; inwardly, be deep”: D.T. Suzuki’s “Eastern outlook” (trans. T. Kirchner). The Eastern Buddhist 38 (1/2): 8–40. Verma, J. (1997). Hinduism, Islam and Buddhism: the sources of Asian values. In: Progress in Asian Social Psychology, vol. 1 (eds. K. Leung, U. Kim, S. Yamaguchi, and Y. Kashima), 23–36. Singapore: Wiley. Wallerstein, I. (1997). Eurocentrism and its avatars: the dilemmas of social science. New Left Review 226: 93–107. Wong, P., Manvi, M., and Wong, T.H. (1995). Asiacentrism and Asian American Studies? Amerasia Journal 21 (1/2): 137–147. Xu, K. (2013). Theorizing difference in intercultural communication: a critical dialogic perspective. Communication Monographs 80 (3): 379–397. Yadava, J.S. (1987). Communication in India: the tenets of Sadharanikaran. In: Communication Theory: Eastern and Western Perspectives (ed. D.L. Kincaid), 161–171. San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Yep, G.A. (2014). Encounters with “the Other”: personal notes for a reconceptualization of intercultural communication competence. In: The Global Intercultural Communication Reader, 2e (eds. M.K. Asante, Y. Miike, and J. Yin), 339–356. New York: Routledge. Yin, J. (2009). Negotiating the center: towards an Asiacentric feminist communication theory. Journal of Multicultural Discourses 4 (1): 75–88. Yin, J. (2017). Rethinking cultural identity in the context of globalization: comparative insights from the Kemetic and Confucian traditions. In: Conflict Management and Intercultural Communication: The Art of Intercultural Harmony (eds. X. Dai and G.-­M. Chen), 155–174. London: Routledge. Yin, J. (2018). Beyond postmodernism: a non-­Western perspective on identity. Journal of Multicultural Discourses 13 (3): 193–219. Yin, J. (2022). Rethinking Eurocentric visions in feminist communication research: Asiacentric womanism as a theoretical framework. In: The Handbook of Global Interventions in Communication Theory (eds. Y. Miike and J. Yin), 188–214. New York: Routledge.

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Yum, J.O. (2015). The impact of Confucianism on interpersonal relationships and communication patterns in East Asia. In: Intercultural Communication: A Reader, 14e (eds. L.A. Samovar, R.E. Porter, E.R. McDaniel, and C.S. Roy), 110–120. Boston: Cengage Learning.

Further Reading Asante, M.K. (2013). Afrocentricity: Imagination and Action. Penang: Multiversity and Citizens International. Jian, G. and Ray, G. (eds.) (2016). Relationships and Communication in East Asian Cultures: China, Japan and South Korea. Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt. Karenga, M. (2008). Afrocentricity and multicultural education: concept, challenge and contribution. In: Dealing with Diversity: The Anthology, 2e (eds. J.Q. Adams and P. Strother-­Adams), 243–256. Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt. Miike, Y. (2022). An anatomy of Eurocentrism in communication scholarship: the role of Asiacentricity in de-­Westernizing theory and research. In: Communication Theory: The Asian Perspective, 2e (ed. W. Dissanayake), 255–278. Manila: Asian Media Information and Communication Center. Miike, Y. (in press). Asiacentricity and the field of Asian communication theory: today and tomorrow. In: The Routledge Handbook of Cultural Discourse Studies (ed. Shi-­xu). London: Routledge. Smith, L.T. (2021). Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, 3e. London: Zed Books. Wallerstein, I. (2006). European Universalism: The Rhetoric of Power. New York: New Press.

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Fabricating Difference: Interculturality and the Politics of Language1 Crispin Thurlow University of Bern, Switzerland

Identity is always … a structured representation which only achieves its positive through the ­narrow eye of the negative. (S. Hall 1997a, p. 21) Difference is the motor that produces texts . . . . Where there is no difference, no text comes into being. (Kress 1985, p. 12) I have had these two quotes on my academic website for a while. I like them, partly because they come from two scholars I greatly admire, but mainly because, together, they articulate the essential connection between language and identity. Both language and identity are predicated on the perception, organization, and expression of difference. We make sense of ourselves by defining ourselves in relation to different people. We are impelled to speak in order to ­negotiate the meanings that differentiate us. Given the centrality – and unavoidability – of difference, it is all the more ironic that we struggle to handle the kinds of differences encountered daily. Our handling of difference varies tremendously – the ways we react to difference, and the ways we speak of difference. Sometimes we deliberately accentuate and exaggerate differences; at other times we suppress them, either by trivializing them or by pretending that they are not there at all. Much of the time we seek to resolve or overcome differences in our yearning for commonality and solidarity. Too seldom are we willing or able to open up to differences, to recognize, accept and explore them. Difference is, of course, the bread-­and-­butter focus of intercultural communication. In this regard, the ideas of scholars like Stuart Hall and Gunther Kress (quoted above) have helped me shape my own approach to intercultural communication, one which is informed also by cultural studies and critical discourse studies. These are all scholarly traditions which share a commitment to more problematized, broadly conceived views of both culture and identity; they also acknowledge the central role of language and communication in constituting social life. Orienting to capital-­C criticality, these fields of scholarship also share an underlying concern for ideology, inequality, and power.2 They are all concerned with the interplay between small-scale interactional practices and large-scale political-­economic processes. This, then, is the general framework within which I situate the current chapter. As a sociolinguist and

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discourse analyst, however, I am especially concerned to focus on the power and politics of language in sites of intercultural exchange.3 This is often where we see words being deployed for fabricating rather than navigating cultural difference.

The Power and Politics of Words Cultural mythologies have us all very conflicted about language. As children, many of us grow up with sayings like “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words can never harm me.” At the same time, though, we are also constantly reminded that “The Pen is mightier than the sword.” So, which is it to be? Does language matter or does not it? Needless to say, the answer is both a philosophical and a political one. Most lay people and many scholars are often inclined to think of language as little more than a passive reflection of society; in other words, cultural identities, organizational hierarchies and political structures find themselves neatly mirrored in the different ways people speak and write. To some extent this is true. However, it asks quite a lot of people to start thinking of language as an institution in its own right – one as powerful as any religious, state or ­educational system – which is also capable of creating and recreating social realities that otherwise feel so concrete and “natural” to us. In fact, this is the ideological nature of ­language: it persuades us that, like water and heterosexual sex, it too is somehow natural, neutral and normal. Surely, people worry, not everything is socially constructed? Men are men and girls are girls, right? Just because something is imagined does not mean that it’s imaginary  – a fabrication ­without substance (cf. Gupta and Ferguson 1992). Socially constructed identities, hierarchies, and structures certainly feel very real; they also have material outcomes for people. In addition to words, therefore, people really do throw sticks and stones (and worse) at those they find disturbing, threatening or just plain different. Nor are people at liberty to do their own thing with words, simply creating their own meanings. If people do make things up completely, there can be grave consequences, psychiatric or otherwise. Language is inherently intersubjective: we make meaning together, we learn meaning from each other, we share meaning. If we are to make sense to each other, we have to rely on the conventions of our language use, the traditions of our culture and the patterns of our relationships. When we speak, we therefore speak not with our own voice but with “social voices” – the words and worlds of meaning we inherit from others (Cameron 2001). As Mikhail Bakhtin (1986, p. 69) famously put it: “Any utterance is a link in a very complexly organized chain of other utterances.” It is this deeply interconnected, endlessly inherited quality of language which can make words feel like “givens” or “facts” rather than an exchange of, or negotiation over, meaning. We are inevitably constrained by this inheritance; if we want to be creative and try to say something different, we have to work hard to resist the influence of the social voices which speak through us. It can be done, however. Usually, in small, one-­at-­a-­time steps, but it can be done. And in doing so, we also start to shift conventions, traditions, and societal patterns. Feminist linguists are, for example, often ridiculed for their efforts to equalize language by, for example, challenging the use of the generic masculine pronoun (i.e. “he” or “man” for all people). Detractors complain: do they really think they can bring about equality for women like this? No, says Deborah Cameron (1995); to suggest this would be either possible or sufficient is absurd. The political objective behind these linguistic moves is rather to speak out against the social voices which condition us to believe that the generic masculine pronoun is the only choice we have.4 This is how we gradually change our vocabulary, rewriting the repertoire in a way which at the very least includes women and gives voice to their perspectives and experiences. It’s as good a place as any to initiate the much bigger process of social-­political change which must also happen.



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Jan Blommaert (2005, p. 2) observes nicely how, as a key “ingredient” in the workings of power, language warrants analytic attention: The focus [should] be on how language is an ingredient of power processes resulting in, and ­sustained by, forms of inequality, and how discourse can be or become a justifiable object of ­analysis, crucial to an understanding of wider aspects of power relations.

Words really do matter. They are not simply symbolic representations of the material; they are material. They are bodily and concrete. When we speak, it is sound waves that beat against our eardrums; when we write, it is ink that is scratched, struck or pressed onto paper. Words also have material consequences. It is with strings of words, bundles of texts, that we name and distinguish people so as to categorize and regulate them. We deploy our words and texts also to punish people, to harm them, to exterminate them, even. We do not think – or like to think – of ourselves exercising language on this scale and to these ends in our everyday speech and writing, but in using language we unavoidably amplify and augment the social voices with which we speak. And, in doing so, we unthinkingly privilege our own ways of speaking over those of other people. On the one hand, it is the taken-­for-­grantedness of language which makes it so workable and so pleasurable. On the other hand, it is this same taken-­for-­grantedness which typically blinds us to the significance of our words – their meaning and their consequence. To be sure, there is a long scholarly lineage in thinking of language as a powerful institution and, therefore, as an agent of both social control and social change. To name just a few well-­ known scholars: Edward Sapir (Sapir and Mandelbaum 1949), Benjamin Whorf (Whorf and Carroll  1956), Bronislaw Malinowski (1946), J.L. Austin (1962), Erving Goffman (1967), Mikhail Bakhtin (1986), Michel Foucault (1981), Pierre Bourdieu (1991) and Judith Butler (1990). These scholars have each demonstrated the complex, influential ways in which even the most mundane moments of language work performatively to establish the relationships and meanings of social life, as well as many of the material realities by which our societies come to be organized. In a nutshell, words do things  – they make stuff happen. We do banal, well-­ intended things with language, but language is never neutral. On the contrary. Ultimately, there is politics in even the most “innocent” of utterances. We witness the effects of power in all discourse, which is to say in all spoken or written language. And, as a range of different discourse analysts have shown, the political nature of language is expressed at every level and in every domain. This politics takes the form of, for example, the interactional accomplishment of apartheid (Chick  1985); the sexist norms of politeness behavior (e.g. bind of women saying “no” to sexual assault Holmes  1995); the impossible double-­ (Ehrlich 1998); and inter-­ethnic discrimination in the workplace (Gumperz 1997) or in the classroom (Edwards 1997). This is why most discourse analysis can be viewed as critical insofar as it invariably questions “objectivity” and challenges people’s claims to “normality” and “factuality” (see Jaworski and Coupland 2014, p. 27 – listed in Further Reading at the end of the chapter). Words provide people with powerful  – and power-­filled  – resources for constructing the very differences which are usually the primary object of investigation in intercultural communication studies. There is at least one other major reason why language warrants greater consideration for scholars of intercultural communication, arguably more so than ever. Critical discourse analysts have long been concerned with the role of language in representing, organizing and reproducing the neoliberal discourses of global (or “advanced” or “post-­industrial”) capitalism. This is how, for example, Norman Fairclough (2002, p. 164) explains things: “In so far as the restructuring and re-­scaling of capitalism is knowledge led, it is also discourse led, for knowledges are produced, circulated and consumed as discourses. . . .” With the large-­scale shift from manufacture-­based to service-­based economics – especially in the rich countries of the West – communication becomes more and more essential. In ­economies

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which rely on the selling and promotion of knowledge, information and lifestyles, it is words, images and design (i.e. the look and sound of things) which become central. Communication is how more and more people organize their work and earn a living. Language is thereby commodified as a workplace skill and/or a resource for sale (see Heller 2010). If for no other reason, this should make language and communication a major focus for Intercultural Communication scholars. Where there is commodification, there is invariably also exploitation. As language becomes more important to the (re)orderings of economic life, it is also ­subjected to even greater intervention and regulation. Language is therefore nowadays being used more than ever as an instrument [sic] for evaluating, controlling and managing not just products but also the people who make them. This process is what Fairclough (1995, p. 3) elsewhere describes as the technologization of discourse: “a calculated intervention to shift discursive practices as part of the engineering of social change.” Along the same lines, Cameron (2000) has shown how workers (e.g. in call centers) find ­themselves being policed into particular ways of speaking according to scripts that are given to them. This “technologizing” of language typically entails the imposition of a sanitized, “correct” way of speaking. Furthermore, the have-­a-­nice-­day “MacDonaldization” of language which Cameron considers is also problematically gendered, rendering commercial communication styles the province and responsibility of women. Language is thus politicized in yet another way. The strategic deployment of language – and languages – as a technology for controlling and managing people can be taken to extremes; for example, in the language testing of immigrants (Piller 2001) and the linguistic profiling of refugees (Blommaert 2005 – see Further Reading at the end of this chapter). However, what I would like to show in this chapter is how similar principles of “technologization” sit at the heart of a range of banal, everyday discursive practices. In this regard, I offer four examples from my own work showing the way language is deployed as a resource for producing cultural, social and/or economic differences. The hidden agenda of these particular uses of language/s is to create and perform a marked Other. Cultural, social or economic difference is thereby exaggerated for strategic gain, even if people appear to be celebrating “diversity” (cf. Jordan and Weedon 1995). Ultimately, the effect is to reinscribe unequal relations of power between the speaker/writer and the othered community being spoken/written about. This is also how people shore up their own privilege.

The Linguistic Production of Difference As linguistic anthropologists Kathryn Woolard and Bambi Schieffelin (1994) argue, people’s beliefs about language are often based less on linguistic facts than they are on questions of identity. In other words, talk about language is often only superficially concerned with other people’s ways of speaking or writing; instead, it is usually the speakers (or writers) themselves who are being criticized or judged. Whether this appears to be done on ­linguistic grounds – e.g. an appeal to “good” or “clear” English – it inevitably reproduces hierarchies of cultural, social, and economic status (cf. Bourdieu 1991). We see this often in mediatized discourse such as newspapers, TV shows and advertising which function as influential “mechanisms of representation”, informing and shaping the way many people come to understand the world around them. I demonstrate this in the four case-­study examples which now follow, each of which demonstrates the linguistic production or fabrication of cultural difference.5

Case 1 – Crazy Foreigners: Tourist Linguascaping and the Exoticization of Locals As one of the world’s largest international service industries, and representing an enormous global movement of people, tourism is undoubtedly a major site of intercultural exchange (Thurlow and Jaworski 2010a). The so-­called tourist gaze is very powerful in shaping the way



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many people understand cultural differences (Urry 2001; cf. also Bauman 1998). This way of  seeing and interacting with the world is reproduced in brochures, posters, commercials, guidebooks and postcards. In these different genres, the mythologies of tourist destinations are created and the core meaning of tourism is established: what it means to be someone privileged enough to travel by choice, seeking out exotic “foreign” peoples and cultures. It was this in mind that my colleagues and I examined British television vacation shows (Jaworski et  al. 2003). We were interested in how the shows and their celebrity presenters represented cultural difference and, specifically, local languages. Although most local people featured in the shows were seen to use English with the presenters, occasionally presenters were depicted interacting with a local person speaking in a local language (e.g. Extract 10.1 below), or quoting foreign language phrases in their segments (e.g. Extract 10.2), or making explicit comments about the local language (e.g. Extract 10.3). The extracts I present here are typical of the kinds of fleeting encounters we found: the first is an instance of “expert talk” in Italy, the second a greeting ritual in Fiji, and the third a service encounter in Spain. Extract 10.1 Mary Nightingale (Presenter) at a Family-­run Hotel in Italy 1 MN:   (voiceover) I found all the hotels very comfortable and what’s nice is 2 they’re all so individual and they feel so (.) Italian (1.0) this farmhouse 3 has been in the family for generations (.) Vera is the boss (.) and the 4 chief pasta maker 5 Vera: (cut to Vera’s kitchen where she is making pasta) quest’e la pasta queste this is the pasta these 6 sono (.) l’impasto (.) mangiala cruda mangiala cruda are (.) the mixture (.) eat it raw eat it raw 7 MN:   (picks up a single strand of raw pasta, moves away from Vera, raises the piece of pasta to the camera) there’s a piece of Vera’s tagliatelle (.) isn’t 8 that absolutely beautiful (.) it’s perfect 9 10 Vera:    (looks baffled at MN’s interest in the piece of pasta)

Extract 10.2 John Savident (Presenter) Walking Through a Marketplace in Fiji (JS apparently wandering through a market place) 1 JS: away from the hotel the town of Nandi [sic.] is just ten minutes away (.) 2 Fiji is such a friendly place and you’re always greeted with a big smile (cut to a woman smiling) and a call of ((BULA)) the local greeting 3 4 (to a street vendor) bula 5 Vendor:  bula bula John (JS continues walking past her stall, laughs to her) how 6 are you bula bula la la la

Extract 10.3 Lisa Riley (Presenter) in Spain 1 LR: (voiceover) it’s well worth taking a wander up the side streets off the 2 square (camera on LR and friend) where you can find traditional tapas 3 bars just like this one (points to bar) ((shall we take a look)) (LR walks to 4 bar; to barman) hola me puedes dar la carta por favor? hello can you give me the menu please? 5 Barman:   (hands over menu) ((unclear)) 6 LR: gracias (to camera, cheerfully) been learning that all day (giggles) thank you

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Much more detailed analyses of these three extracts are given in Jaworski et al. (2003). For now, however, I highlight some of the main conclusions we made about these types of mediatized intercultural encounters, with specific reference to the linguistic production of difference. What is immediately striking is how brief the encounters are and, in each instance, how tokenistic the depiction of the local language is. This immediately gives lie to a core mythology in tourism discourse: that travel promises a chance to “get to know” the locals and therefore have a “real” engagement with another culture. Generally, the TV shows positioned English as the de facto language of tourism, with local languages reduced to the status of a handful of fixed phrases found in guidebook glossaries (see Thurlow and Jaworski  2010b). English is thereby confirmed as a “global language” while local people’s ways of speaking are deployed as little more than a resource for linguascaping – as a backdrop for added exotic flavor and a sense of authenticity. In the first extract, Vera, the “chief pasta maker”, is cut off midstream  – mid-­sentence, even – as the presenter turns to camera to show the audience back home a strand of “exotic” pasta. In Fiji, meanwhile, the presenter performs his role of down-­with-­the-­locals tourist in a highly staged (the vendor uses his name!) greeting ritual with the appreciative, “friendly” local. In the last extract, the presenter reveals what is really at stake in these moments: dipping into the local language is all about having a bit of fun. Using local languages constitutes just another form of playful activity on a par with trying different culinary specialties or learning new skills such as sailing, horse-­riding, skiing, and so on. In conclusion, local languages render Other in the service of Self. The effect is similar to the use of “mock Spanish” by Anglophone Americans in the USA. In this regard, Jane Hill (2001) argues that playful, flippant snatches of Spanish serve to elevate the identities and Whiteness of many Anglophones. Much the same argument can be made for the use of phrasebook expressions by our TV-­show presenters; in this case, however, it is the elevation of Anglophone Britishness which is at stake. What may appear to be little more than fun – which is after all typical for tourism – emerges as a kind of Orientalizing of the local people, even while appearing to celebrate them (Said  1978; cf. Jordan and Weedon  1995). The presenters, as influential, celebrity role models, thereby encourage tourists to take up this performance: “Here’s how to be a tourist,” “Here’s an appropriate way to interact with local people,” “Here’s what intercultural exchange looks like.” While it may be tempting to think of these mediatized exchanges as harmless, entertaining expressions of intercultural exchange, I  propose that the shows (also) reproduce an old-­fashioned, neocolonial vision – or ­spectacle – of cultural difference.

Case 2 – Generation Grunt: Digital Discourse and the Fabrication of Youth I am still concerned with people’s everyday beliefs about language in my next case study, but this time I focus on the way young people’s new-­media language – or digital discourse – is commonly depicted in the news media (see, for example, Thurlow 2004). To start, take a look at the following indicative extracts from a sample of over 100 international (English-­language) newspaper reports all centrally focused on young people, digital media, and language: Fears are growing that today’s teenagers are becoming “Generation Grunt”, a section of society that has effectively lost the ability to talk or express itself. We may well be raising the thickest, most incoherent and sub-­literate generation for centuries.

As these examples show, adult-­driven media commentary is often unapologetically exaggerated and remarkably hostile toward young people (cf. Giroux 2000; Males 1996). In fact, it is hard to imagine how it would be appropriate nowadays to speak like this about any other



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c­ ommunity defined, say, by disability, gender, race, or age. As a major period of the lifespan, youth is almost always represented as strange, exotic or even dangerous. Central to public discourses about youth is the representation of young people in sweeping, homogenizing terms. With specific reference to language, this is what I have tried to show through the systematic analysis of reasonably large datasets of English-­language newspaper stories (e.g. Thurlow  2007; Thurlow and Jaroski  2020).6 With reference to texting, for ­example, I found young people being continually lumped together as “the keyboard generation,” “Generation IM,” “the gen-­txt community,” “Generation Text,” “mobile generation,” “the thumb generation,” “gen.txtrs,” and “GNR8N TXT.” In this way, an entire (global) generation of young people were being depicted on the one hand as “wired whizzes” but on the other hand as “techno-­slaves,” with their digital media practices caricatured as a “craze,” “mania,” “youth obsession,” or as having “cult status.” Although true of all intergenerational complaining, the issue of young people’s literacy and language practices was a key theme. More specifically, the concern was their supposed illiteracy, bad language practices, and their deleterious impact on “good” English. Young people’s digital media language was described as “destroying,” “harming,” “limiting,” “damaging,” “ruining,” “threatening,” “massacring,” “corrupting” or “eroding” Standard English. This apparent onslaught was epitomized with references to formal markers of received practice (e.g. grammar and spelling) and canonical standards of literature (e.g. Shakespearean English); as in these examples: The text-­messaging craze is . . . systematically destroying grammar, syntax and even spelling. And to think this happened in the land of Shakespeare. If the bard were alive today, he’d probably write, “2B or not 2B . . . .”

Perhaps surprisingly, given that English has not collapsed in the face of text messaging, the same moral panic has not abated. A colleague and I have more recently found the same (completely unfounded) type of mediatized discourse emerging around the use of emojis (Thurlow and Jaroski 2020). Even though it is also adults who use emojis, the “problem” is persistently framed as a youth one. In this instance, it is not just good English – or French, German or Spanish – which is depicted as being under threat, but language itself. Emoji “are ruining the English language because young people use them to communicate and don’t bother with words” . . . . Abusar de los “emojis”: ¿El nuevo enemigo del lenguaje? Emoji abuse: The new enemy of language? Emoji invasion: the end of language as we know it :/

These are all examples of how language is often misunderstood or, in Pierre Bourdieu’s (1977) terms, “misrecognized.” Seldom rooted in any proper research, these are gross exaggerations. As any rhetorician knows, asking a question like, “the new enemy of language?” sows the seed of possibility in the mind of the reader – especially when coupled with the negatively loaded issue of “abuse.” Regardless, it is the blatant misrepresentation of young people which does warrant special concern. Mediatized depictions of their language practices are strategically deployed to produce – and exaggerate – cultural difference and, in this case, an intergenerational divide. Over and over again, my research has shown how journalists consistently represent young people’s new-­media language as being impenetrable and inaccessible to adults (e.g. “baffling,” “causes confusion,” “abbreviations and bizarre acronyms”). These are some of the terms used to describe young people’s digital media language: a mysterious lexicon / hieroglyphics / technobabble / cryptic chat / a bizarre activity / hodgepodge communication / secret code / language soup / jumble / impenetrable / ramblings /

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cryptograms / garbled / encoded messages / gobbledegook / gibberish / argle-­bargle / cipher / exclusive / a secret language / code language / obscure / effective code against POS [“parent over shoulder”]

There is perhaps something a little self-­absorbed about the implication here that young people are somehow deliberately texting in order to exclude adults. Just as Rosina Lippi-­Green (1997) sees the “burden of communication” being always forced onto ethnic minorities, it is young people who are evidently obliged to make themselves understood to adults. The powerful demand of the powerless is that they speak their language and that they speak it clearly! On the surface, then, young people’s ways of communicating are treated as a suspicious code which must be cracked. Beneath the surface, however, we find adults fetishizing the “teen-­ness” of digital discourse in order to problematize young people. In conclusion, adult journalists and other media commentators create and promote a specific image (or style) of “teentalk” and new-­media language  – one which often bears little resemblance to actual practice. Public discourse about young people’s digital language thereby helps sustain the myths of adolescence; it does so also to service the identity needs of adults. Language and new-­media language in particular are exploited as resources by which adults exoticize but also demonize youth. Journalists everywhere fabricate a vision – or version – of youth which hinges on an exaggeration of both social separateness and cultural difference.

Case 3 – “Regular Guys” and “Wooly Sluts”: Selective Stylization and Taboo Language My third case-­study example comes from a project examining how the news media represents taboo language (Moshin and Thurlow 2020; Thurlow and Moshin 2018). Here, among other things, my colleague and I documented the typographic and discursive tactics newsmakers use to depict swear words spoken by high-­profile government officials. We also looked at the way ­journalists wrote about sexualized body parts in media spectacles involving two women celebrities. We found that newsmakers’ linguistic choices were shot through with social and moral judgments even while claiming to report only the facts. Language was, once again, a resource for fabricating difference; in this instance, for journalists to style themselves as witty wordsmiths while selectively stylizing other people along classist, sexist and even racist lines.7 Dozens of tactics are deployed by newsmakers for representing or referring to swear words while appearing to avoid them. For example, they used indirect references (e.g. it, that word, the obscenity), typographic substitutions (e.g. s**t, F#ck, SH!T), initialisms (e.g. WTF, they can F right O, FU), x-­word formulae (e.g. f-­word, f-­bomb, the s-­word), or euphemisms (e.g. frikkin, No. 2s, fig, fudge). These are all perfect examples of what anthropologists have called “containment games” (Irvine 2011, p. 17) where taboo acts are repeated but in ways which seek to distance the user from the taboo. Having said which, journalists are often having too much fun playing their language games and thereby end up drawing even more attention to the taboo words, such as with these overly complicated circumlocutions: . . . the C word . . . not the one you think, the one no one is ever supposed to use . . . you’ll be able to grasp it (deliberate choice of phrase) if I tell you the second and third syllables are “sucking” It closed with a reference to the constituent as a certain anatomical part. No, not that one. The one you sit on.

What was perhaps more troubling about these linguistic practices was the variably context of their use; in other words, the kinds of issues being reported. For the most part, swear words only ever seemed to appear in newspapers when journalists were writing about an artist,



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a ­celebrity, a rap musician, a gang member, or a criminal. This is what made the stylizations ­selective: specific types of language or ways of speaking are used for characterizing – or c­ aricaturing – some people but not others. In the rarer instances when swears words like “shit” and “fuck” were reportedly used by someone outside these marked communities, the taboo was invariably framed as exceptional. This was the case especially for high-­profile public or political figures. The production of difference around the reporting of swearing works implicitly and e­ xplicitly. The first is evident in reports of swearers like George Bush and Dick Cheney, at the time President and Vice-­President of the USA. Both these men were typically given the benefit of the doubt; their swearing was justified on the basis of their original intentions or their personality. For example, journalists interpreted Bush’s recorded use of the word “shit” as his being “frustrated” or “impatient,” or that it was said in “a moment of frustration and passion” and that “at least Bush’s words were honest.”8 This, readers were told, was language that was “rough-­edged,” “unvarnished,” “unpolished” or “raw,” but it was also “a refreshing blast of candor,” “politics without the spin,” “plain-­folk talk,” and “straight-­talking” from a “regular guy.” Implicit in all this reporting is that the swearing was even remotely newsworthy because it was being done by a political elite of educated, professionalized White men. The selective stylization is also evident in reverse when, for example, Bush’s taboo language was condemned in ageist and racist terms: barely comprehensible grunts you hear from teenage boys / frat-­boy / ANIMAL HOUSE SUMMIT / insouciance and smart-­alecky attitude / he can make even a global summit meeting seem like a kegger / demeanour of a petulant adolescent Homey G-­8 / Bush’s gangsta rap summary of the crisis in Lebanon / they conversed not as s­tatesmen but rather as semi-­articulate homeboys / his rap with George Bush / with all the ­diplomatic – and eating habits – of a Cossack

At other times, the production of difference around taboo language happens in more direct, explicit ways; most notably, when journalists were reporting about the sexualized body parts of women. For this, we analysed media reports about two spectacles in particular: Janet Jackson’s breast being exposed during a Super Bowl performance, and paparazzi snapshots of Britney Spears’ exiting a car without underwear. In both cases, the tension between journalists’ prurient delight and puritan distaste makes way for a more unapologetic moral condemnation. This type of overt opinion-­making is all the more curious given the value supposedly placed on impartiality and the reporting of facts. In the case of Britney Spears, the same circumlocutions and word play were evident everywhere: for example, references to “her naughty who-­nose-­what,” “her aversion to underwear,” “underwear is over-­ rated,” “sans panties,” “that’s not all she’s flashing around,” “flashionista,” and “rock-­ bottomless.” This also included headlines like PANTIES 911!, FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY and OOPS. JUST A LI’L BRIT MISSING. However, the prejudiced edge of the reporting revealed itself also in a lurid attention to details, such as when readers were offered the following kind of information about Spears’ body: “shaved,” “well-­ groomed,” “fresh caesarian scars,” “gaudy c-­section scar,” “livid herpes sores,” “deforested,” “showing off her post-­baby figure (a little too much).” Indeed, the apparent misogyny of this news media commentary is left in little doubt with even more direct, explicit evaluations of Spears which appeared in the main text or in headlines (capitalized): gross / rancid nudity / whore-­level makeup / slagosphere / trampy / celebretard / vulgar ­exhibitionist displays / tragic flesh baring induced slight nausea / SLUTTY AS EVER / SHRINKY, SLINKY AND STINKY / skank / wild and wooly slut

The naming of women’s genitals is always fraught with ideology (see Braun and Kitzinger 2001) and language about sex is likewise always morally charged. What all this taboo talk – and talk about taboo talk  – exposes is its strategic use for demarcating people as clean or unclean,

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acceptable or unacceptable (cf. Douglas 1991/1966). Ultimately, the effect is also to r­ eproduce the taboo around particular types of words (and practices) as well reinscribing the notion of taboo itself – that certain things should be unspeakable. Once again, there is an inevitable slippage between judging speakers’ words and judging their bodies, their lives, and their status in society. Just as we are taught there is “proper” language and there is “improper” language, we are also instructed about “proper” people and “improper” people, about who are insiders and who are outsiders. In doing so, taboo language and language about taboo help construct identities and ideologies of difference.

Case 4 – Premium Power: Floating Signifiers and Classist Language Changing tack slightly, and referring to some of my more recent research, I turn now to issues of social class as the last of my case-­study examples. This work arises in a long-­term study of elite discourse: the way seemingly ordinary people use language in everyday settings to position themselves  – or to position others  – as distinctive and/or superior (Thurlow and Jaworski 2017). Specifically, however, I refer to a project on the difference-­making power of a single word: premium. This is a label used all over the place as a claim that certain products, services or people are better than the ordinary or the rest. In Thurlow (2020), I present an extensive critique of how premium functions as a floating signifier; that is, a word or phrase whose meaning, as Stuart Hall (1997b) explains, “can never be finally fixed, but is subject to the constant process of redefinition and appropriation” (cf. also Lévi-­Strauss (1987 [1950]). In Figure 10.1, I offer a snapshot of the way that premium is nowadays attached to any number of goods or services; it is a ubiquitous labelling that seeks to persuade people into an easy sense of distinction. My own collected examples include

Figure 10.1  Premium on the move.



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c­ hocolates, beer, clothing, haircuts, toweling, potato chips, olives, crab cakes, and tomatoes. The power of “premium” is at its most vivid, in the elaborately orchestrated language games of so-­called Premium Economy, a service offered by international airlines. Here we have not the sorting of tomatoes, but rather the sorting of people. Premium Economy is arguably the most profitable of passenger classes; it is also where language comes to the fore. In an industry where profit margins are slim, one of the cheapest resources available to airlines – the one with the lowest fossil-­fuel burn – is words. Words are precisely how airlines fabricate a “class” of passengers which is tangibly but not too visibly different from Economy, while steering clear of the more prestigious (and expensive) Business. In teasing apart the copious marketing copy of over 40 international airlines, my analysis pin-­points three common rhetorical strategies which underpin the production of ­difference – and distinction – in Premium Economy. This is apparently how airlines define the meaning of premium. The first strategy is “extraction” (e.g. of money and other people’s comfort), and the second strategy is “excess” (i.e. of words and other largely immaterial performances of plenty). Perhaps the most important strategy of all, however, is the core grammatical feature and a related social-­psychological phenomenon of “comparison.” Airlines can only profitably afford to offer “extra” and “more” – as in the words of one airline, “More comfort, more choice, more privileges.” All of which hinges on the human predilection for downward comparison – or, in the case of airplane seating configurations, backwards comparison. And, as behavioral economists attest, this strategy works well: simply knowing that others are worse off makes people feel better about themselves and more willing to part with their money. In the final reckoning, I have come to understand “premium” to be a prime example of what Bourdieu (Bourdieu and Wacquant  1992, pp.  167–168) famously called symbolic violence. For all its seemingly frivolous, innocuous appearance, the little word premium is deployed (quite successfully it seems) as a means for controlling people through seduction and enchantment. In fact, and following the work of critical economist Frédéric Lordon (2004), I argue that the “humble joy” of having a little extra or a little more – of being just a little bit better than the rest  – is partly how members of the aspirational middle classes make themselves ­compliant to the capitalist order. As such, premium promises just enough to keep me – and, I assume, others like me – striving willingly for my/our own subjugation. It is thus that we find ourselves always seeking to distinguish ourselves in favorable ways; in other words, to make ourselves a little bit different from, and, indeed, a little bit better than the rest. This quite banal, seemingly harmless way of understanding social status is something learned from an early age. In this regard, and having previously argued for the importance of biography and anecdotal theory in intercultural communication (Thurlow 2004; cf. Gallop 2002), I offer up the following domestic story about another status-­making floating signifier. On a work trip to Stockholm some years ago, I needed to take my two school-­age sons along with me during their spring break. My local colleagues had kindly accommodated us in one of Sweden’s “Elite” hotels. On arrival day, my sons and I checked in and made our way up to the room. As we stepped across the threshold my oldest son declared, with genuine disappointment, “But this isn’t elite!” After I pressed him, he explained that the room was just not big enough. Evidently, he had already learned about the well-­established link between space, privilege, and the performance of status. In that moment, he was also learning two truths about language: first, words do not carry meaning, and, second, words really do matter.

Putting Language in Perspective .  .  . in every society the production of discourse is at once controlled, selected, organised and redistributed by a certain number of procedures whose role is to ward off its powers and its dangers, . . . to evade its ponderous, formidable materiality. (Foucault 1981, p. 52)

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The kinds of defensive justifications one hears often – “it’s just words” or “I’m only ­joking” – make important philosophical and political assumptions about the nature of l­anguage and about the role of language in social life. These kinds of comments can only be made if one believes that language does little more than merely represent a pre-­existing reality – words are simply vessels of meaning, and language a conduit for reality. It is this same misrecognition of the powerful, constitutive role of language in society that plagues so much (conventional) Intercultural Communication scholarship. This, in turn, leads us to overlook the banal, seemingly innocuous communicative or representational tactics by which strategies of power and inequality are enacted daily (cf. de Certeau 1988). And yet, as Michel Foucault warns, these moments of frivolous textuality always conceal their “formidable materiality.” In presenting my case study examples, I have deliberately wanted to reconceive of interculturality in its broadest terms – broader, at least, than Intercultural Communication scholarship would normally do (see Thurlow 2004, for more on this; also Collier 2002). Often, people think of cultural difference only with regards to nationality or race/ethnicity. Cultural difference is seldom so neatly reduced; nor is it so easily identified. The representation and production of difference occurs in any number of everyday, banal enactments of otherness as a subjectively and socially constituted phenomenon. At the very least – and without falling into the trap of simply exaggerating the differences between p ­ eople – critical intercultural scholars are more willing to recognize the cultural meanings and practices of people whose lives are also distinguished by their age, (dis)ability, class status, sexual identity and so on. It is in this way that interculturality comes to be more about material inequalities, power relations and ideologies of difference, rather than simply skin color, geographical location, passport, clothing, food, nonverbal behavior, or language. As Russell Ferguson (1990; quoted in Nakayama and Krizek 1995, p. 291) reminds us: The place from which power is exercised is often a hidden place. When we try to pin it down, the center always seems to be somewhere else. Yet we know that this phantom center, elusive as it is, exerts a real, undeniable power over the entire framework of our culture, and over the ways we think about it.

Nor can, or should, language be isolated from its own context of production. Language too is discursively constructed, its meanings constantly changing and being rethought. As Alastair Pennycook (2004, p. 17) puts it, language is “called into being” in the moments of its use. This is important to remember because it helps prevent us from fetishizing and unduly privileging language. Language is, after all, only one of many semiotic systems; indeed, it is often far less useful for intercultural exchange than many other modes of communicating (see Aiello and Thurlow 2006). Furthermore, semiotic modes never exist in isolation of other meaning-­ making practices. Language is only ever made truly meaningful and/or understandable in the context of paralinguistic and other nonverbal resources (cf. Kress and van Leeuwen 1996). In other words, so much in the way of intercultural exchange also occurs outside of language and our encounters with difference are as much material, spatial, affective and visual as they are linguistic. Notwithstanding, language should always be an important consideration for critically engaged intercultural communication scholarship. This requires treating language/s in more complex ways than is typical of conventional intercultural communication textbooks: as just another “barrier” to be overcome. Language is a key social institution in and of its own right (cf. Cameron 1997); it is a field (or source) of negotiation, conflict and oppression. As such, language is unavoidably implicated in the regulation not only of words, sentences, and texts, but also of bodies, of speakers and writers. Language is, as I have shown, a powerful technology for producing difference and for policing people. Herein lies the materiality and the material consequence of words. In the symbolic marketplace in which language is a major currency, not



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all speakers are equal; some people’s ways of speaking are always valued more highly than other people’s ways of speaking. It is in this way that we see ethnic others, aged others, sexualized others and classed others all being disciplined through the way they (apparently) use language. At the same time, privileged speakers (and writers) are able to shore up their own symbolic, cultural, social and economic capitals. And often this is done at the expense of these others. Just as those who control the means of production and the mechanisms of representation wield power, so too do those in the privileged position of being able to manage and manipulate language; these are the people whose words seem to matter most when speaking of ­difference. And a mastery [sic] of language is also a mastery of concealment – most notably, the concealment of the mastery itself.

Notes 1 This piece is based on an extensively revised, updated, and expanded version of Thurlow (2010) which appeared in the first edition of this handbook. 2 “Critical” is a hotly debated term. I mean it in the sense of Critical Social Theory, after the famous Frankfurt School of sociology whose objective was to critique society in order to “liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them” (Horkheimer 1982, p. 244). 3 My understanding of “language” is heavily influenced by sociolinguistics, discourse analysis and ­linguistic anthropology. There are, of course, other critical intercultural scholars who concern themselves with linguistic practices, most notably those working in the more US-­American tradition of critical rhetoric studies (see Mckerrow 2009, for an overview). 4 “Political” here refers to cultural politics rather than party politics or government politics. In this regard, a useful source of further information can be found at https://culturalpolitics.net/index. 5 I am obviously only able to present the bare essentials of these four case studies. More theorizing, detailed analyses, and nuanced interpretations are to be found in the original publications which are listed under “Recommendations for further reading.” 6 One such dataset may be found at the Digital Discourse Database, part of a project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation: https://digitaldiscoursedatabase.org. 7 In discourse studies, “style” is a technical term describing how people use different ways of speaking to present – or style – themselves as certain kinds of people. To distinguish how people also do this to other people, the term “stylize” (hence, stylization) is sometimes used. See Cameron (2000) for more detail. 8 A BBC report of this incident can be found online at: http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=6Xq3DobSCKQ. More recently, another president also made the news for his “accidental” swearing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Xq3DobSCKQ.

References Aiello, G. and Thurlow, C. (2006). Symbolic capitals: visual discourse and intercultural exchange in the European capital of culture scheme. Language and Intercultural Communication 6 (2): 148–162. Austin, J.L. (1962). How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Bakhtin, M.M. (1986). Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Bauman, Z. (1998). Tourists and Vagabonds., Globalization: The Human Consequences. New  York: Columbia University Press. Billig, M. (1997). The dialogic unconscious: psychoanalysis, discursive psychology and the nature of repression. British Journal of Social Psychology 36: 139–159. Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bourdieu, P. and Wacquant, L. (1992). An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Braun, V. and Kitzinger, C. (2001). Telling it straight? Dictionary definitions of women’s genitals. Journal of Sociolinguistics 5: 214–232. Butler, J. (1990). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge. Cameron, D. (1995). Verbal Hygiene. London: Routledge. Cameron, D. (1997). Demythologizing sociolinguistics. In: Sociolinguistics: A Reader and Coursebook (eds. N. Coupland and A. Jaworski), 55–67. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Cameron, D. (2000). Styling the worker: gender and the commodification of language in the globalized service economy. Journal of Sociolinguistics 4 (3): 323–347. Cameron, D. (2001). Working With Spoken Discourse. London: Sage. Chick, J.K. (1985). The interactional accomplishment of discrimination in South Africa. Language in Society 14 (3): 299–326. Collier, M.J. (2002). Transforming Communication about Culture: Critical New Directions. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. de Certeau, M. (1988). The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Douglas, M. (1991). Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (1966). London/ New York: Routledge. Edwards, V. (1997). Patois and the politics of protest: Black English in British classrooms. In: Sociolinguistics: A Reader and Coursebook (eds. N. Coupland and A. Jaworski), 408–415. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Ehrlich, S. (1998). The discursive reconstruction of sexual consent. Discourse & Society 9 (2): 149–171. Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical Discourse Analysis. Harlow: Longman. Fairclough, N. (2002). Language in new capitalism. Discourse & Society 3 (2): 163–166. Ferguson, R. (1990). Introduction: invisible center. In: Out there: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures (eds. R. Ferguson and T.T. Minh-­ha), 9–14. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Foucault, M. (1981). The order of discourse. In: Untying the Text: A Poststructuralist Reader (ed. R. Young), 48–77. London: Roultedge & Keegan Paul. Gallop, J. (2002). Anecdotal Theory. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Giroux, H.A. (2000). Stealing Innocence: Youth, Corporate Power, and the Politics of Culture. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Goffman, E. (1967). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Pantheon. Gumperz, J.J. (1997). Interethnic communication. In: Sociolinguistics: A Reader and Coursebook (eds. N. Coupland and A. Jaworski), 395–407. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Gupta, A. and Ferguson, J. (1992). Beyond culture: space, identity and the politics of difference. Cultural Anthropology 7 (1): 6–23. Hall, S. (1997a). The spectacle of the “other”. In: Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (ed. S. Hall), 223–279. London: Sage. Hall, S. (1997b). Race, the Floating Signifier: Transcript [Excerpt from the Documentary Film]. Hall-­ Northampton, MA: Media Education Foundation www.mediaed.org/transcripts/Stuart-­ Race-­the-­Floating-­Signifier-­Transcript.pdf. Heller, M. (2010). The commodification of language. Annual Review of Anthropology 39: 101–114. Hill, J.H. (2001). Language, race, and white public space. In: Linguistic Anthropology: A Reader (ed. A. Duranti), 450–464. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Holmes, J. (1995). Women, Men and Politeness. London: Longman. Horkheimer, M. (1982). Critical Theory: Selected Essays. New York: Continuum. Irvine, J.T. (2011). Leaky registers and eight-­hundred-­pound gorillas. Anthropology Quarterly 84 (1): 15–89. Jordan, G. and Weedon, C. (1995). The celebration of difference and the cultural politics of racism. In: Theorizing Culture: An Interdisciplinary Critique after Postmodernism (eds. B. Adam and S. Allan), 149–164. London: UCL Press. Kress, G. (1985). Linguistic Processes in Sociocultural Practice. Geelong: Deakin University Press. Kress, G. and van Leeuwen, T. (1996). Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London: Routledge. Lévi-­Strauss, C. (1987 [1950]). Introduction to Marcel Mauss. London: Routledge.



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Lippi-­ Green, R. (1997). English with an Accent. Language, Ideology, and Discrimination in the United States. New York: Routledge. Lordon, F. (2004). Willing Slaves of Capital: Spinoza and Marx on Desire (trans. G. Ash). London: Verso. Males, M.A. (1996). The Scapegoat Generation: America’s War on Adolescents. Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press. Malinowski, B. (1946). On phatic communion. In: The Discourse Reader (eds. A. Jaworski and N. Coupland), 296–298. London: Routledge. Mckerrow, R.E. (2009). Critical rhetoric: theory and praxis. Communication Monographs 56 (2): 91–111. Nakayama, T.K. and Krizek, R.L. (1995). Whiteness: a strategic rhetoric. Quarterly Journal of Speech 81: 291–309. Pennycook, A. (2004). Performativity and language studies. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies 1 (1): 1–19. Piller, I. (2001). Naturalization language testing and its basis in ideologies of national identity and ­citizenship. International Journal of Bilingualism 5 (3): 259–277. Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books. Sapir, E. and Mandelbaum, D.G. (eds.) (1949). Selected Writings in Language, Culture, and Personality. Berkeley: University of California Press. Thurlow, C. (2004). Relating to our work, accounting for our selves: the autobiographical imperative in teaching about difference. Language and Intercultural Communication 4 (4): 209–228. Thurlow, C. (2007). Fabricating youth: new-­media discourse and the technologization of young people. In: Language in the Media: Representations, Identities, Ideologies (eds. S. Johnson and A. Ensslin), 213–233. London: Continuum. Thurlow, C. (2010). Speaking of difference: language, inequality and interculturality. In: The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication (eds. T.K. Nakayama and R.T. Halualani), 227–247. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Thurlow, C. and Jaroski, V. (2020). “Emoji invasion”: the semiotic ideologies of language endangerment in multilingual news discourse. In: Visualizing Digital Discourse: Interactional, Institutional and Ideological Perspectives (eds. C. Thurlow, C. Dürscheid, and F. Diemoz), 45–64. Berlin: De Gruyter. Thurlow, C. and Jaworski, A. (2010b). The commodification of local linguacultures: guidebook glossaries. In: Tourism Discourse: The Language of Global Mobility, 191–223. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Thurlow, C. and Jaworski, A. (2010a). Tourism Discourse: Language and Global Mobility. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Thurlow, C. and Jaworski, A. (2017). The discursive production and maintenance of class privilege: permeable geographies, slippery rhetorics. Discourse & Society 28 (5): 535–558. Thurlow, C. and Moshin, J. (2018). What the f#@$! Policing and performing the unmentionable in the news. In: Exploring Silence and Absence in Discourse: Empirical Approaches (eds. M. Shröter and C. Taylor), 305–328. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Urry, J. (2001). The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies. London: Sage. Whorf, B.L. and Carroll, J.B. (eds.) (1956). Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Woolard, K. and Schieffelin, B.B. (1994). Language ideology. Annual Reviews in Anthropology 23: 55–82.

Further Reading Blommaert, J. (2005). Discourse: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cameron, D. and Panović, I. (2014). Working with Written Discourse. London: Sage. Fairclough, N. (2003). Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. London: Routledge. Jaworski, A. and Coupland, N. (eds.) (2014). The Discourse Reader, 3e. London: Routledge. Jaworski, A., Thurlow, C., Ylänne-­McEwen, V., and Lawson, S. (2003). The uses and representations of local languages in tourist destinations: a view from British television holiday programmes. Language Awareness 12 (1): 5–29.

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Moshin, J. and Thurlow, C. (2020). Making (up) the news: the artful language work of journalists in “reporting” taboo. In: The Business of Words: Wordsmiths, Linguists and Other Language Workers (ed. C. Thurlow), 125–138. London: Routledge. Thurlow, C. (2014). Disciplining youth: Language ideologies and new technologies. In: The Discourse Reader, 3e (eds. A. Jaworski and N. Coupland), 481–496. London: Routledge. Thurlow, C. (2020). Dissecting the language of elitism: The “joyful” violence of Premium. Language in Society https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404519001015.

Journals of Particular Relevance Discourse & Society (Sage) Critical Discourse Studies (Taylor & Francis) Journal of Sociolinguistics (Wiley-­Blackwell) Language in Society (Cambridge)

11

Livin’ la Vida Marimacha: Post Borderlands and Queerness in Starz’s Vida Bernadette Marie Calafell1 and Nivea Castaneda Acrey2 Gonzaga University Boise State University

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Premium cable network, Starz, ran the show Vida, created by Tanya Saracho, from May 2018–May 2020. The show which ran for three seasons was based on a short story, Pour Vida, by Richard Villegas Jr. The show centers on the experiences of sisters, Emma (Mishel Prada) and Lyn Hernandez (Melissa Barrera), who must come together after the death of their mother Vida. They come to find out that their mother was married to a woman named Eddy (Ser Anzoategui). The series explores the sisters’ coming to terms with the revelation, running Vida’s bar in the Boyle Heights neighborhood in California, and negotiating their respective romantic relationships. Vida unpacks themes of gentrification and assimilation, as well as queerness. The show has been heralded for its representations of gay, lesbian, and bisexual characters as it was nominated for GLAAD Media awards in 2020 and 2021 (Vida 2018–2020). A dominant narrative in queer Chicana feminist writings, such as those of Cherríe Moraga (1985) and Gloria Anzaldúa (2012), is the idea that Chicana lesbians must leave home or migrate in order to fully embrace their lesbianism. However, Vida offers a counternarrative in that Emma returns home to what Muñoz (2020) terms the brown commons to become and embrace her identity as a marimacha. She confronts the ghosts of the past, her father’s ­religious bigotry, and her lack of understanding of her mother’s sacrifice and true identity. Likewise, the character of Eddy, as a butch Chicana lesbian exists in the brown commons. Significantly, this is a post-­borderlands narrative as it asks us to rethink queer Chicana identity in terms of the brown commons rather than a narrative that is strictly tied to the popular borderlands theory of identities introduced by Gloria Anzaldúa (2012). Thus, in this chapter, we examine the characters of Emma and Eddy to explore how they offer new understandings of Chicana identities, queerness, and gender performance in a post-­borderlands landscape. Furthermore, this chapter adds to the literature on queer women of color who are often erased in queer landscapes that center white gay men. This chapter further adds to the growing field of queer intercultural communication which brings queer and trans* of color critique to the center of intercultural communication by centering intersectionality, belonging, and difference.1 Additionally, we bring to bear our experiences as Chicanas, including one of us who identifies as queer, to use our theories in the flesh to help guide our self-­reflexive analysis.

The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication, Second Edition. Edited by Thomas K. Nakayama and Rona Tamiko Halualani. © 2024 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2024 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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Post Borderlands and the Brown Commons Recently scholars, such as T. Jackie Cuevas (2018), have challenged Anzaldúa’s borderlands paradigm as the dominant theorization of Chicana/o/x identities, particularly for queer, genderqueer, and trans* folks of color. Cuevas (2018) suggests, “Their struggles tend to coalesce around issues of nonnormative gender expression or gender identity; they thus disidentify with Chicanidad and queerness through resignifying the relation between the two at the intersection of gender variance and genderqueerness” (p. 11). Cuevas (2018) elaborates, “By claiming the new mestiza consciousness can transcend its double bind of being on the border between two cultures through a ‘tolerance for ambiguity,’ Anzaldúa’s borderlands theory does not fully recognize the power differential between dominant and subjugated cultures or assumes that it is easily possible to transcend said power differential through individual agency, the individual act of combining aspects of two opposing cultures” (p. 11). Thus, Cuevas (2018) introduces a post-­borderlands paradigm suggesting, “A post-­borderlands project makes borderlands theory an explicit object of study, testing and pushing the limits of how borderlands theory has become so infused in Chicana studies as to become a default way of seeing, deployed as a nearly automatic lens. It looks for the places where borderlands theory does not quite fit or hold, where it may be helpful yet not enough. One of those significant fissures is around the nonnormatively gendered queer body that the selected texts put at the center of their narratives. Post borderlands is enunciated via an interplay between gender and sexuality under the sign of Chicanx gender variance” (p. 12). Cuevas (2018) describes the post-­borderlands project as one that can be described as critical jotería studies, noting “‘Jotería’ is a Chicanx term for queer people” (p. 18). Shane T. Moreman (2009) notes that the joto “is displaced of a rightful home in the United States while he is also displaced of his rightful belonging to Latino culture” (p. 4). Moreman (2009) situates the joto within a borderlands context. Gutierrez-­ Perez writes, “Jotería is therefore deployed as an identity category, a cultural practice, and a social process that utilizes a mestiza/o epistemology as a dramatic gesture of empowerment and as an embodied oppositional consciousness for a large, diverse community within and beyond the U.S. Southwest” (p. 92). Similar to Cuevas (2018) in moving beyond a borderlands paradigm, Muñoz (2020) advances what he terms “the brown commons” which refers to “brown people, places, feelings, sounds, animals, minerals, flora, and other objects. How these things are brown, or what makes them brown, is partially the way in which they suffer and strive together but also commonality of their ability to flourish under duress and pressure” (p. 2). The brown commons is centered not on individual experiences but instead a shared sense of community “that captures the way in which brown people’s very being is always a being-­in-­ common” (Muñoz 2020, p. 2). For Muñoz (2020), brownness is in “relation to everyday customs and everyday styles of living that connote a sense of illegitimacy” (p.  3). Furthermore, “to think about brownness is to accept that it arrives at us, and that we attune to it only partially” (Muñoz  2020, p.  3). It is important to note that the brown commons are undergirded by a sense of critical hope and critical utopianism. We draw on the brown commons, as a post-­borderland space that is attuned to the specific experiences of queer Chicana/o/x peoples. In this chapter, we explore the narratives of Emma and Eddy and how they navigate the brown commons. Emma narratively moves from a bisexual who doesn’t claim labels (“I don’t identify as anything. I’m just me”), representative of privilege and reflective of the gentrification happening in the neighborhood, to a self-­ proclaimed marimacha insider. Eddy, who as a butch lesbian is consistently displaced because of the death of Vida, comes to represent the non-­gentrified home of the brown commons. Eventually, Eddy, Lyn, and Emma come together in the brown commons to create a queer family of choice – they come home.



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Que Yo Soy Marimacha When we first meet Emma, she is all business as she returns home after her mother’s death. She is represented as upper-­class assimilated businesswoman. Emma’s assimilation is confirmed by one of her white male co-­workers who after she sleeps with him tells her that no one sees her as Latina. Similarly, when she hires a local Chicano handyman, Baco, to help fix the bar up, he assumes she is not Mexican informing her about “Mexicans around here.” Emma responds with, “What does that mean? I am Mexican too.” He tells her, “Oh you could have fooled me. The way you talk … and your whole … How you look …” Likewise, local community activist Mari labels Emma and Lyn whitetinas or Chipsters who are coming to the neighborhood to gentify it, meaning that they are Chicanas participating in the gentrification of their neighborhood. Rivera Berruz (2019) critiques the idea of authenticity within Latina/o/x communities, discussing the boomerang perception theorized by Maria Lugones, which suggests that we are using white perceptions as people of color to judge other people of color. This is significant as all the attacks Emma experiences as being inauthentic serve to mark her as an outsider. Many of these attacks come from other Chicana/o/x people. Emma has been estranged from her family (and culture) though initially it is unclear why. We come to find out that her mother, Vida, sent Emma away to live with her grandmother when she found her at 11 years old kissing another girl. Likewise, Vida found Emma’s book of love poems about another girl named Cruz, who Emma reconnects with once she returns home. As a result, when she finds out that her mother has been running a gay bar and is married to a woman, she calls her a “fucking hypocrite” and a “fucking cunt” who is “batting for the tortilleras.” She labels Eddy who has been married to Vida for two years, “a carpet muncher.” Emma discursively positions herself as different from Eddy and Vida, casting them as Others. Once Emma has started seeing and sleeping with Cruz, she attends a wedding of two gay men with her. There she meets some of Cruz’s queer lesbian friends who call her a “baby queer” who is “vacationing in queerness.” Cruz attempts to say that coming out is a process, but Emma is visibly upset. Emma angrily tells them that they are making a lot of assumptions about her and responds, “You didn’t just call me a tourist.” Another woman at the table Nico, who will later become Emma’s primary love interest, has her back as she says, “For real!” The same woman who criticized Emma tells her that she passes for straight presumably because of her femme cisgender appearance. Nico intervenes calling out stereotypes of what queers are supposed to look like. Nico sarcastically says, “Seriously Emma, how else are queers supposed to announce themselves through the confines of the binary?” Regardless of Nico’s support the women continue to mock her saying, “Pan-­sexuality is the new rite of passage for baby queers.” Emma chides them, “Stop saying baby queer. I’m sorry I don’t abide by your dated categories of queerness. Sorry that you think I’m confused or indecisive because I have a wide range of what I can get off to.” Emma then calls out Cruz for letting her friends attack her. Nico calls what happened an ambush saying she “doesn’t appreciate us acting like our own queer police.” Not only is Emma marked as an ethnic outsider in her own community, but she is marked similarly in queer communities at home. As the series develops, Nico and Emma enter a turbulent on and off relationship. Nico works as a bartender at the bar, which has been renamed from La Chinita to Vida. Emma’s gender performance is that of a femme, which scholars have argued are often read unintelligible in queer communities (Johnson and Calafell 2019), particularly when not paired with a butch counterpart. Furthermore, bisexual women may face suspicion from lesbians, as if they could turn at any moment, that bisexuality is just a passing phase, or a step toward either heterosexuality or queerness (Abdi and Calafell 2018; Johnson and Calafell 2019). Thus, the scrutiny Emma faces as a bisexual femme is not unusual, particularly as she is paired with Cruz

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who can be described as a soft butch. Meyer (2010) argues that bisexual television characters are often portrayed by non-­white actors. She refers to these characters as intersectional hybrids hegemonic functions simultaneously” (Meyer  2010, who “serve hegemonic and counter-­ p. 367). Meyer (2010) suggests that a multiply marginalized character, allows for the acceptance of bisexuality by others to be read as a sign of tolerance. However, we argue that in most cases the intersectional hybrid is the sole person of color in a largely white and straight cast. In Vida’s universe brownness is the norm. Thus, the lack of acceptance of Emma’s bisexuality by other brown queers is an important moment in the representation of bisexuality. Similarly, Abdi and Calafell (2018) have examined the bisexuality of Callie Torres on Grey’s Anatomy through her proximity to whiteness through her continual choice of white partners. Meyer (2010) also notes that bisexual characters are often casually introduced as such in secondary storylines (p. 380). This is certainly not the case for Emma whose sexuality is at the forefront of Vida’s storylines. Thus, Emma’s storyline is unique and important for scholars to unpack. Emma’s move from outsider in both her ethnic and LGBT communities come together intersectionally through the fight to keep the bar. It turns out that Vida and Eddy were not legally married because Vida never divorced her husband who she had told her daughters was dead. The fight to keep the bar afloat and its ownership drives the entirety of the series. Eventually the sisters find out that their father is indeed alive and runs a church nearby. Lyn attempts to form a relationship with her father, confiding in him about the state of the bar and her relationship with Emma. Emma feels betrayed when she discovers Lyn has been seeing their father, Victor, because it was revealed that he committed domestic violence against their mother who had him deported as a result. Lyn is eventually baptized in Victor’s church, abandoning Emma when she needs her. Emma had become pregnant with Baco’s child after a fling and took the morning-­after pill. When she is in desperate need of help with her drag king show and her bodily reactions to the morning-­after pill, Lyn is nowhere to be found, until Emma sees her pulling up with Victor. Nico ends up caring for Emma and this leads to them getting back together. Soon after, the sisters find out that Victor is suing them for control of the bar. Upon finding out about Victor’s legal maneuvers, Emma confronts Victor who is in the middle of a religious ceremony with Lyn present as well. Victor wants to control and change the bar because of the “perverted spirit of homosexuality that your mother left.” He claims that the gay bar is unholy and needs to be changed. Emma retorts, “Not just my mother, or did Lyn not tell you that your daughter, la hija de el pastor is a queer. Que soy marimacha. Que soy marimacha. Pastor is a deadbeat father who beat his wife.” Victor replies, “You are your mother’s daughter,” to which Emma defiantly says, “Yes I am.” Victor then tries to get his parishioners to join in at praying the gay away. Horrified, Lyn tells Emma she’ll take care of things as Emma leaves. Emma’s identification as marimacha, which we translate as dyke, but with brownness – a part of jotería, is significant as a discursive move from “just me” to a strong politicized brown queer lesbian identity. Anzaldúa (2009a, b) notes the derogatory connotation associated with marimacha (p. 155); however, she notes that these are terms her community uses (p. 163), which situate them within the brown commons. Cuevas (2018) notes, “Marimacha can mean ‘lesbian’ or it can mean a masculine woman or butch” (p. 24). She also draws upon Alicia Arrizon’s work to note that marimacha can be a place where gender is “fluid and destabilized” (Cuevas 2018, p. 24). Cuevas (2018) further argues that the term has “expansive” possibilities associated with genderqueerness and gender nonconformance (p. 25). Cuevas (2018) elaborates, “‘marimacha’ is not an umbrella term but rather a locus of exploration that allows us to examine the possibilities for gender variance and gender variant critique in relation to Chicana cultural production” (p. 24). After the multiple ways that Emma has disparaged her mother, it is significant that she claims an affiliation with her. As previously mentioned, much of the work on Chicana lesbians



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deals with the fact that many must leave home in order to self-­actualize or that they cannot return home. However, in Emma’s character we see that she becomes steadfast in her identity as a marimacha when she returns and stays home. It is through the identification with her queer mother that she can finally strongly name and stand in her identity. Likewise, both sisters have been harassed throughout the show by Mari and her group of friends for what they see as gentefication. Eventually, Emma is fed up and tells them they should be ashamed for harassing her and her sister and start focusing on some of the actual businesses that are gentrifying the neighborhood. Thus, Emma has also reached the point culturally where she is strong enough to stand up for herself and mark her space as a cultural insider embodying Rivera Berruz’s critique about the ways that we oppress each other as Chicana/o/x people by using white standards to judge one another. Emma has (re)claimed her space in the brown commons, which Muñoz argues is undergirded by a politics of hope. This critical hope is important because as Vida ends, the situation with the bar remains unresolved. Yet Emma stands strongly in her sense of identity, family connections with Lyn and Eddy, and has (re)staked her place in the neighborhood – the brown commons. After what happens with Papi, eventually a neighbor tells Lyn the truth about what happened with Vida, Victor, and Emma. Vida got rid of Victor because of how he reacted when he found Emma naked playing house with a neighbor girl. Vida defended Emma, which resulted in Victor beating his wife. She then called the police and sent Emma away to protect her. Lyn shares this with Emma in an effort to repair their broken bond. It is in this moment that she truly sees the sacrifices her mother made for her, and that she is indeed her mother’s daughter. Aida Hurtado (2020) writes of the femme-­macho who sounds eerily like Emma, “The femme-­macho, unlike the virgin or the whore, can be physically attractive or unattractive. A strong personality is what characterizes her. The strength of the femme-­macho does not lie in her racial/physical appearance but, rather, on remaining emotionally uninvolved through sexually active – a cynical, detached, derisive view of love, tenderness, or any ‘soft emotion’ associated with femininity. The man’s challenge is to deflower the femme-­macho emotionally; the power of the femme-­macho is to remain an emotional virgin. The Achille’s heel of the femme-­macho is her emotions. Yet she will only be punished for showing particular emotions. The femme-­macho can be sarcastic, funny, outrageous, aggressive, mean, or belligerent, but she cannot be tender, loving (except in a political or abstract sense), frightening, or insecure. In fact, femme-­machos are always in mortal combat with men to emasculate them and overpower them. Although femme-­machos are able to express a wider range of emotions than other kinds of women and therefore obtain some sense of freedom, they are still emotionally trapped because they are never allowed to show weakness” (p. 21). Throughout the show, Emma is guarded with her emotions and trust. Similarly, her random sexual encounters with both men and women lack intimacy and end in coldness. As the show progresses, however, we see Emma thaw from being an ice queen to showing genuine emotions and forging lasting relationships with her sister, Nico, and Eddy. Hurtado (2020) notes that “many Chicanas, struggling to escape the narrow confines of the whore-­virgin dichotomy, embrace the femme-­ macho characteristics as a form of liberation” (p. 21).

Eddy the Roommate We first meet Eddy in the kitchen of her and Vida’s apartment serving Lyn, Vida’s youngest daughter, enchiladas. Eddy explains to Lyn that the community has really shown support after Vida’s death which is evident by the plethora of flans fighting for space all over the apartment. The different arrays of flan all over the home once again situate this particular space as the brown commons through the food and relational aspects. Lyn looks down at the plate of

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enchiladas and while her eyes clearly tell us she’s hungry, she instead hesitantly rejects the plate because she is vegan, a word and lifestyle that clearly Eddy is not familiar with as evidenced by her shocked face and confused “what?” Throughout the entire show, Eddy shifts back and forth between Spanish and English as she talks; she pulls and borrows from one language to verbally make sense in the other. She is not entirely US American and not entirely Mexican, and her accent in both languages tells us she is a deslenguada (Anzaldúa 2012, p. 80), a true Chicana. While she is not immediately explicitly identified as queer, Eddy’s gender expression through her oversized pants, loose button-­down collared shirt, bulky leather jacket, and short haircut positions her as queer because her performance does not fit neatly in either gender binary. Her physical appearance is masculine and butch yet her soft and timid voice and performance fits the archetype of a true Mexican wife – nurturing, soft, and emotional. Gender ambiguity “can render a person illegible to a community and loved ones” (Cuevas 2018, p. 3) and Eddy’s ambiguous Chicanx body coupled with her sensitive charisma, serve as evidence of an identity that Cuevas argues is not served by the borderlands paradigm entirely; thus, she fits within a post-­borderland narrative. Eddy’s body “becomes a vehicle through which the body is exposed and multiply delineated, thereby exposing the intersections of queerness through the performance and performativity of gender and sexuality” (Cuevas 2018, p. 29). The vegan scene is interrupted by Emma’s entrance into the home. Lyn embraces Emma and it is clear they have not communicated or seen each other in a while. Emma looks toward Eddy, confused by her presence in her mother’s home. Eddy begins her introduction and Lyn nervously interjects and introduces Eddy, “Emma this is Eddy. She’s the one that … she helped mami run the bar and was like – her roommate.” Emma isn’t satisfied with this introduction; she is puzzled that her mother had a roommate. Eddy changes the subject and tells Emma she is delighted to meet her because Vida has talked so much about her. Eddy then proceeds to share the order of events for the funeral and celebrations. Emma is once again displeased with Eddy’s comment. “You made that decision?” Emma asks Eddy. “Pues I guess I did. To tell you the truth I am just following your mamacita’s wishes.” We first find out that Eddy and Vida are married when Lyn’s ex-­boyfriend tells her that he did not come to the funeral to “find Lyn” rather, he came because “Eddy is good people and her wife just died.” Lyn is visibly uncomfortable and responds, “Her WHAT!?” Lyn runs to find Emma and tells her they need to talk. The scene abruptly shifts to Eddy sitting in a chair, her eyes glued to her knees, afraid to look up at a very angry and investigative Emma, “How long?” “Full on married? Just … two years,” Eddy responds. Emma begins to talk fast trying to hold back tears and commands to see the will. Eddy scurries to find an iPad and hands it to Emma. Emma reads for three seconds and as her face begins to anger Eddy intervenes, “That was your ama’s idea, she’s the one that wanted it that way.” As Emma gathers her purse and orders Lyn to leave with her, she turns around and says, “Just so you know, this is never happening.” This is the first official time that Emma and Lyn reject Eddy as their family. The next day, after finding out that Vida’s will orders that the bar and building be shared between Emma, Lyn, and Eddy, Emma and Lyn attempt to sneak out of the house to avoid Eddy. Eddy catches them before they exit. She heads toward the dining table carrying a pan of steamy chilaquiles. “Something for your pansa,” Eddy says, “Los chilaquiles are 100% vegan. Chequeé online and everything just to make sure.” Lyn begins to tell Eddy that they actually have to go and as we see Eddy’s eyes drop to the ground in disappointment, Lyn changes her mind and decides she will try the vegan chilaquiles after all. Emma takes this opportunity to warn Eddy that she is going to meet with a local developer to talk about the options they have for the bar. Emma mentions that based on what the accounting books say, she could determine whether they should sell the building or not. Eddy tells Emma that she will help her find the books for the bar and then firmly interjects, “But I am not selling. No matter what the books say. I could never do that to Vida.” With a cunning smile Emma responds, “Then I’ll see you in court.”



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While Eddy is portrayed as a butch and one with masculine presenting features, she disturbs the stereotypical butch narrative often as witnessed in this scene. Standard Chicana/o/x ­narratives of queer identity try to maintain the traditional familismo status quo – a feminine presenting mother that stays home, cleans, and cooks for the family and a masculine presenting father who works, gets fed by the woman of the house, and is ultimately taken care of. Based on this narrative, Eddy would be assigned the gender roles typically assigned to a man. Eddy’s character offers a post-­borderlands counternarrative that marks her body as masculine creating expectations for masculine performance. However, her gender role performance is more nuanced and fluid as we see her follow the Mexican characteristics expected from the woman of the family. She eloquently shapeshifts into the loyal wife who centers the wellbeing of the family and the stereotypical mother who makes her children breakfast. Cuevas (2018) claims that Chicana butches are not only those “who prefer to fuck rather than be fucked in terms of lesbian sex but are those who fuck gender, fuck with gender, fuck things up, question the boundaries and limits of traditional authority” and mess with traditional gender norms (p. 30). Clearly, we see this with Eddy. Later in the day, Emma and Lyn return to the apartment after talking to the bank that wants to buy Vida’s building to further gentrify the neighborhood. Emma just learned that they are in major debt and is upset. However, she has just made a commitment to take on and pay her mother’s debt and knows she will need her mother’s wife for this heavy task. Eddy is at the table eating flan. “Is that flan still good after two days?” Emma asks, clearly frustrated. “Flan keeps for a week, more sometimes. It’s gotta get eaten,” Eddy replies. Emma irritably grabs a fork and stabs the flan that Eddy is eating and sits next to Eddy and begins to eat; a peace offering in Emma’s language. Her intense sighs as she forks more flan in her mouth make Lyn begin to salivate and probe, “Flan has like, milk right?” Emma nods and continues to eat while Eddy responds, “Yeah. y eggs.” Lyn reaches for a fork and surrenders her fight, “Fuck it. (Sigh). God … I had forgotten about flan. Mmm … It’s like impossible to be 100% vegan here.” The scene ends with all three women breaking bread (flan), eating from the same plate, at the same table, while they are being authentic with each other for the first time. They have come back to the brown commons, they are home, and Eddy is proud, “No te preocupes – we won’t tell nobody.”

A Proper Family Over the course of the series, Lyn, Emma, and Eddy work together to maintain the bar their mom and wife left them all while trying to stay afloat financially and interpersonally, while also avoiding the inevitable trap of gentrification. Grief swallows Eddy as she mourns her wife. Only her bed, the toilet, and the bathtub embrace her body as her eyes struggle to stay open after so much crying. Yet unfortunately for Eddy, the loss of her wife does not stop the world. Her phone rings as her friends want to check in on her and knocks at the door remind her that she must take care of the building and tenants that Vida left behind. Emma tells Lyn that she is not going to wait for Eddy “to be ready” for them to start figuring out how to start running the bar. In a scene with one of the tenants Eddy talks about the memories with her wife and all the appointments that did not happen, yet she still longs for, “Me and Vida, we had so many plans, Doña Tita, we were going to remodel the bar. She had a whole Pinterest board of design ideas. We were even going to tell the girls about us getting married bring the family back together again. Set things right with Emma.” It is evident that for Eddy, grieving keeps her connected to Vida and it is also abundantly clear that Eddy is not handling the loss well because every episode showcases Eddy drowning her pain with tequila. As the show progresses, we witness Eddy’s desire to be a family with Vida’s children, while Emma and Lyn do not seem entirely interested to be Eddy’s family. In a later scene, Emma approaches Eddy nervously and asks to borrow Eddy’s car. The way she asks for the car depicts Eddy as a

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­complete stranger to her, “Just for an hour or so … I have amazing insurance, I’m a great driver, and if you don’t feel comfortable lending it to me, I totally understand.” As Emma is trying to get this all out, Eddy is trying to interrupt her assuring Emma it is fine, that she can borrow the car without Emma having to justify herself. Eddy immediately grabs her keys and plants them in Emma’s hand, “Take it! Whatever is mine is yours.” The central invitation to become family occurs when Eddy is belligerently drunk in Vida’s bar later that night. She demands for the daughters to explain how they can walk around without properly grieving for their mother. “I feel like hearing why you two are so freaking feelingless about your ama. It has been over a week since mi Vida died and you walk around nothing. What is wrong with you two?” Emma is upset that Eddy is policing how she is mourning her mother and Eddy continues, “I would have these daydreams. How we could all be a family and go camping how gabacho families do. Todo like canoes and tents and shit. Like a proper family.” Doña Tita intervenes and brings three shot glasses. One for Eddy, Lyn, and Emma. Doña Tita demands a toast for Vida’s life. The joining of the glasses through a toast symbolizes a desired union of a family. Eddy instantly takes a glass. Lyn hesitates for a moment, but ultimately accepts a glass, while Emma stares angrily at the third and walks away.

A Marimacha, a Dyke In the final episode of the first season, Eddy and her friends attempt to find another bar to hang out at because Emma has just disrespected Eddy by telling her she wouldn’t be surprised if Vida’s bar is in major debt because of Eddy and her “freeloader” friends. As Eddy and her friends begin to get settled at a new bar, homophobic stares and looks of disgust from brown heterosexual women and men penetrate the room. Eddy and her friends are clearly not wanted in this space. Trujillo notes that “the vast majority of Chicano heterosexuals perceive Chicana lesbians as a threat to the community. Chicana lesbians are perceived as a greater threat to the Chicano community because their existence disrupts the established order of male dominance and raises consciousness of many Chicana women regarding their own independence and control” (Trujillo  1991, p.  186). Additionally, Cuevas (2018) notes that in Chicana butch narratives, “it is not necessarily queer sexualities but rather queer genders that threaten a Chicanx cultural or familia sense of unity” (p. 3). To make light of the moment, one of Eddy’s friends, who is also queer but feminine presenting, heads to the music machine alone. A drunk man approaches her and begins to harass her asking her to put a romantic song for him and laying his eyes at her body like she is a fresh piece of flesh. She asks him to back off, yet he continues to sexually harass her and puts his hand on her lower back. Cuevas (2018) claims that performing masculinity for many butch lesbians affords them survival mechanisms that Eddy’s friend in this scene does not have. Contrarily, Eddy’s masculine performance through her short haircut, bulky clothing, and weighty boots provides her refuge in spaces “in that she can escape the physical harassment directed at vulnerable women” (Cuevas 2018, p. 63) Eddy comes to the rescue, “Hey buddy, the lady is just trying to mind her own business, okay?” The drunk man responds, “What do we have here? A marimacha? Are you with this dyke?” He asks Eddy’s friend, “Yeah I am.” “Groooooossssss, man,” he leans in closer to Eddy’s friend, clearly not respecting their boundaries and Eddy intervenes again, “Hey back off, man!” “Or what?! You gonna make me? Come on, you wanna be a real man? I’ll treat you like a man.” In that moment, the drunk man shoves Eddy and Eddy shoves him harder, landing him into a wall. His friends pick him up and the guy is clearly embarrassed and tries to play it off. Someone yells at Eddy and her friends as they walk off to their table, “Pinche lesbianas!”



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Though Cuevas (2018) claims that masculine presenting butches are more protected as previously stated, she also argues that at times, a masculine appearance, and in particular Eddy’s “appearance as a Chicanx man, endangers her” when entities with more power deem her as dangerous. In this case, Eddy’s resistance that propelled a straight man into a wall ­ultimately was dangerous to this drunk man’s machismo. How dare a marimacha, who is ultimately a woman, shove him into a wall and make him look weak to his friends and entire bar? A while later when Eddy goes to the bathroom by herself, the drunk man enters, breaks a bottle on her head and violently beats her. An ambulance siren culminates the scene.

Coming Home: A Queer Family of Choice Emma and Lyn frantically enter the hospital looking for Eddy. They find Eddy’s friends who are upset because the hospital staff will not let them see Eddy. Emma angrily yells at several nurses and demands to see Eddy. “I am sorry, but it’s ICU so it is family only,” a nurse tells Emma. Lyn quickly interjects, “She is our stepmother, you can check that.” After Emma and Lyn witness a broken, unconscious Eddy, Emma realizes that Vida’s bar was not simply a place to consume alcohol, rather it is a safe space for people like Eddy, for people like her own self. It is then that Emma begins to accept Eddy as family and when the three women create a queer family of choice in the brown commons of the bar. Both Eddy and Emma embark on journeys around their sexuality and gender. Emma’s culminates in her role as femme-­macho or marimacha. Eddy on the other hand, is secure and steadfast in her identity throughout each ordeal she faces. Eddy is beaten by a man and is later assumed to be trans by a younger femme lesbian who is hitting on her. When she corrects the drag kings who address her as them, she shares, “they threw out the word queer like nothing. When did that become okay?” Monica, one of the drag kings, who is later presented as femme, hits on Eddy, but Eddy is not ready to date yet. However, the scene with the drag kings ­performing and critiquing toxic masculinity through embodiments of Latino film characters, and then ragging on Eddy calling her, “a repressed mas presenting queer,” is telling. This is significant, especially when juxtaposed with the vulnerable image of a nude Eddy crying in the bathtub over Vida. Eddy is allowed to be a complex butch character, just as Emma is allowed to grow in her journey as femme-­macho or marimacha. Each woman’s journey has allowed them to come closer to one another, come home or in fact, reaffirm their place at home (as in the case of Eddy), all while creating their family. In this chapter, we have drawn upon Cuevas’ (2018) theorizing of post-­borderlands identity and Muñoz’s (2020) theorization of the brown commons to understand the queer world making happening in Vida. The show offers a counter narrative to the dominant Westernized narratives that people must leave home to truly be free to be queer and to find family. Through the world of the brown commons created in the neighborhood, food, drink, and relationality of the bar and its surrounding world, Emma, Lyn, and Eddy actually have to come home in order to form a “proper family” and their queer family of choice. Furthermore, both Eddy and Emma grow strong in their sense of being marimachas. While Eddy’s character serves as the grounding space of home, comfortable with her identity, it takes the connection with home, her neighborhood, her culture, the bar, and Eddy for Emma to self-­actualize as a marimacha. The show showcases the various performances of genderqueerness that are a part of the post-­ borderlands world described by Cuevas (2018). Thus, we offer that Vida provides unique and complex queer characters who ask us to move beyond the borderlands paradigm, instead centralizing racialized queerness and gender.

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Note 1 See Eguchi and Calafell (2020).

References Abdi, S. and Calafell, B.M. (2018). Em[race]ing Vis(bi)lity: an analysis of Callie Torres’ and the (im) perfect operation of bisexual identity on Grey’s anatomy. In: Adventures in Shondaland: Identity, Politics, and the Power of Representation (eds. R. Griffin and M.D.E. Meyer), 120–137. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Anzaldúa, G. (2009a). Bridge, drawbridge, sandbar, or island: lesbians-­of-­color hacienda alianzas. In: The Gloria Anzaldúa Reader (ed. A.L. Keating), 140–157. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Anzaldúa, G. (2009b). To(o) queer the writer  – loca, escritora y chicana. In: The Gloria Anzaldúa Reader (ed. A.L. Keating), 163–175. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Anzaldúa, G. (2012). Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute Press. Cuevas, T.J. (2018). Post-­ Borderlandia: Chicana Literature and Gender Variant Critique. New Brunswick, NJ. Eguchi, S. and Calafell, B.M. (2020). Queer Intercultural Communication: The Intersectional Politics of Belonging in and across Difference. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Hurtado, A. (2020). Intersectional Chicana Feminisms: Sitios y Lenguas. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Johnson, J.A. and Calafell, B.M. (2019). Disrupting public pedagogies of bisexuality. In: Queer Communication Pedagogy (eds. A. Atay and S.L. Pensoneau-­Conway), 62–72. New York: Routledge. Meyer, M.D.E. (2010). Representing bisexuality on television: the case for intersectional hybrids. Journal of Bisexuality 10 (4): 366–387. Moraga, C. (1985). Loving in the War Years: Lo que nunca paso por sus labios. Boston, MA: South End Press. Moreman, S.T. (2009). Rethinking conquergood: toward an unstated cultural politics. Liminalities: A Performance Studies Journal 5 (5): 1–12. Muñoz, J.E. (2020). The Sense of Brown. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Rivera Berruz, S. (2019). Stylized resistance: boomerang perception and Latinas in the twenty-­first ­century. In: Theories of the Flesh: Latinx and Latinx American Feminisms, Transformation, and Resistance (eds. A.J. Pitts, M. Ortega, and J. Medina), 240–250. Oxford: Oxford Scholarship. Trujillo, C. (ed.) (1991). Chicana lesbians: fear and loathing in the Chicano community. In: Chicana Lesbians: The Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About, 186–194. Berkeley, CA: Third Woman. Vida (2018–2020) Awards. IMDB. www.imdb.com/title/tt7725422/awards?ref_=tt_awd (accessed 3 March 2020).

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The Hegemony of English and the Rise of Anti-­globalism: Problems, Ideologies, and Solutions Yukio Tsuda

Introduction English is widely used around the world and perceived as a lingua franca of international ­communication today. However, there is an increasing concern about the hegemony of English which causes a number of problems of inequality and discrimination. In this essay, I shall critically focus on the problems caused by the hegemony of English, examine some ideologies that support it and make some concrete proposals that may help to solve these problems. In addition, I will add a brief discussion about the connection between the hegemony of English and globalism particularly in reference to the rise of anti-­globalism that has been spreading across the world in the past decade.1 The hegemony of English, or the English hegemony refers to “the situation where English is so dominant that various forms of inequality and discrimination take place in communication all around the world” (Tsuda 2018). The global spread and use of English is taken for granted today, and it is seldom addressed. Thus, it is very important to give it a critical examination so that the hegemony of English will be acutely perceived and recognized as one of the sources of inequality, injustice, and discrimination in intercultural and international communication. In order for intercultural communication studies to be “critical” in the true sense of the word, it is essential to address the issue of inequality in communication such as the hegemony of English. I shall address it especially from the perspective of the non-­English speaking and non-­Western people. At the same time, the discussion in this chapter is, of course, not intended to attack the English-­speaking peoples and nations, but it is intended to raise consciousness about the hegemony of English which has a huge impact upon the peoples of the world.

Development of the Critique of the Hegemony of English Before starting to discuss the problems of the hegemony of English, I will briefly refer to the recent development of the critical studies of the hegemony of English. I published my dissertation Language Inequality and Distortion in 1986 (Tsuda 1986) in which I pointed out that the dominance of English causes inequality between the English-­ speaking people and the non-­English-­speaking people. The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication, Second Edition. Edited by Thomas K. Nakayama and Rona Tamiko Halualani. © 2024 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2024 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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Several years later, Linguistic Imperialism was published by Robert Phillipson, a linguist in Denmark (Phillipson 1992). Phillipson argues that there is a structure of inequality between English and other languages, which is justified and reinforced by international power politics, exploiting development aid and worldwide English language teaching. Also in 1994, Alastair Pennycook published Cultural Politics of English as an International Language in which he critiques the hegemony of English by using the notion of “discourse.” He argues that it is the “discourse” of English as an international language that has primarily justified the present dominance of English (Pennycook  1994). In  2001, The Dominance of English as a Language of Science was published by Ulrich Ammon, a German linguist. This book is a collection of international studies surveying how much English is used in each country in academic activities. The results show that there is a definite dominance of English in academic communication. Two years later, The Hegemony of English was published by Donald Macedo and his associates (Macedo et  al.  2003). They criticized the linguistic racism that exists in the United States and Europe, especially referring to the “English-­Only” ideology. A brief history of the recent development of these critical studies of the hegemony of English shows that there is indeed a growing concern and interest in this serious linguistic issue. When I first started research on the hegemony of English in the early 1980s, I found that there was almost no research being done on this issue in the English-­speaking academia except for Esperanto studies. Sociolinguistics in the United States is so descriptive and objective that it has failed to recognize and criticize the hegemony of English. This scientific apathy is accompanied by the Western-­centric consciousness that allows the English-­speaking scholars to take it for granted that the world will speak English and therefore there is no problem in it. On the contrary, there are plenty of problems. Therefore, it is very important to make a critical examination of the hegemony of English, because it allows us to understand that the hegemony of English is not a purely linguistic matter, but it is directly connected with the power structure of international relations. Although the United States of America is not as powerful as before, it is still the strongest country in the world with its considerable military and economic power, exercising hegemonic influence over other countries not only in terms of politics, but also in terms of linguistic and cultural domains. The hegemony of English is real.

Six Problems of the Hegemony of English The hegemony of English refers to the situation where English is so dominant that inequality and discrimination take place in communication. As far as I have studied, there are at least six problems of inequality and discrimination caused by the hegemony of English. They are: (i)  linguicism; (ii) linguicide; (iii) Americanization of culture; (iv) information control; (v) mind control; (vi) English divide. I shall discuss them one by one.

Linguicism What is linguicism? The word has been coined by Tove Skutnabb-­Kangas, a Finnish linguist, following racism and sexism. Linguicism is defined as follows: “Linguicism refers to ideologies and structures where language is the means for effecting or maintaining an unequal allocation of power and resources” (Phillipson 1992, p. 55). Looking back in history, we discover a great number of cases of linguicism. Speakers of dialects were discriminated against because of the linguistic variety they spoke. In the process of building a modern state, the government established a national standard language which served as a linguistic norm and became a basis of discriminating against the speakers of the nonstandard languages.



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English functions and is widely recognized as a global standard language today. That very fact serves as an enormous power and becomes a basis of discrimination, because it gives the speakers of English an enormous power and control in communication. The very fact that the use of English is taken for granted also gives an additional power to the English-­speaking countries and peoples. In most international conferences, English is used as the only or one of the official ­languages. For example, the International Whaling Committee adopts English as its only official language. The non-­English-­speaking countries have to provide translations if they wish to use their own languages. In 1993 when the International Whaling Committee was held in Kyoto, Japan, I had a chance to observe one of the meetings. Most delegates spoke English except for those from France, China, and Japan. I was surprised to find that when the delegates for these three countries spoke their languages, the audience did not even pay attention to them. Some people chatted among themselves. They started listening only when the translators provided the English translations. This example shows that the hegemony of English not only deprives the languages other than English of the chance to be used, but also marginalizes them as meaningless “noises.” In other words, the non-­English-­speaking people are not only deprived of their language rights, but their human dignity is also violated as they are ignored. The hegemony of English forces the non-­English-­speaking people to learn and use English. However, the English spoken by the non-­English-­speaking people is often labeled “Broken English,” which is rather an unkind label to degrade the non-­English-­speakers. In addition, a new label has been created and used recently. The new label is BSE (Ammon  2003). BSE stands for “Bad, Simple English.” The label ridicules and degrades the English spoken by nonnative speakers of English. Thus, nonstandard English becomes the target of discrimination. In international scientific journals, linguicism seems to be prevalent as scholars of the non-­ English-­speaking countries have difficulty getting their papers accepted not necessarily because of the quality of their research per se, but because of the quality of their English. In today’s international academic community, the system is already organized in such a way that benefits the scholars who are native speakers of English, because English is now the language of sciences, and the ideas and voices of the non-­English-­speaking scholars are often ignored unless they are very proficient in English. Donald Macedo, a critical sociolinguist at the University of Massachusetts, and his associates present a very interesting case of linguicism, which happened some years ago at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They describe it as follows: A group of students petitioned the administration not to hire professors who spoke English with a foreign accent, under the pretext that they had difficulty understanding their lectures. By barring professors who spoke English with a foreign accent, these students would have kept Albert Einstein from teaching in U.S. universities. (Macedo et al. 2003, p. 12)

Thus, linguicism, or inequality and discrimination because of the dominance of English is real. Non-­English-­speaking people are not only forced to learn and use English, but they are also discriminated against because of the nonstandard variety of English they use.

Linguicide There is a prediction among some linguists that in several hundred years from today, only one prestigious global language will remain and prevail in the world. It will probably be English. Linguicide refers to the killing of languages, especially weaker and smaller ones. The term linguicide derives from the word, “genocide” (the deliberate killing of a people because of

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their difference). Daniel Nettle and Susanne Romaine, British linguists, have provided a detailed account of linguicide in their book Vanishing Voices (Nettle and Romaine 2000). They attribute linguicide to the global spread of Western modernization which has destroyed the social environments of non-­Western countries since the sixteenth century. Western modernization has transformed traditional societies into the so-­called modern societies across the world that encourage the use of Western languages and degrade the indigenous languages. The creation of modern societies has led to the establishment of societies that are centered on Western languages and indigenous languages have been marginalized. Nettle and Romaine (2000) report that there are around 5000–6700 languages in the world today. The number of languages has decreased by 50% over the past five centuries, and the speed at which languages disappear is increasing, with, on average, one language disappearing every two weeks. There have been a lot of voices raised and warnings given to the ecological crisis, especially, in reference to the problems of endangered species, or the disappearance of animals and plants. Linguistic ecology is in crisis too. This planet is filled with endangered languages which may disappear at any moment. Along with the disappearance of these languages, related cultures, values, knowledge, philosophy, poetry, songs, memories, and linguistic souls also disappear. In a few hundred years from today, there will be only one language left on earth – probably English. Living in the United States, many Americans often feel threatened by the rise of Spanish. It has brought about a linguistic movement called the “Official English Movement” in the 1980s, trying to officially adopt English as the national language of the United States. English is not by law an official national language in the United States. However, this movement underestimates the enormous power and influence of English, especially in the international and global context. Actually, many people of the world feel threatened by English, as it dominates as the global language for business, science, media, tourism, politics, diplomacy, education, and so on. In France and Brazil, the governments have passed a law that restricts the use of English in their countries. English dominates all the spheres of human life in many countries in the world. The majority of international organizations adopt English as a sole or official language. As the global economy spreads in the world, there will be no choice for most people of the world but to learn and use English. It is true that English is a lingua franca today, but because of that it threatens other languages. It deprives the non-­English speaking peoples of the opportunity to use their own languages. I suspect that the hegemony of English is one of many factors causing “global language shift.” Language shift is a phenomenon in which a person changes his/her primary language. This happens to most immigrants. They gain the language of the host country, and they tend to lose their own in order to survive. Thus, language shift is accompanied by language loss. Economically and politically strong languages often replace the weaker languages. Some people argue that English hegemony is not responsible for global linguicide by pointing out that it is the dominant languages in each country that causes the weaker languages to disappear. This is partially true. However, we are living in the age of globalization in which we are greatly influenced not by the forces in each country, but by the global forces that come across the national borders. It is very difficult for any language to escape the enormous influence of English which dominates as the global standard language. For example, dominant languages such as French, Spanish, and Arabic have been losing power in international communication in the face of the hegemony of English. The percentage of speeches made in the United Nations in English during 1992–1999 increased from 45% to 50%, while the percentages of speeches made in French, Spanish, and Arabic all decreased: 19% to 13.8% for French, 12% to 10% for Spanish, and 10% to 9.5% for Arabic (Calvet 1998). Even the more widely spoken languages are under the influence of hegemony of English. English, being the language of globalization and the greatest economic and political power, makes people gravitate to it and lose their own languages. Louis-­Jean Calvet, a French linguist,



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categorizes English as a “hypercentral language” that makes many people around the world gravitate toward it. Calvet provides what he calls the gravitation model of linguistic hierarchy in which most people gravitate toward English, the hypercentral language, causing many people to shift to English (Calvet 1998). Indeed, many people all around the world are now living in a social environment that centers on English. In China, “there are an estimated 400  million English language learners” (British Council in China 2023), which is more than the population of the USA. In Korea, you cannot obtain a job interview if you do not have good scores in the English test. In Japan, ­billions of “yen” (the Japanese currency) are spent every year on learning English. The teaching of English to small children is becoming a big industry. In fact, the Japanese government has been pushing very hard to promote the use of English in schools as well as in workplaces. As a result, there is a growing concern about the possible loss of Japanese traditional culture and spirit. It is possible that in these Asian countries many people will shift to English in the future. Not only in Asia, but throughout the world, “Englishmania” or obsession with English is taking place. Why? It is because the whole world has been organized in such a way that leaves no other choices but to use English. Many people believe they have chosen English voluntarily, but actually they are unconsciously made to choose English and are not allowed to choose other languages. We are now living in an age of “Speak English, or perish.” This may result, sooner or later, in a global language shift in which people dispose of their own languages and shift to English. This would lead to global language loss and that is global linguicide.

Westernization and Americanization of Culture The impact of the English hegemony upon culture is another serious problem. You may have already heard the words and concepts such as “Coca-­colonization” and “McDonaldization” of culture, both referring to an enormous influence of American mass production culture upon the local cultures of almost all parts of the world. The global spread of American products influences people’s minds, values, and ways of life and English plays an important role. The spread of American products goes hand in hand with the spread of English, thus buying and using American products facilitates the spread of English which in turn facilitates the global spread of American products, creating the cycle of reinforcing the hegemony of English and American materialistic culture resulting in the weakening and often the loss of the local cultures. Some people say that although Americanization of culture is happening, it is changing only the surface of the local cultures across the world. I suspect, however, that its effects are more significant than we imagine. The impact of Americanization of culture penetrates the depth of human imagination and lifestyles. It has changed the value-­systems and belief-­systems of many cultures to American ones. The invasion of English and American culture is causing not only the replacement of languages, but also the replacement of mental structures. I can give you two typical examples to illustrate this point. One is from Japan, and the other is from Ladakh, a Himalayan region of Indian mountains. First, ever since the end of World War II and the following occupation by the US army, the enthusiasm and infatuation with English took place and continued in Japan until today. As a result, the use of foreign words, mainly English, has increased enormously to the extent that English is being used very frequently in daily communication in Japan. Nowadays, the conversation of most people is filled with English words such as “computers,” “address,” “access,” “login,” etc. One research study reports that the use of foreign words in magazines in Japan increased from 9.8% of the total words in 1956 to 34.8% in 1994 (The National Research Institute for the Japanese Language 2006). And this had already happened before the arrival of the Internet. It is possible that in the future, the Japanese language will be replaced by English.

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Another example that vividly illustrates the Americanization of culture has been provided by Helena Norberg-­Hodge, a Swedish ecologist. She reports that the impact of American culture even penetrates small groups of ethnic tribal people living in Ladakh in the high mountains of the Himalayas. She deplores the westernization of Ladakh as follows: The sudden influx of Western influence has caused some Ladakhis – the young men in particular – to develop feelings of inferiority complex. They reject their own culture wholesale, and at the same time eagerly embrace the new one. They rush after the symbols of modernity: sunglasses, Walkmans, and blue jeans several sizes too small  – not because they find these jeans more attractive or ­comfortable, but because they are symbols of modern life. (Norberg-­Hodge 1991, p. 98)

It is very sad to see that the young Ladakhis have lost confidence in their own culture and develop an inferiority complex toward Western culture. It will probably be very difficult for Ladakh culture to be transmitted to the next and the following generations. (Also, I noticed that Norberg-­Hodge referred to the Japanese product, “Walkman” as an example of Western influence, which indicates that Japan has been highly Westernized.) Helena Norberg-­Hodge further argues that due to the influence of violent Hollywood movies, the young Ladakis show a tendency toward violent and emotionally unstable behaviors. She regrets to say that traditionally calm and considerate Ladakhis have been transformed into a more aggressive people. These two examples clearly demonstrate the impact of Western culture. They show that American modern and material culture is not superficial, but profound to the extent that it is affecting the very nature of local cultures across the world and that the hegemony of English plays an important role in its effects. There is no doubt that English is the language of globalization and global economy. If any country wants to have a share of the benefits of globalization, they have to incorporate English into their society. Rather, they are forced to choose English. However, doing so may jeopardize the independence and uniqueness of their traditional cultures as demonstrated so far. The dominance of one language is now affecting the cultures and ways of life all over the world and homogenizing them into a Western and particularly American pattern of life. Indeed, ­“Coca-­colonization,” “McDonaldization,” and “Hollywoodization” of the world is taking place.

Information Control The fourth problem I have discovered in the hegemony of English is information control. Language and culture are inseparable, and so are language and information. When English dominates, information in English will dominate too. On the Internet, for example, English dominates with about 68% of the web pages being in English in 2000 (Kaigo 2003), and 20 years later, English is still ranked first with 60.5% of the top 10 million web pages using various languages in 2021(Languages used on the Internet 2021). Also, most international news is sent by way of international news agencies such as UPI, AP, and Reuters located in the United States and the United Kingdom. The flow of this international news is one-­way: from English-­speaking countries, especially the United States, to the rest of the world. Frustrated by this unequal flow of international information, some non-­Western countries have been raising their voices against “information inequality” and “imbalance in information flow.” Since the 1970s, the countries belonging to the nonaligned movement started a project which was later called “New World Information and Communication Order” (NWICO). In the 1976 “New Delhi Declaration” they pointed out how badly information inequality and imbalance affects developing countries. Here is an excerpt from the declaration:



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Table 12.1  Seven global news media. Media

Countries

APTN Reuters TV CNN Fox News Channel MSNBC BBC Al Jazeera

UK UK USA USA USA UK Qatar

Source: Adapted from Inoue (2005, p. 185). The present global information flows are marked by a serious inadequacy and imbalance. The means of communication of information are concentrated in a few countries. The great majority of countries are reduced to being passive recipients of information which is disseminated from a few centers.

However, instead of staying to discuss and tackle this issue, the United States and the United Kingdom withdrew from UNESCO where the debate on the New World Information and Communication Order was going on. The two countries obviously decided that the debate was against their national interests. Then, faced with financial difficulties, the debate in UNESCO quickly lost power. The Japanese communication scholar, Yasuhiro Inoue, pointed out the structure of monopoly of the global news media by the United States and the United Kingdom in his recent research (Inoue 2005). Table 12.1 shows that six out of the seven global news media organizations are located in the United States or the United Kingdom. Referring to this situation of monopoly and imbalance, Inoue comments as follows: The news and information provided will be biased and will not represent the diverse realities of the world. This is a serious issue, since such news and information will be accepted as “fact” and the “images of the global media have a great impact on the formation of public opinions and international relations.” (Inoue 2005, p. 191)

From these examples we can say that global information is heavily concentrated in the ­English-­speaking countries, especially the United States. The United States controls global information and the hegemony of English plays a large part in it.

Mind Control The next problem I have discovered in the hegemony of English is mind control, or the colonization of the mind. Language is not just a tool or a medium. It represents a way of thinking, a mental structure. Learning a language is not simply learning a tool. It affects people’s emotions and perceptions. It influences their thoughts, beliefs, and values. Learning to speak English often means learning to become and behave like Americans or British. Through learning English, many people in the world will possibly become mentally controlled by English. You become supporters and admirers of English, its culture and countries through the experience of learning it, while at the same time you devalue your own languages, cultures, and countries. The hegemony of English operates to reward the successful learners of English: they will gain high-­paid jobs, achieve higher social status, and individual accomplishments. They admire English and even become ardent advocates of English.

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At the same time, however, successful learners of English tend to give up their own languages. In California, the Hispanic people decided to oppose bilingual education for their children in 1998, because they wanted their children to be able to speak English (Matsubara 2002). They seem to have chosen individual success at the expense of their own linguistic heritage, Spanish. The economic rewards provided by the hegemony of English, thus, make people believe that it would be better to choose English and dispose of their own languages. The hegemony of English controls people to the extent that they choose English and give up their own languages. It is a form of mind control.

English Divide The last problem of the hegemony of English is English divide. English divide takes place as a result of the formation of the English language-­based class system (see Figure 12.1). As English is increasingly becoming a global standard language, proficiency in English will become a very important basis of evaluation. There will be a great divide between English-­ speaking people and non-­English-­speaking people. The hegemony of English will create a global class society where native speakers of English who often possess the highest proficiencies in English will compose the ruling class. As native speakers of the prestigious global language, they will monopolize the powers of communication and participate fully in global communication. Next come the speakers of English as a second language. In the English-­ based class system, they constitute the middle class, and therefore they have the second ­strongest powers of communication. These people are speakers of different varieties of English such as Indian English, Singaporean English, and so on. Their participation in global communication is almost equal to that of native speakers of English. Then come the speakers of English as a foreign language. They form the working class of the English-­based class system because they suffer from the labor of learning English for many years, often for a lifetime. They do not have as much power of communication as native speakers or speakers of English as a second language. Their participation in global ­

Native speakers

ESL speakers

EFL speakers

Silent class

Figure 12.1  English language-­based class system. Source: Adapted from Tsuda (2006, p. 129). ESL, English as a Second Language; EFL, English as a Foreign Language.



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communication is very much restricted and they easily become discriminated against or treated unfairly. The majority of the world’s population belongs to this class. At the bottom of the English language-­based class system exists what I call the silent class that has no or little contact with English. In any country where there is little overseas influence, especially Western influence, there seems to be almost no contact with English. The people in such a country are the silent class. Their power of global communication is almost nonexistent and their participation in global communication will be very restricted. As the hegemony of English develops and becomes stronger, we will find ourselves living in the English language-­based class system which produces and reproduces the English divide. In such a system, only the people who can speak English well will prosper at the expense of those who cannot or do not speak English. In fact, the English-­speaking countries gain as much as about one-­third of the world’s GDP (Gross Domestic Product), even though they represent only 8% of the total population of the world (Tsuda 2006). In many non-­English-­speaking countries in Europe and Asia, the English divide is happening: people get jobs and promotion if they demonstrate proficiency in English. The hegemony of English thus causes the practice of inequality, always operating to reward speakers of English and deprive the non-­English-­ speaking people of the opportunities to participate in global society.

Ideologies Reinforcing the Hegemony of English We have seen that there are plenty of problems caused by the hegemony of English. The underlying problem is that there has been almost no criticism of the hegemony of English. Rather, the hegemony of English has been unconsciously accepted; it has been perceived as inevitable. The notion of English as a global standard language has become taken-­for-­granted knowledge: it has never been called into question. Why has the hegemony of English been unchallenged despite a great number of problems it creates? How has the hegemony of English been legitimated? What ideologies prevent us from understanding the realities of the hegemony of English? In this section, I will discuss the three main ideologies that justify and reinforce the h ­ egemony of English. They are (i) Western-­centered universalism; (ii) monolingualism; (iii) utilitarian individualism. These three ideologies are combined to operate to reproduce and reinforce the hegemony of English.

Western-­centered Universalism Western-­centered Universalism refers to the idea that the West creates and represents the universal values, and that therefore the rest of the world should follow the Western model. Western-­centered Universalism believes that Western culture and civilization is the model for all countries and cultures to follow. Especially during the period of Western imperialistic expansion, Western-­centered universalism was employed to justify Western rule and control. Here is a speech by an Englishman who invaded Australia in the nineteenth century: Black men – Love White men. Love other tribes of black men. Do not quarrel together. Tell other tribes to love white men, and to build good huts and wear clothes. Learn to speak English. If any man injures you, tell the Protector and he will do you justice. (Bailey 1991, p. 85)

Western-­centered universalism is evident in this speech: the whites are the absolute rulers whom the natives are supposed to obey. Whites’ culture, religion, and language are directed toward the natives with an absolute authority, as a universal truth. The Englishman’s order

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that the natives should modernize themselves just like the Westerners is based on the Western-­ centered universalism. He ordered, “Learn to speak English” as he believed that English is a civilized, chosen, and universal language. He believed that the “savage” natives would be saved and modernized if they became like the Westerners. This is what is usually called “the messiah ideology,” an idea that justifies the Western imperialistic invasion in the name of ­saving and modernizing the non-­Western cultures. Western-­centered universalism is still prevalent and serves as an idea that justifies the hegemony of English. Many people, Western or non-­Western, believe that English is the language that the world should speak because the West is equal to the world representing the universal model. This kind of belief seems to be consciously and unconsciously held by a great many people in the world.

Monolingualism Monolingualism is an ideology that believes in the use of the only one dominant language in a society. Monolingualism is an ideology held by the dominant linguistic group who wishes to maintain their interests, power, and dominance. Monolingualism supports the hegemony of English in that it encourages the use of the most dominant language. The ideology of monolingualism is clearly reflected in the “U.S. English” movement in the United States which seeks to make English the official language of the United States. U.S. English sees the growing use of languages other than English and the resultant multilingualism as a threat to the unity of the nation. They believe that the use of English will realize a “unified America.” They argue that multilingualism is too expensive and the use of the most dominant language, English, will help immigrants to succeed in the United States. US English expresses its opposition to multilingualism by presenting a number of statistics to show how expensive multilingualism is and monolingualism is therefore a wiser decision. Below is an example of the statistics presented on their homepage (U.S. English Homepage 2008): It costs $1.86 million annually to prepare written translations for food stamp recipients nationwide. The cost for oral translations skyrockets to $21 million nationally per year (US Office of Management and Budget 2002).

The statistics indeed shows how costly multilingualism is, which makes most people believe more in monolingualism, or the use of English. Nowadays most people are very economically minded, so economical monolingualism has a great appeal. Also, most people believe in the use of a common language because it is convenient. That makes them believe more in monolingualism. The value of being economical and convenient is so prevalent today that it makes most people accept the existing hegemony of English in which the most dominant language is used as a common language.

Utilitarian Individualism Utilitarian individualism is a form of individualism that seeks only the individual’s self-­interests. English is a passport to success today and most people want to learn it for their own benefit and achievements. They need English for their own profits. They do not care about the problems caused by the hegemony of English. Rather, they support and accept English as a global standard language and try to get rewards by learning and using it. When I went to the United States in 2007 on a Fulbright grant and gave lectures on the hegemony of English to American professors and students, I received quite a lot of criticism from the audience who consciously or unconsciously held utilitarian individualism.



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At one of the lectures I gave, the following voice came out from the audience showing the feelings of discomfort to my lecture on the hegemony of English: “I take pride in mastering English as a second language. What’s wrong with that?” The student was proud of his mastery of English and seemed to be doing well in the United States. He failed to understand that the hegemony of English is a social and public issue and therefore it should be addressed beyond the scope of individual gain or loss. English enabled this student to become a successful immigrant and he benefits from the hegemony of English. His response reveals that he is confined in his own self-­interests and fails to understand the problems of the hegemony of English. On another occasion, there was an even more emotional response to my lecture coming from a professor: “The world has chosen English. And there is nothing wrong with it!” This emotional statement was made by a professor who I imagine had immigrated to the United States. The reason that these successful immigrants to the United States strongly disagree with my arguments on the hegemony of English is that they feel as though they were criticized because they had taken advantage of the hegemony of English. They feel it is English that has made them what they are today. They have benefited from English and gained a lot of rewards from it. These individual successes and achievements, that is, utilitarian individualism, prevent them from recognizing the realities of the hegemony of English. They have been deluded into the confines of utilitarian individualism and fail to recognize the significance of the hegemony of English beyond the scope of individual success and achievement. Also, the hegemony of English is a product of an achievement-­oriented competitive society. In such a society, most people become self-­centered to gain their own benefits, resulting in apathy toward social problems.

Ecology of Language Paradigm: An Alternative to the Hegemony of English Paradigm Having discussed the problems and ideologies of the hegemony of English, I will now discuss some ways to deal with it and possibly fight against it. First of all, we need to have a theory or a philosophy that will guide us and give us a new way of thinking in order to deal with and fight against the hegemony of English. For this purpose, I have proposed “the ecology of language paradigm” (Tsuda 1994, 1999) as an alternative paradigm to “the hegemony of English paradigm,” the dominant ideology that supports the hegemony of English. It is a part of the larger paradigm called “the Western modernization paradigm” which advances Western-­centered universalism, monolingualism, and utilitarian individualism as well as modernization, industrialization, capitalist economy and materialism. The “Western modernization paradigm,” however, causes a number of serious problems such as environmental destruction, global warming, population explosion and concentration, urbanization problems, widening gaps between the rich and the poor, and so on. “The Western modernization paradigm” assumes that there are no limits to growth and development, but that is where this paradigm fails. It should be replaced by a more sensible paradigm that will allow for sustainable growth and development. Therefore, I have proposed “the ecology of language paradigm” which is based on ecology. The ecological movement pursues the preservation and maintenance of the environment. “The ecology of language paradigm” thus aims to preserve and maintain languages all over the world. There are three goals in the ecology of language paradigm. They are: (i) the establishment of language rights; (ii) the establishment of linguistic equality; (iii) the establishment of mother tongue-­ism.

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Language Rights Language is one of the most important components for human beings, therefore, it should be recognized and established as the essential part of human rights. In 1996, the Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights (1996) was adopted at a meeting in Barcelona, Spain in order to internationally raise consciousness about the importance of language rights. Skutnabb-­Kangas and Phillipson name language rights “linguistic human rights” and define them as follows: We will provisionally regard linguistic human rights in relation to the mother tongue(s) as consisting of the right to identify with it/them, and to education and public services through the medium of it/them . . . . In relation to other languages we will regard linguistic human rights as consisting of the right to learn an official language in the country of residence, in its standard form.­ ­(Skutnabb-­Kangas and Phillipson 1995, p. 71)

This definition stresses the social aspect of language which acknowledges and encourages social participation. Language is important not only for its social function, but also for what it is, because we are what we speak. Language, especially the mother tongue, is not merely an instrument, but it is a source of human pride and dignity. Therefore, language rights should be established as an essential part of the right to be oneself. Everyone is entitled to the right to use the language(s) s/he chooses to speak and this right should be honored in all forms of communication.

Linguistic Equality Linguistic equality is a necessary condition for social and communicative equality. There are a variety of reasons for social inequality, but linguistic inequality is the one that is the most serious and yet not recognized. In any country, the most dominant language often becomes the standard language, reducing all other languages to a lower status. In international communication today, English has become the most dominant language, which has made all the other languages less prestigious. Thus, linguistic inequality is prevalent today, which justifies and reproduces social and communicative inequality. In order to overcome social and communicative inequality, linguistic equality should be realized. Linguistic equality refers to the situation where all the languages are endowed with the equal statuses, so that they will be used equally in communication. Linguistic equality will be realized when language rights are established because then everyone can use the language they have chosen. All the international declarations and agreements including the United Nations Charter, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights prohibit us from having language as a ground for discrimination. Linguistic equality together with language rights thus should be urgently established so that more equal and democratic international communication will be made possible where different languages will be heard and recognized.

Mother Tongue-­ism “Mother tongue-­ism” is the promotion of the use of mother tongues. Using English is emphasized today, while using mother tongues is not, especially for the non-­English speaking people. The emphasis on the use of English results in the neglect of mother tongues across the world.



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In Japan, people are obsessed with speaking English. As a result, most Japanese speak English to foreigners even though they are in Japan. They never even try to speak Japanese. Japanese is thus neglected while English takes center stage. I suspect that this kind of neglect of mother tongues takes place all over the world in the face of the hegemony of English. Minority languages that have little economic and political power are often neglected by their own speakers. To deal with the neglect of mother tongues, the use of mother tongues should be encouraged. Mother tongue-­ism, or the active use of mother tongues, is meaningful at least in two ways. One is that mother tongue-­ism promotes language rights. To use a mother tongue is to become aware of the right to one’s own language. The active use of mother tongues is very instrumental in terms of enhancing and recognizing language rights. As a result, the importance of minority languages and endangered languages will be recognized. The other significance of mother tongue-­ism is that it will promote the preservation of linguistic and cultural diversity. Mother tongue-­ism will help preserve a person’s pride in his/her own language and culture, and enhance his/her cultural identity. Mother tongue-­ism makes us realize the importance of mother-­tongue preservation which is necessary to preserve the wisdom stored in mother tongues and to restore and strengthen the pride in and identification with these languages. In order to encourage the use of mother tongues, translation is very important. The messages conveyed through mother tongues should be translated into major languages so that the messages will be understood. We have to educate ourselves to learn at least one more language other than our own mother tongue so that we will be able to communicate with someone who speaks different languages from our own. Multilingualism and multiculturalism have also been promoted by UNESCO and several declarations have been made to promote multilingualism and multiculturalism. Mother tongue-­ism is a practice of multilingualism and multiculturalism which respects, promotes, and preserves mother tongues all around the world.

Proposals to Fight Against the Hegemony of English In addition to the problems caused by the hegemony of English shown in the previous sections, some concrete measures should be created and if possible, implemented, to solve the problems caused by the hegemony of English. There are five proposals I would like to make in order to deal with the problems of the hegemony of English. They are: 1 2 3 4 5

a global language agreement the English tax free English language learning the obligatory use of foreign languages the promotion of peaceful and compassionate communication (PCC)

I hope these proposals will be taken seriously and further discussed for improvement and consideration for actual implementation.

A Global Language Agreement This is an agreement among all the nations of the world which could ensure linguistic and communicative equality. The fundamental spirit of this agreement could be: “Language should

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not be the reason for discrimination.” The spirit has already been expressed in the important international declarations such as the United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. A global language agreement based on this spirit could operate as an international legal instrument to prevent discrimination on the basis of language. Based on the important articles of the three major international declarations above, we will be able to devise three fundamental principles which express the core philosophy of global language agreement. The principles are as follows: • First principle: No discrimination should be allowed on the grounds of language. • Second principle: All people should be entitled to the right to their languages and right to their cultures. • Third principle: All people should be entitled to the right of expression, opinion, and information. The first principle could be called “the principle of linguistic equality” as it stipulates against linguistic discrimination. The second principle could be called “the principle of cultural equality” as it clearly expresses the need to preserve a person’s own culture. The third principle could be called “the principle of equal information exchange,” as it emphasizes a person’s right of expression, opinion, and information. In international communication where people of different languages and cultures interact, communication should be practiced according to the three principles above in order to ensure linguistic and communicative equality so that people can communicate with one another without interference, discrimination, or domination of a certain group of people who speak a ­certain language with a certain culture. We must make a proposal like a global language agreement by incorporating the three principles above, so that people of the world will be able to communicate more equally without giving a special privilege to a certain language. In order to do that, it is urgently necessary to organize an international body to create a global language agreement and make it known to the world.

The English Tax The English tax has been inspired by the Tobin tax, proposed by James Tobin, an American economist and Nobel Prize winner. The Tobin tax is a taxation system which imposes tax on international banking transactions. In foreign-­exchange market, huge sums of money are transacted every day across the world, enabling some companies to use methods such as “Hedge Funds” and “Derivatives” to make billions of dollars. As a result, the banking economy has become considerably larger than the real economy. Also, the market for international banking transactions is exclusive, as most of the banking transactions are carried out in a few large cities such as London, New York and Tokyo, implying that only a small number of people make millions of dollars. Tobin, in his proposals, attempts to correct this situation by imposing a tax on international banking transactions in order to curtail speculative transactions. The money collected as Tobin tax, should then be redistributed to poor countries. I was inspired by the Tobin tax and decided to apply the idea to the problem of the hegemony of English. Then I came up with “the English tax.” Like the Tobin tax which proposes taxing international banking transactions to curtail s­ peculative banking, The English tax will tax the English language used in international ­communication, and the money collected will be used for the building of linguistic and communicative equality as well as the restoration and preservation of minority and endangered languages.



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All the English words and sentences will be taxed. Not only the English documents, but also emails, audio-­visual materials, textbooks, and spoken words in English will be taxed. Hollywood movies will be taxed because of the English language used in them. Multinational corporations will be taxed for English language use in their business activities. One of the objectives of the English tax is the curtailment of the use of English. The users of English, whether they be native or nonnative, will hesitate to use English when the English tax is imposed. They will think twice if they should use English or not, which I hope will ­somehow curtail the use of English, and thereby reduce the influence of the hegemony of English. Tobin tax has already been adopted in France and Belgium. It is being considered for implementation in the United Kingdom and Spain. Thus, it is very practical and very urgently necessary to adopt an international taxation system such as the Tobin tax as a counter-­measure to excessive globalization which is creating poverty around the world. The same applies to the solution of the hegemony of English. In order to further justify “the English tax,” I shall bring up “internet tax” which was proposed by the United Nations Development Planning (UNDP) in its 1999 annual report (UNDP 1999). The internet tax was proposed to reduce the digital divide that was caused by the global diffusion of information technologies and the spread of the Internet. Only the advanced nations enjoy the advantages of the IT revolution and the poorer countries cannot afford it. The internet tax was proposed to correct this inequality. According to UNDP report, 88% of the world’s internet user population is concentrated in the advanced nations which compose only 15% of the total of the world population. Also, North America, which composes only 4.7% of the world’s total population, contains more than half of the whole internet population. The UNDP proposes that 1% should be taxed per 100 emails. It is right that “the rich” are taxed and the money collected will be redistributed to “the poor.” “Tobin tax,” “the English tax,” and “the internet tax” will all share this position. That is why these ideas are all very realistic and should be seriously considered.

Free English Language Learning My third proposal to battle against the hegemony of English is free English language learning, which means that English language learning all over the world should be free of charge. Billions are spent by non-­English-­speaking people on learning English, but this should be stopped because it is not fair that non-­English-­speaking people should spend so much money. Who gains the most in the hegemony of English? Undoubtedly, it is the English-­speaking people and countries. There are about 500–1000  million English speakers around the world.  These people benefit as English is a global standard language, while the rest of the world, about 5 billion non-­English-­speaking people spend a lot of money and time learning English, and there is no guarantee if they will really be able to become proficient in English. Instead, they cannot participate in international communication. The English-­speaking people and countries should help non-­English-­speaking people and countries if they truly wish English to become a global standard language for everyone in the world. That is why I propose that English language learning should be free. English is a common property for the entire world. Therefore, it is wrong for English-­speaking people and countries to benefit economically from teaching English. English language learning should not be carried out as a business or an industry, because English may be a common good that should be equally shared by all, and not for a certain group of people to make money out of it. English should be taught voluntarily and all resources produced and provided free of charge.

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English-­speaking people and countries should be glad that the world is learning their l­anguage, and they should not demand any profit from it. They have already had enough ­benefit. English language learning should be free. It is taken for granted that the non-­English-­speaking people should spend their money on learning English. If English is a global standard language that everyone in the world should learn, there should be some financial support for the learners so that they will not suffer from the financial burden.

Obligatory Use of Foreign Languages My fourth proposal is “obligatory use of foreign languages” in international communication. This proposal is made for the purpose of creating a new international custom of using a foreign language instead of the existing custom of using English. If using a foreign language becomes customary in intercultural and international communication, it will help establish a more equal intercultural and international communication than the English-­dominated communication. By having an equal foreign language handicap, we will be able to communicate more equally. In intercultural and international communication in which English is a common language, English-­speaking people often dominate, resulting in unequal communication. In contrast, in an international conference where the participants are obliged to speak a foreign language, no one can easily dominate communication because everybody has to speak a foreign language. Of course, the English-­speaking people will have to speak a language other than English. The objective of this proposal is to give an equal linguistic handicap to all the participants in intercultural and international communication. As it is now, English-­speaking people have the largest freedom of expression by speaking their own language, while the other people suffer from an enormous linguistic handicap. By obliging the participants in communication to speak a foreign language, linguistic equality in communication will be realized. Some people may feel that if everybody speaks different languages, it will be very difficult to understand one another. This problem will be solved with the use of translators. Also, in many cases, most non-­English-­speaking people may choose to speak English, I believe, and if the English-­speaking people choose to speak French, then the communication will become bilingual and translation will not become too complicated. In addition, the obligatory use of foreign languages will encourage English-­speaking people to learn foreign languages. By learning foreign languages, English-­speaking people will not only learn about foreign cultures, but will also change their attitudes about languages. It is possible that they will reduce the imperialist consciousness and “English-­centrism” internalized in their minds. This change in their consciousness will be very important in terms of overcoming the hegemony of English.

The Promotion of Peaceful and Compassionate Communication (PCC) The last proposal I would like to make is the promotion of peaceful and compassionate Communication (PCC) in order to reduce the impact of the hegemony of English. As we have seen, the hegemony of English is real and there are many problems because of that. But in order to communicate globally and internationally, it seems that we have no other choice but to use English today. From the point of view of the non-­English-­speaking person, communication in English causes a lot of stress and frustration, because you cannot understand or be understood in many cases. You might be misunderstood, ridiculed, insulted, and even ignored because of lower proficiency in English, as we have seen in the discussion of linguicism.



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To avoid linguicism in communication from happening, peaceful and compassionate ­communication (PCC) should be promoted. PCC refers to the kind of communication in which people communicate peacefully and compassionately. In PCC, peace and compassion are the common values that will enable people to communicate peacefully and compassionately. If PCC is practiced, the atmosphere of communication will be changed into a very calm, quiet, safe, cooperative, understanding, empathic, non-­confrontational one and above all, an affectionate one. PCC will enable all the people of different languages and cultures to feel safe, comfortable, and protected so that the division between English-­speaking people and non-­English-­speaking people will be somewhat lessened, if not entirely eradicated. There is a possibility that we will be able to overcome the hegemony of English by putting PCC into practice. I have to say that the concept of PCC originates from my own cultural background, namely, Japan where the fundamental principle of the nation has been “wa,” “harmony or compassion” since the seventh century when the nation’s first constitution explicitly declared “wa” as the most respected value in the nation. Let us not let the hegemony of English divide us, but let us try to communicate peacefully and compassionately with each other in any language so that the linguistic and cultural gap will be overcome. Whether you are a native speaker of English, or a nonnative speaker of English, be sure to have peacefulness and compassion toward the person you are communicating with. Be sure to have the heart of “wa,” harmony or compassion. Be willing to concede in order to avoid conflict, just as most Japanese people do. Try to communicate peacefully and compassionately most of the time, then possibly, the language barrier may break down and everyone can be friends. Some critics may point out that in order for these five proposals to be successful, the ­structural transformations should be made simultaneously in the domains of politics, economics, and diplomacy as language and communication issues are closely intertwined with all of them. It is important to create social and international conditions that will help these proposals to be accepted and effectively implemented. At the same time, it is even more important to raise consciousness about the hegemony of English so that more people will become aware of the problems.

Will the End of Globalism Put an End to the Hegemony of English? More than a decade has passed since the publication of the first edition of this handbook, and during this period the world has dramatically changed. I have already modified this chapter a little bit, and I feel the need to add a brief discussion, reflecting upon the changes that have happened in the world and connecting them with the hegemony of English. One of the biggest changes in the last decade was no doubt the rise of anti-­globalism movements symbolized by Donald Trump becoming president of the United States and “Brexit,” the British decision to leave the European Union. In some other European countries such as France, Italy, and Austria, the patriotic political parties have been gaining support in each country, demonstrating the growth of anti-­ globalist and pro-­ nationalistic sentiments in Europe. It seems that in the United States and in Western Europe, more and more people want to put an end to globalism. It is true that globalization has made almost all kinds of human activities free and “borderless,” by relaxing national rules and regulations and allowing people to freely move across the national borders and engage in economic and other activities on a global scale. At the same time, however, globalization has widened the gap between the rich and the poor across the world. Also, the increase of terrorism and crimes is threatening the social order

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and stability in the United States, Europe and other countries, mainly due to the rapid influx of immigrants and refugees which was caused by globalism. Moreover, globalization allows for the rise of a new “hegemonic” power, namely, China, now the second biggest economic power with the increasing military strength, attempting to extend its influence on a global scale. Already in 2007, a Chinese military official was quoted as saying that the Pacific Ocean will be divided into two areas: the Eastern area from Hawaii will belong to the United States, while the Western half will belong to China (Hirano 2019, p.  22). Moreover, the Chinese government claims that the Senkaku islands, which are an integral part of Japanese territory, belong to them, which is causing conflict between the two countries. Also, the impact of the Chinese influence in Australia has been reported in detail in the book called Silent Invasion: China’s Influence in Australia (Hamilton 2018). China’s ambition to expand and dominate on a global scale is becoming a serious threat to many other countries. Since 2018, a trade war has begun between the United States and China. The two countries raised tariffs against the products of the other country many times to prevent them from coming into their own market. And in 2020, the coronavirus pandemic spread all around the world, and at the time of writing this chapter, there was no sign of it diminishing yet. The pandemic made the people around the world reconsider the value of globalism and more and more people started thinking about putting an end to it. Actually, almost all the nations locked down their countries prohibiting the entry of foreigners. This seems to indicate that the world really wished for the end of globalism. Faced with these problems caused by globalization, it is only natural and inevitable that most people feel confused and threatened, and seek protection for anti-­globalism and pro-­ nationalistic movements, which promise to give protection and restore national unity and pride. I believe that Trump’s “America First” policy is symbolic of many American people’s wish to put an end to globalization and restore national pride and prosperity. Many Americans want the United States to be top priority for its own people, namely, “America First,” and never to interfere with other countries. And the same goes with Europe and Japan. Quite a lot of Japanese people support Donald Trump, indicating their wish for the end of globalism and for the revival of patriotism and nationalism. What does this growing sentiment across the world, the wish for the end of globalization, have to do with the hegemony of English? It has a great deal to do with it, because the hegemony of English is inseparable from globalization. There is no doubt that the global economy greatly helps English spread around the world. Therefore, if globalization slows down or stops, the impact of the hegemony of English may become smaller than today. More and more people may begin to realize the importance of “national” or “regional” or “local” languages rather than “global standard language” such as English. I believe that an increasing number of people around the world are beginning to become aware of the value of “mother tongues,” namely, the first languages that are so closely connected with who they are and where they come from, namely, the “cultural roots.” Anti-­globalism sentiments and movements share the same awareness: they are aiming to restore their national and cultural identity and pride. For example, many Americans want to be proud of themselves by saying “Make America Great Again,” and the British want to be proud of themselves by regaining “independence” from the European Union. And in some other European countries, the same awareness is growing to restore “national independence and unity” and thus put an end to globalization. Many people want to feel protected in their own countries and feel “at home” in their homelands, not in some globalized uncomfortable country that is foreign to them. From the perspective of protecting national and local languages, the rise of “linguistic ­patriotism,” the love of your own languages, should be respected and even encouraged, because languages are the souls of each country and they should never be prohibited.



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“Patriotism” serves as the breakwater against the “hegemonic” waves of globalization that may disrupt national culture and tradition, and saves the world from suffering from “global linguicide,” the devastating disappearance of weaker languages across the world, discussed earlier in this chapter. However, I have to emphasize at the same time that American patriots should be critically aware of the hegemony of English because English, their own language, is the most powerful language in the world, causing a variety of problems I have already discussed in this chapter. English-­speaking people should not take advantage of their linguistic advantage and impose English upon the peoples of other languages. They are responsible for building equal and free communication in which the non-­English speaking people can participate and express their ideas freely and equally.

Conclusion: Not “Hegemony” but “Harmony” As we have seen, the problems caused by the hegemony of English are evident, and they should be addressed urgently. Some people may feel some of my proposals are unrealistic, but all these proposals are the results of serious thinking and effort to create linguistic and communicative equality in the world, and I hope that they will be taken seriously. The greatest obstacle to understanding and solving the hegemony of English is the uncritical acceptance of it. This essay is an attempt to raise critical awareness of the hegemony of English. I hope that many English-­speaking people as well as non-­English-­speaking people who are learning English for their own benefit will become aware of the hegemony of English and begin to realize the importance of linguistic and communicative freedom and equality in intercultural and international communication. We should be aware of the problems of the hegemony of English beyond the scope of individual interests. The hegemony of English is a serious issue for all the people across the world. Also, there are very few linguists and communication scholars in English-­speaking countries who grapple with the hegemony of English. I sincerely hope that many more English-­speaking scholars and people will become aware of the hegemony of English and begin to work for the establishment of a more equal form of global communication. Last but not least, the issue of “hegemony” is about the desire to dominate over others. In any circumstances, we have to control and minimize the desire to dominate others, and learn to live harmoniously with others and respect others without interfering with them at all. In this sense, the philosophy of “wa” (harmony or compassion) in Japan, which I mentioned earlier should be acknowledged and implemented in human communication all around the world. We should try very hard not to dominate, but to respect and love one another. In short, not “hegemony,” but “harmony.” Let us not let the hegemony of English divide us.

Note 1 Some portions of this chapter have been taken from Yukio (2008).

References Ammon, U. (ed.) (2001). The Dominance of English as a Language of Science: Effects on Other Languages and Language Communities. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter. Ammon, U. (2003). Global English and the non-­native speaker: overcoming disadvantage. In: Language in the 21st Century (eds. H. Tonkin and T. Reagans), 23–34. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

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Bailey, R. (1991). Images of English. London: Cambridge University Press. British Council in China (2023). English in numbers. www.britishcouncil.cn/en (accessed 12 June 2023). Calvet, L.-­ J. (1998). Language wars: language policies and globalization. http://nanovic.nd.edu/ assets/8706/calvetpaper.pdf (accessed 8 June 2010). Hamilton, C. (2018). Silent Invasion: China’s Influence in Australia. Melbourne: Hardie Grant Books. Hirano, H. (2019). Nihonwa Sudeni Sinryakusareteiru (Japan Has Already Been Invaded). Tokyo: Shinchosha. Inoue, Y. (2005). Global media to news eizou no kokusai ryuutuu – beiei tsuushinshaniyoru kasen k­ ouzouno mondaiten. In: News-­no kokusai ryuutsuu to shimin ishiki (ed. Y. Itoh), 171–194. Keio University Press. Kaigo, M. (2003). Internet-­no Eigo Shihai to globalization. In: Eigokasuru Sekai (ed. Y. Tsuda), 63–65. Tsukuba University. Languages used on the Internet (2021). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_used_on_the_ Internet (accessed 23 January 2021). Macedo, D., Dendorinos, B., and Gounari, P. (2003). The Hegemony of English. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. Matsubara, K. (2002). America no kouyougowa Eigo?: Tagengoshakai America no gengo ronsou. In: Sekai no Gengo Seisaku (ed. T. Kawahara), 20. Tokyo: Kuroshio Shuppan. National Research Institute for the Japanese Language (2006). Gairaigo IIkae Tebiki. Tokyo: Gyousei. Nettle, D. and Romaine, S. (2000). Vanishing Voices: The Extinction of the World’s Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Norberg-­Hodge, H. (1991). Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh. London: Rider. Pennycook, A. (1994). Cultural Politics of English as an International Language. London: Longman. Phillipson, R. (1992). Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Skutnabb-­Kangas, T. and Phillipson, R. (1995). Linguistic human rights, past and present. In: Linguistic Human Rights: Overcoming Linguistic Discrimination (eds. T. Skutnabb-­Kangas and R. Phillipson), 71–100. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Tsuda, Y. (1986). Language Inequality and Distortion. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Tsuda, Y. (1994). The diffusion of English: its impact on culture and communication. Keio Communication Review 16: 49–61. Tsuda, Y. (1999). The hegemony of English and strategies for linguistic pluralism: proposing the ecology of language paradigm. In: Worlds Apart: Human Security and Global Governance (ed. M. Teheranian), 153–167. London: I. B. Tauris. Tsuda, Y. (2006). Eigo shihai to kotoba no byoudou [The Hegemony of English and Linguistic Equality]. Tokyo: Keio University Press. Tsuda, Y. (2008). English hegemony and English divide. China Media Research 4 (1): 47–55. Tsuda, Y. (2018). English hegemony. In: The International Encyclopedia of Intercultural Communication, vol. I (ed. Y.Y. Kim), 720–725. London: Wiley-­Blackwell. UNDP (1999). Human Development Report: Globalization and Human Development. Oxford, Oxford: Oxford University Press. declaration.org/index-­ gb.htm Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights (1996). www.linguistic-­ (accessed 20 May 2010). U.S. English Homepage (2008). www.us-­english.org/inc (accessed May 20, 2010). US Office of Management and Budget (2002). Report to Congress: Assessment of the Total Benefits and Costs of Implementing Executive Order No. 13166: Improving Access to Services for Person with Limited English Proficiency, March 14.

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On Terra Nullius and Texts: Settler Colonialism, Native Disappearance, and the Introductory Cultural Studies Reader Aimee Carrillo Rowe California State University, Northridge

The music video opens to the sound of a single guitar riff wailing longingly over black-­and-­ white images of a cowboy-­guitarist, who walks casually across a stage. The scene cuts to images of the iconic John Bon Jovi and his band members in the various activities of band life: boarding planes, performing on different stages, looking soulfully out of hotel windows. The performers call forth their audiences, signified by intercut images of enthusiastic fans – cheering, holding lighters, raising their hands as a mass, collective wave. Bon Jovi closes his eyes and bends his knees as he belts into his mic: I’m a cowboy, on a steel horse I ride I’m wanted dead or alive Wanted dead or alive1

The scene ends with the band silhouetted on stage, bowing then rising, hands raised and clasped in triumphant unity as the music and images fade. All that remains is the sound of the wind blowing. The music video stages a compelling story of Bon Jovi as a modern frontiersman, riding alone on his “steel horse” in service of his far-­flung fans. The good cowboy sacrifices the comforts of home (“I drive all night just to get back home”), bodily comfort (“sometimes I sleep, sometimes it’s not for days”), and safety (“I play for keeps ’cause I might not make it back”) to mobilize the endearment of his audiences (“I’ve seen a million faces and I’ve rocked them all”). In these ways, “Wanted Dead or Alive” activates the trace of the cowboy in US culture, “an evocative representation of American values: love of freedom, fairness, individualism, toughness, enterprise, forwardlooking attitude, and whiteness” (Yellow Bird  2004, p.  42). The cowboy mobilizes sentiments of toughness, overcoming hardships, and competition as captured in various cultural figures. We see this theme recur in beloved US cultural figures – the Dallas Cowboys, Clint Eastwood, the Marlboro man – all of which embody the frontier as an essential character of national identity. Frontier masculinity not only underwrites “the nation’s masculine vigor and purpose,” but also the foundational promise of Manifest Destiny: “the incorporation of new land that would provide the economic independence associated The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication, Second Edition. Edited by Thomas K. Nakayama and Rona Tamiko Halualani. © 2024 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2024 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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with manhood in republican and agrarian ideology.”2 As with the structure of Orientalism that orients relations of Western supremacy over and against Eastern subordination (Said) or that of whiteness as organizing race relations (Dyer), the cowboy is figured against his savage enemy, the Indian. The Cowboy-­ Indian binary serves as the enigmatic embodiment of American identity, for the American would not be “American” but for the aura of Indianness – that trace of wildness that the cowboy embodies, even as the Indian disappears – that distinguishes him from his British counterpart. Cowboy imagery appears in various cultural forms as place names, images, and stereotyped identities populate our land-­and media-­scapes. The walls of the Wells Fargo Bank feature grim-­ faced pioneers, sepia images of Western towns and buildings, dynamic covered wagons, manned by a lone cowboy pressing six galloping horses forward across the prairie. Bold cowboys and strong, swift horses signify fundamental American values: individualism, enterprise, and progress. Marketing these values to my daughter’s generation, the Disney film, The Good Dinosaur, features a young male dinosaur, Arlo, who ventures from his frontier home in search of his father. Arlo’s coming-­of-­age is confirmed when he successfully fights off unruly raptors, whose feathers and ruthless mode of attack recall tropes of Indian savagery, inviting young people to identify with the Western hero  – to imagine themselves in distinction to the raptors, who threaten their safety. In this way, the figure of the Indian is the absent presence of settlement processes as settlers name their towns, streets, and states using words or tribal names of the Native Americans they displaced to create their homes: Alabama, named for the Alibamu tribe; Alaska for the Aleut “alaxsxaq,” or “mainland”; Kentucky from the Iroquoian word for “on the prairie”; Missouri, named for the Missouri tribe. Near my home, created through the theft and settlement of Tongva and Chumash lands: we have Temescal Canyon, named for the “sweat houses” and Topanga Canyon, a famous named artist-­hippy outpost, named for the Tongva word for “place above” that marked the boundary between Tongva and Chumash landbases.3 Signifiers of conquest are pervasive, yet remain invisible to the settler consciousness. This pervasive invisibility works to naturalize the supremacy of settler identity through repeated affirmations of settler belonging on occupied indigenous land through its attendant erasure of indigenous existence  – the production of the Native as always-­ already “disappearing” (Simpson  2014). Indigenous erasure is often understood within the settler consciousness through Darwinian logics of extinction. In this chapter, I tease out the ways Native disappearance is structured into the settler consciousness through processes of knowledge production. I examine how narratives of conquest reify the setter place in the social order as a location earned through the imagined labor of creating order out of chaos, society out of wilderness and taming savages. These frontier achievements confirm settlers as the rightful inheritors of the pastoral landscapes such scenes evoke, in turn, structure the field of critical intercultural communication. They are fundamental to how we relate to, imagine, and decode the relationship between self and other, even as they circumscribe the parameters of how we imagine those relations in the first place: settler logics objectify the land and natural elements, not as relatives, but as resources for extraction. My reading of such scenes as haunting introductory cultural studies texts works to unveil the pervasive invisibility of settler logics through which self and other are inscribed. Informed by Native American and Indigenous Studies frameworks, such critical reading practices enable critical intercultural communication and cultural studies practitioners to attend to the cultural and material production of settler identity, material, and land formations. The ongoing processes of settlement and resistance to it – like the Standing Rock Sioux’s efforts to thwart the South Dakota pipeline project, Kanaka Maoli struggles to protect Mauna Kea, and the Winnemem Wintu tribe’s efforts to block expanding dam projects on the McCloud River4 – point to the urgency of Native American and Indigenous Studies intellectual and political projects to counter ongoing processes of settlement. Indigenous activism interrupts the seemingly inevitable march of settler expansion to make possible radical new



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imaginaries around intercultural communication, grounded in a profound respect for all our relations. I seek to bring these possibilities to light as a way of reimaging intercultural ­communication. To do so, I explore the ways in which the absence of tools with which to deconstruct settler colonialism points to a larger project of disappearance constitutive of ­ongoing processes of settlement. If, as Wolfe argues, settler colonialism is a “structure, not an event” (2006, p. 388), then the absence of critical tools through which to apprehend settler colonialism is more than a mere oversight that might be corrected through “adding” a tool to our kit. Rather it points to the deeply problematic nature of critical projects like intercultural communication studies (and its attendant pedagogies) that perpetuate the settler colonialism as an epistemic and material structure. To unearth how settler colonialism structures my own intellectual production as an intercultural communication scholar, this chapter draws on Native American and Indigenous Studies to consider how scholarly production in the field of intercultural communication studies unwittingly draws on logics, metaphors, and imagery that reproduce frontier frameworks. The first section clarifies the importance of land to our theorization of settler colonialism within cultural studies. Next, I offer readings of two introductory cultural studies texts (books I’ve taught in my own intercultural communication courses) to show how settler metaphors and imagery evoke a pervasive, yet invisible, settler logic. Finally, I consider the possibilities of Indigenous futurities and how we as intercultural communication practitioners might participate in them.

Indian Under Erasure: Settler Colonialism and Native Disappearance Understanding the dynamics of settler colonialism is vital to formulating a decolonial intercultural communication studies framework. Intercultural communication studies, cultural studies and postcolonial theories productively interrogate the politics of migration, diaspora, and transnationalism, foregrounding questions of mobility, travel, development, and resource exploitation to theorize complex power dynamics within globalization. But in the absence of a careful attention to the politics of land and its settlement, intercultural communication studies participates in the erasure of Indigenous peoples. To explore the underlying structures that inform this complicity, I define settler colonialism and examine the political stakes of foregrounding settler colonialism as a framework within a decolonial, land-­based critical intercultural communication studies framework. Settler colonialism is foundational to settler nation formation as the process through which colonizers come to envision an already-­inhabited landbase as their home. Lorenzo Veracini describes settler colonialism as a “global and genuinely transnational phenomenon” that “national and imperial historiographies fail to address as such,” arguing that “colonial studies and postcolonial literatures have developed interpretive categories that are not specifically suited for an appraisal of settler colonial circumstances” (Veracini 2011, p. 2). Settler nations and their subjects construct and imagine the lands they seek as open, untamed, and unoccupied places. This narrative requires the erasure – both rhetorically and materially – of Indigenous peoples to enable settlers to claim and privatize these sites through the interrelated processes of occupation, expropriation, and development. Settler colonialism is centrally about the ongoing pursuit of land, and this pursuit may only be fulfilled through the ongoing displacement of Indigenous peoples. In this sense, land is productively understood as the necessary, but often-­overlooked, condition of colonial modernity. Settler colonialism must be understood as a structure to render visible its ongoing organizing force within the US nation state and global power relations. This is why Wolfe’s (2006) phrasing of settlement as a “structure, not an event” and Veracini’s notion that settler colonialism “covers its tracks” (2011) leverage so much rhetorical and conceptual power in the turn toward analyzing settler colonialism. These arguments render palpable the urgency and

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­obligations of attending to settler colonialism across disciplines, even in works which do not immediately appear to be concerned with Indigenous land. The cultural and material work of “settling” is neither merely about populating land settling, nor is it adequately captured within theories of migration (Veracini  2010, p.  3). Settler colonialism organizes and differentiates peoples, social relations, bodies to enable uses of land and natural resources. As Indigenous and Native American Studies scholars argue, the disciplining and deadly effects of these structures fall heavily on the bodies and landbases of Native peoples (see Barker  2008; Morgensen 2011; Rifkin 2011; Simpson 2014). Such a framework helps us understand the fact that land theft, Indian removal, and the genocide of Native people are not “an event” or an historic formation of national origins that might be relegated to the past. Rather these processes remain central to the functioning of the settler state as Indigenous lands are reconfigured, consumed, and continually expropriated as privatized settler property. The ongoingness of settler colonialism circulates through the construction of Indigenous peoples as always-­already “disappearing.” This disappearance marks the limits of the politics of recognition, as Audra Simpson argues, because settler colonialism “structures justice and injustice in particular ways, not through the conferral of recognition of the enslaved but by the conferral of disappearance in subject. This is not seeing that is so profound that mutuality cannot be achieved” (2014, p.  23). Native disappearance is grounded in and legitimated by Western knowledge production as illustrated by the project of “salvage ethnography,” in which “presumably vanishing Native bodies, cultures, and communities were rendered objects to be studied, advancing the careers of white anthropological ‘experts’ as well as the institutionalization and disciplinary notion that Native people were, in fact, disappearing” (Simpson and Smith 2014, pp. 4–5). These theories reveal how settler colonialism is an ongoing project that demands our critical apparatuses at various sites of knowledge and cultural production. Yet recent theorizations of settler colonialism expose the ways that cultural and intellectual productions remain complicit with ongoing settlement, not only in popular and everyday practices, but also within seemingly progressive intellectual projects like queer studies, feminist studies, and critical race studies (see Barker 2011; Denetdale 2007, 2008; Million 2013; Morgensen 2011; Goeman 2013; Rifkin 2011, 2012, 2014; Simpson 2014; Simpson and Smith 2014). Indigenous Studies critiques have helped me interrogate my own work in the field of critical race rhetorics to trace how our theories not only fail to interrogate settler colonialism, but actually participate in its formation. While work in this field has productively theorized how racial formation and the intersections of race, gender, class, sexuality, and (neo)colonialism shape our daily lives as US Americans, it also traffics in settler logics. For instance, in the introduction to their edited collection, Critical Rhetorics of Race, Lacy and Ono (2011) point to the ambivalent contractions of racism within a presumably post-­racial US society. The aim of critical race rhetorics, they instruct, is not only to expose such contradictions – as the pervasive nature of racism seemingly runs counter to our investment in US American identity as “exceptional” – but also to provide “tools to deconstruct and interpret representations of race and racism” that saturate public life (2011, p. 1). While critical race and intercultural communication studies frameworks are vital to leveraging such critiques, they also need to account for the various ways that processes of racialization are organized through settler colonialism. For example, Patrick Wolfe draws an important distinction between the processes of racialization that structure Black and Native identities: “As opposed to enslaved people, whose reproduction augmented their owners’ wealth, Indigenous people obstructed settlers’ access to land, so their increase was counterproductive. The restrictive racial classification of Indians straightforwardly furthered the logic of elimination” (Wolfe 2006, p. 388). In our failure to attend to such distinctions, then, culture critics not only miss a key element of power, but unwittingly participate in the naturalization of settler logics. Jodi Byrd argues that when our methods presume the erasure of Indigenous peoples as



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modern subjects, we participate in “the very present and ongoing colonization of indigenous lands, resources, and lives” (Byrd 2011, p. 6). Given the pervasive ways that settler colonialism is embedded within the very knowledge structures that inform critical intercultural communication studies, I want to now turn my attention to the ways in which the disappearance of the Indigenous subject is conferred.

Tattooed Savages: Text and Subtext of Cultural Studies Chickasaw theorist, Jodi Byrd, details the ways in which critical projects like cultural studies are organized through the erasure of Indigenous genocide and conquest. Her genealogy exposes “prevailing understandings of race and racialization within U.S. post-­colonial, area, and queer studies” are built on “an historical aphasia of the conquest of indigenous peoples” (Byrd 2011, p. 24). Bird’s close readings of the seminal works of some of our most influential theorists, like Jacques Derrida, underscores how “the savage and the ‘Indian’ . . . serve as the ground and pre-­condition for structuralism and formalism, as well as their posts.” Here I consider how the figure of the “tattooed savage” persists as “an undeconstructable core” within knowledge/power/language formation of critical intercultural communication studies as an undigested subtext. Bird’s language resonates with Harland’s classic articulation of the relationship between language and thought, one of the key concepts I teach in my intercultural communication classes. Harland writes of the human struggle to “reject” the knowledges society teaches us, noting the subject “has always already accepted the words and meanings through which such knowledges,” which “lie within him [sic] like an undigested piece of society” (in Turner 1990, p. 12). Byrd leverages the tools of deconstruction to compel us to reflect back on our own knowledge and pedagogical practices, so that we might detect these “undigested” epistemologies within our own academic production as intercultural communication scholars, teachers, and public intellectuals. Like Harland’s rejecting subject, this section seeks to expose how the “tattooed savage” persists as an undigested knowledge form within intercultural communication studies. I offer a close reading of the language, metaphors, and visual rhetoric through which the field imagines itself – and which I have introduced students to it through introductory cultural studies readers. Intercultural communication studies, postcolonial, and (post)Marxism treatments of movement, resource and labor extraction, and border crossing provide vital critiques of (neo)colonization. In the absence of a careful examination of processes of settlement, however, we continue to participate within its ongoing processes. For instance, Glen Coulthard parses out the limits of Marx’s primitive-­accumulation thesis for understanding the dynamics between Indigenous peoples and the Canadian nation state. Coulthard argues that while Marx theorized primitive accumulation “a process confined to a particular (if indefinite) period,” Coulthard notes that “the escalating onslaught of violent, state-­ orchestrated enclosures” under neoliberalism “has unmistakably demonstrated the enduring role that unconcealed, violent dispossession plays in the reproduction of colonial and capitalist social relations in the present” (2014, p. 59). The persistence of the figure of the “primitive,” then, is not easily circumscribed within a particular origin, but continues to structure global power relations, the functioning of the nation state, and forms of resistance – on the streets and between the pages of our books. Indeed, if tattooed savages underwrite critical knowledge projects, then we not only fail to interrogate the pervasive quality of the primitive, but we participate in its fantastical construction and erasure. In this way, our best efforts to critique global capital and cultural forms of exploitation may be inadequate to the tricky task of unearthing the “undeconstructable core” of the savage/

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savior dynamic. Here I consider two examples from my own intercultural communication classes by offering a critical reading of textbooks I have taught: Jeff Lewis’s (2008) Cultural Studies: The Basics and Tim Sullivan, John Hartley, Danny Saunders, Martin Montgomery and John Fiske’s (1994) Key Concepts in Communication and Cultural Studies. This cursory sample is by no way exhaustive or representative of the field of intercultural communication, but I share it as a way of exposing my participation in the erasure of settler logics. These and similar texts have informed my own pedagogical and intellectual production as I have unreflexively incorporated them into my scholarship and taught them in my classes. I focus on the frontmatter of texts targeted to an undergraduate audience to consider the ways in which critical intercultural communication studies – and the broader rubric of cultural studies that informs it  – are embedded within settler knowledge circuits. I draw on Sara Ahmed’s (2006) notion that how we perceive worlds is organized through relations of “proximity” between body and objects through action. Ahmed argues that heterosexual orientation is a function of “straight” lines of direction, repeated in ways that are invisible to us, but which powerfully demarcate what is “natural” or “the norm” from that which is not “in line,” or deviant. Ahmed describes orientation as facing a certain direction, a process that is “organized rather than casual” to create a “collective direction” in which imagined communities form by falling in line, by facing the direction “already faced by others” (2006, p. 15). In this way, anthologies, readers, and introductory texts might be seen as serving an “orienting” function, situating subjects in relation to a field and objects its of study. I examine both how these texts orient readers to the field of cultural studies through imagery and metaphors, focusing on cover matter and introductory comments as orientating devices. The first thing that stands out to me in Jeff Lewis’s book, as I hold it in my hands, is its cover image. It’s a painting by Terry Batt, entitled Forthcoming Attractions, a cartoon of a shifty-­eyed cowboy, donning a Lone Ranger mask, red bandana, his gun rests in its holster and an arrow pierces his hat. Below this figure, the cowboy is flanked by two Indians – one with a drawn bow and arrow, the other with a spear. The cowboy and Indian scene is figured within a collage of frontier tropes: a longhorn bull, a twin-­prop plane flying over a large naval ship, a Calvary man on a horse, palm trees, an exotic totem pole. Opening the book, I find Lewis’ analysis of the image, which foregrounds its “postmodern” quality without mentioning its fairly-­obvious settler theme. Lewis writes: Postmodern art is characterized by pastiche, wit, multiple ironies and images from popular culture. The paintings of Terry Batt, like those of many other postmodern artists, are rich with warm and vibrant colours and scales of human responsiveness. The works engage the viewer in the experiences of everyday life, including the life of mass media and popular characters. Terry’s work hearkens back to the NY Avant garde, reflecting a clear homage to painters like Andy Warhol. (2008, p. 206)

This analysis skirts the depiction of a frontier battle, instead drawing readers’ attention to its postmodern qualities of “pastiche, wit, and irony.” In the absence of any critical reading, the cowboy and Indian imagery orients the reader within a frontier logic. Michael Yellow Bird examines how such representations circulate in tropes of the wild west: The Lone Ranger, with his gun resting in its holster, is depicted as benign; the feathered arrow shot through his hat suggests he might be the victim of Indian savagery, though Indians are inactive, inert in the image. Indians are depicted, in Yellow Bird’s words, “as buffoons”: one shoots in the direction of the other’s back while the other gallops on a horse adhered to a pedestal over a fallen blue body, toward the left side of the page. The Indian moves from right to left, against the direction of the (Western) reader’s eyes as if he were moving backward in time, heading for oblivion signified by the edge of the frame. This orientation of the Native body resonates with Byrd’s argument that “indigenous peoples are



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located outside temporality and presence, even in the face of the very present and ongoing colonization of indigenous lands, resources, and lives” (2011, p. 10). In this way, the image and Lewis’ reading of it orient the reader, as the bodies on the page are facing in certain directions that draw on familiar tropes to subtly naturalize settler logics. It might seem mere happenstance – a one-­off occurrence – that Lewis and his editorial team would select such an image as cover art. But Byrd notes the systematic nature in which the tattooed savage appears across texts by some of our most revered theorists – Judith Butler, Jacques Derrida, Felix Deleuze, Slavoj Žižek, Gayatri Spivak, theorists who have profoundly shaped my own intellectual production as a cultural studies and intercultural communication studies scholar. This is because “indigenous savagery that stand a priori to theories of origin, history, freedom, constraint and difference” (Byrd 2011, p. 10), the “ground” for thinking structuralism and its posts – as the limit of thought that hovers at its edges to mark the known from the unknowable. This a priori quality means that the figure of the Indian serves an orienting function, as the point of entry into critical thought that must be deconstructed if we are to interrogate the settler investments at the heart of liberatory knowledge projects like intercultural communication. Now let us use this decolonial framework to detect how these settler logics recur (orienting us through an otherwise undetected repetition) in the opening pages of Cultural Studies: The Basics. The book frames the study of culture within a “globalist” framework – a theme that has been vital and transformative in the field of critical intercultural communication studies. Lewis describes the “transformation of the world into a global media sphere” as the “result of a dynamic interaction between macro processes (history, economy, technology, politics and modes of social organization) and the profoundly intimate and intricate microcosms of a person’s life – the realm of the individual subject” (italics original, Lewis 2008, pp. 3–4). While Lewis offers a productive formulation of power/knowledge within a global media context for cultural studies practitioners, this framework overlooks the material grounds upon which such exchanges take place – as well as the conditions of wealth accumulation and extraction organized through ongoing privatization of land. Such frameworks invite students to imagine global culture as groundless, as happening everywhere and nowhere, and as having no connection to Indigenous land. Yet, as Coulthard argues, all of these formations only become possible through Native dispossession and land theft. Earth is the ground that must be extracted as the condition of settler capital and nation state formation. Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang provide an insightful framework through which to apprehend land, settlement, and slavery intertwined processes, productive of interrelated social locations. Tuck and Yang theorize the “triad structure of settler-­Indigenous-­chattel slave,” arguing “the decolonial desires of white, nonwhite, immigrant, postcolonial, and oppressed people, can similarly be entangled in resettlement, reoccupation, and reinhabitation that actually furthers settler colonialism” (Tuck and Yang 2012, p. 2). Their framework helps us keep the role of land as central to formulations of identities, labor, and global flows. Such relations are understood as being structured by settler colonialism, which helps culture critics move beyond a mantra of gender, race, and class, sexuality to examine the complex ways identities, labor relations, and global processes are enabled by occupation, the extraction of wealth, and the ongoing settlement of land. Such a framework helps us critically examine diasporic identities by acknowledging that “colonial subjects who are displaced by external colonialism, as well as racialized and minoritized by internal colonialism, still occupy and settle stolen Indigenous land” (Tuck and Yang 2012, p. 7). Byrd’s reading of the Indigenous trace of that haunts Derrida’s text also provides a productive framework through which to examine knowledge production within critical projects like intercultural communication studies. Further, integrating Tuck and Yang’s figuration of triad structure of settler-­ Indigenous-­chattel slave, we can ask what kinds of positionalities are being constructed in the cultural texts we examine.

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Drawing on this orienting framework, we can assess how settler logics inform Key Concepts in Communication and Cultural Studies. How does this text orient readers within a settler logic? As with Lewis’s text, this text also positions readers as settlers over and against an unspoken subtext of Indigenous erasure as the authorial collective orients readers through frontier metaphors. They write: Fort Knox is reputed to be full of ingots of gold. These ingots are almost uniform blocks, virtually indistinguishable from one another. Although they seem to be intrinsically valuable, they are in fact useless in themselves. Their value lies in their potential  – what you can get for them in exchange, or what you can make them into by the application of your own resources and skills. So it is with this book. (O’Sullivan et al. 1994, p. xi)

The text defines and contextualizes various “key concepts” for cultural practitioners, introducing students to the various critical tools they might leverage to expose power relations. Why would the authors use these metaphors – Fort Knox, ingots of gold, exchange – to orient us to the field of cultural studies? As with Lewis’ text, settler logics and the unnamed figure of the disappearing Indian are the condition of possibility for thinking the book’s intervention. Settler nation state formation and wealth accumulation underwrite these metaphors, processes conditioned on the dispossession of Native populations. Indeed, dispossession is the point of entry for thinking such key concepts as the text hails students into a settler subject position. Readers are invited to imagine their approach to cultural studies within a frontier orientation: as those who build knowledge through “uniform blocks” of gold, “what you can get for them in exchange” or how you might apply your own “resources.” The opening reference to Fort Knox as the site of the US nation state’s Bullion Depository, where official gold reserves are stored, while “ingots of gold” and their potent value within systems of “exchange” creates a chain of equivalence between gold and power. If this equivalence interpellates the budding culture critic as gold miner, we might also read it intertextually to situate the hailing within a broader US cultural context, where traces of American frontier masculinity that permeate pop culture: Wells Fargo’s pioneer décor; the lone Marlboro cowboy riding west; Bon Jovi’s soulful twang, evoking a love of the wide-­open road, a nostalgia for home. These traces construct a circuit of meaning that position the culture worker as a mythic hero over and against the disappearing Indian. The evocation of the pioneer, in turn, calls for the present-­absence of the Indian. Yellow Bird connects frontier nostalgia not only to histories of Indigenous genocide, but also “to the killing of other darkskinned people in other parts of the world who have been regarded as impediments to American colonial progress” (p. 43). From US soldiers’ references to Vietnamese “(free-­fire zones)” as “Indian Country” to Brigadier General Richard Neal’s framing of the 1991 invasion of Iraq as committing our land forces to “Indian Country” (p. 44), the subtextual figuration of Indigenous peoples as savages to be extinguished continues to animate US militarism. These frontier metaphors simultaneously evoke and erase violent histories, presents, and futurities of conquest and dispossession. The unspoken, yet a priori, subtext of the gold mining metaphor is the Indigenous genocide the gold rush mobilized. The unspoken subtext here is that the gold rush accelerated settlement as pioneers were hailed West through the promise of wealth and adventure. The promise of gold resulted a 20-­fold increase in settler populations (from 10,000 to 220,000) as Native populations plummeted (from 275,000 prior to Spanish settlement to just 30,000 after the gold rush). Localized acts of Native genocide spiked as “miners, viewing Natives as competitors for the gold, reportedly went to their villages, raped the women and killed the men”; in some instances, “miners went on ‘killing sprees’ and ­ murdered 50 or more Natives in a day” (Landry 2014).



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Given this egregious history, why would the authors figure their approach to cultural studies through gold rush metaphors? Does not “Fort Knox” and its valuable “nuggets of gold” glorify westward expansion and erase the very histories and contemporary discursive formations that practitioners would presumably seek to challenge? This framing traffics in, as Byrd argues, the figure of the Native as the “undeconstructable core” within critical knowledge/power/ language projects. If the figure of the “savage” recurs as the condition of possibility for Western thought, its present-­absence structures the production of critical concepts that circulate within cultural studies and critical intercultural communication, like freedom, history, origin, and difference (Byrd 2011). My analysis does not single out these authors, but rather to call attention to the broader formation of knowledge projects – and those, like me, who have assigned these and similar books in our classes. I want to underscore the mundane, yet profound ways settler logics animate our reading, writing, and pedagogy – evidence of my own participation in Indigenous erasure as one who has taught it countless times in cultural studies and intercultural communication courses without ever deconstructing this settler framing. This reading aims to offer a critical Indigenous Studies framework through which we might begin to unearth our own unwitting participation in the circulation of frontier logics. In the following section I consider how intercultural communication can learn from Indigenous Studies frameworks that work against this logic of disappearance toward an uneasily productive stance of contingent collaboration.

Contingent Collaborations: Toward a Politics of Survivance I have worked for much of my career to enact, name, and theorize queer, feminist, and transracial alliances. I recently had the opportunity to collaborate with Unangax/Aleut scholar, Eve Tuck, in what I hoped would be an alliance-­building endeavor. Eve pointed me to the uneasy work of collaborating across our various identities, suggesting we might more productively consider our co-­editorialship as a “contingent collaboration.” I began to read her work on this concept and recognized my presumptuousness in imagining an ongoing alliance as what Tuck and Yang call a “move to innocence.” In their chapter, “Decolonization is Not a Metaphor,” Tuck and Yang detail the “innocence” through which any easy idea of solidarity within the triad structure of settler-­native-­slave, pointing to “strategic and contingent collaborations” as more adequate to attend to the incommensurabilities among these identities and the social structures that produce them.5 The contingent collaboration we forged was profoundly educational for me. In the process I came to complicate my own identity as a queer “settler Xicana.” While these identities seem to be at odds – a “Xicana” strongly identifies with her Indigenous heritage and aligns her politics with Indigenous struggles, while settlers occupy and “feel at home in other’s homeland(s)”6 – this quality of incommensurability can be the most productive, humble, and honest position through which to approach contingent collaborations. In the process, I wrote an essay about the importance of such frameworks that enable us to delve into, as opposed to turning away from the incommensurabilities that organize power relations (Carrillo Rowe 2017). A framework that allows for incommensurability and contingency invites culture workers to step into and act from an Indigenous vision of responsibility. Drawing on Dorothy Lee’s observations of Dakota Indians, Anishinaabe theorist, Gerald Vizenor underscores that for the “Dakota, to be to be responsible; because to be was to be related; and to be related meant to be responsible” (2008, p. 18). Vizenor underscores that responsibility is animated by the recognition that we are all interrelated, noting that such practices of “consciousness” are critical to what he calls Native “survivance,” which counters embedded logics of Native disappearance by foregrounding a “sense of presence a responsible presence of natural reason and resistance to absence and victimry” (Vizenor 2008, p. 18). Vizenor draws a connection between this

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Dakota practice of responsibility and the broader project of survivance, which, in turn, animates the work of countering Indigenous erasure. I want to underscore two elements of Vizenor’s insights. First, the knowledge that the human and more-­than-­human worlds are bound together through a web of relations is vital to this sense of responsibility. This kind of responsibility evokes a different form of accountability responsible than capitalist notions of “personal responsibility.” Rather to be relationally-­ emerges from a profound sense of humility and belonging – not just to or with those in our immediate sphere, but also those various and often precarious human and more-­than-­human life forms whose existence is continually placed under erasure. Patrisia Gonzales notes that such practices are grounded not in personal gain, but in how we care for future generations. She writes, “Native science and ceremony are ways of both transmitting knowledge and honoring our responsibilities with our human and nonhuman relations. In Indigenous ceremonies, responsibilities to children and future generations and to the natural world are celebrated as unified commitments” (Gonzales 2012, xxiii). So, as we work toward and within contingent collaboration, our acts are productively animated by a sense of honoring “all our relations” – and expanding who we might count as relatives. The second point I want to underscore is Vizenor’s concept of survivance, which is a vital framework and way of being that vitally challenges any easy retreat to the trope of Native disappearance. As Vizenor writes, “Survivance, in the sense of native survivance, is more than survival, more than endurance or mere response; the stories of survivance are an active presence” (in Breinig 2008, p. 39). Vizenor draws on Derrida’s work to theorize the vexed relationship between presence and absence, utilizing the French term, “survivance,” which means “relic” or “leftover” (Breinig 2008, p. 39). Breinig’s reading of Vizenor evokes the “ance” of survivance to evoke endurance, as “remembrance and resistance are part of that active presence in life and literature” (2008, p. 40). Vizenor observes native acts of resistance manifest as “native humanistic tease, vital irony, spirit, cast of mind, and moral courage,” concluding, “The characteristic of survivance creates a sense of native presence over absence, nihility, and victimry” (2008, p. 1). As intercultural workers attend to these qualities in the work and lives of others and incorporate them into our own, we join Vizenor and other Indigenous scholars and activists in verifying and amplifying Native presence, working against the well-­worn path of Indigenous erasure. In Mohawk Interruptus, Audra Simpson (2014) illustrates this act of survivance, resistance, and Native presence. Simpson underscores that settler colonialism is a territorial project that, unlike the racializing projects of enslavement and labor extraction, is designed to produce the accumulation through the privatization of land. The settler state’s project of land theft produces Indigenous life as a “problem.” Her study of the Mohawks of Kahnawà:ke, however, details how their “hard labor of hanging on to territory” (2014, p.  3) instantiates their “refusal” to be “eliminated,” unsettling assumptions about permanence of borders and nationstates and origins to generate settler precariousness (p. 22). Her work renders palpable the precarious quality of settler colonialism for, as with Butler’s notion of the instability of gender, the settler project requires the continuous and repeated erasure of Indigenous people as temporally coeval, modern subjects. The charge for intercultural communication studies critics, then, is to leverage our awareness of settler susceptibility to render Native presence, as well as the process of erasure that instantiates Native savagery and absence.

Conclusion: Visioning Indigenous Futurity Scholars in the field of intercultural communication studies have developed critical tools to help us unroot the sources of oppression and amplify the conditions of resistance. In some of our best work, we have leveraged intersectional analyses to deconstruct whiteness, blackness, brownness, and the (neo)colonial, racial, gendered, classed, and global formations



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through which social groups are divided, organized, and hierarchized. Kimberlé Crenshaw has inspired many within our field, building on her own life experience of feeling multiply displaced in her Africana studies due to, what she came to theorize, as the intersecting forces of gender, race, and class. Crenshaw’s experience, like those of other black feminist, queer, and woman of color scholars, points to the importance of examining power dynamics through an intersectional lens to consider how various oppressions interact and the intertwine.7 Building on this work, Gust Yep invites us to engage in “thick intersectionalities” to “produce more nuanced and complex examinations of identity” within the context of “neoliberal globalization” (Yep 2016, p. 86). Yep is particularly concerned that the “mantra” of race, class, gender, and sexuality produces a “flat, formulaic, superficial and ‘roster-­like approach’ to intersectionality” as culture workers simply list “such categories as components of an individual’s identity” (2016, p. 87). I want to build on the work that productively leverages the metaphor of the intersection and Yep’s configuration of “thick intersectionalities” to also consider how these intersections are grounded. Intersections do not float in space, but rather are rooted into the land, which serves as their material and rhetorical grounds. Intersecting forces find their connections to the earth in the places where they are planted, in the routes they travel, in the places that constitute home. In her essay, “Interdisciplinary Grounds for Gender Studies: Intersectional and Transnational Feminism in a Neoliberal Academy,” Naomi Greyser underscores the physical, socioeconomic, and epistemological “grounds of feminist inquiry,” noting “they are deeply felt in ways that are more and less – and diversely – material” (Greyser 2018). The grounds that root the intersections that variously form our identities and lifeways – organized through the “triad structure of settler-­Indigenous-­chattel slave” – generate varied and uneven relationships to the land. In her prelude to Indigenous Methodologies: Characteristics, Conversations and Contexts, Margaret Kovach (Sakewew p’sim iskwew) writes that using a prologue in Indigenous research methods serves as a “precursory signal to the careful reader that woven throughout the varied forms of writing – analytical, reflective, expository – there will be story, for our story is who we are” (2010, p. 4). How can we come to deeply, and humbly, interrogate our own stories to expose these varied relationships to the land, as those who descend from and carry out the legacies of these various structured locations? My location as a queer settler Xicana is shaped by all three aspects of this triad, though it is most powerfully informed by settler forces. Chicanx history foreground US annexation of what are now the Southwestern states as an origin story from which Mexican American presence here is framed through a narrative of dispossession. But my Mexican relatives occupied Alta California – as settlers, laborers, and Natives – many decades prior to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Yet in spite of their wealth as landowners, most of my ancestors were poor (land rich, cash poor). My great grandfather was killed on the Long Wharf at Santa Monica, where he and many of his relatives worked for Anglo settlers unloading boxcars from ships to further settle the West. To the best of my understanding, these mestizo ancestors hailed from Yaqui, Tongva, and perhaps Chichimec or other Native communities of Jalisco, all of whom suffered genocide and dispossession and many of whom were enslaved by Spanish and Anglo settlers.8 My location is also shaped in a material way as a homeowner, which entitles me to 6000 square feet, a home with heat and cooling, a “safe” neighborhood in Woodland Hills somewhere in the fuzzy borderlands between Chumash and Tongva lands – and the northwest edge of my own ancestor’s Rancho. My queer identity positions me in various family and relational dynamics, in many ways always seeking, interrogating, and opening myself to queer lifeworlds and radical forms of relationality. To recognize my identity as a queer Xicana also means that my work and my ways of being in the world are invested in alternative relational structures and in aligning my political praxis with Native political projects and sensibilities. Expanding on Mishuana Goeman’s (2013) argument that all of the United States is Indian land, Audra Simpson and Andrea Smith urge us to imagine “a different political future” – one that “requires not simply recognition of the

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land bases currently occupied by Native peoples but a dismantling of the settler state and a complete rearticulation of the relationship between peoples and land” (Simpson 2014, p. 21). It seems that at this historic moment in which a president seeks to unravel the democratic elements of our government, while people pour into the streets in unprecedented numbers, might be a most productive time to imagine a futurity in which Indigenous frameworks and land, human, and relational practices guide our steps forward. For Kanaka ʻŌiwi Hawaiʻi scholar, Hōkūani K. Aikau, Indigenous futurity “does not wittingly or unintentionally reposition the US state at the center,” but requires “material decolonization and deoccupation of Indigenous national lands” and the “ability of Indigenous peoples to care for our people and our lands, on our own terms” (Aikau 2015, p. 659). In this chapter I have sought to bridge cultural studies with Indigenous and settler colonial studies frameworks as one small step in investing in Indigenous futurities. This reading points to the pervasive, yet subtle, trope of the romantic cowboy and his subordinated other, the “tattooed savage,” as deeply yet powerfully embedded within the logics of popular culture – and even within the very critical frameworks culture critics leverage to critique the popular. To unroot and begin to unravel these settler logics entails attending to the deeply rooted structure of settler colonialism as a “structure” and not “an event” that is contingent upon the ongoing conquest of Native lives. Yet Native American and Indigenous Studies theorists and activists productively interrogate and work against these processes of disappearance, revealing the precariousness of settler colonialism and the settler nation state. Indeed, Indigenous futurities are imagined and organized through native survivance and the refusal to default to the settler nation state as the center organizing force of power. This work entails nothing less than the decolonization and deoccupation of Native lands through the mobilization of a radical imaginary beyond the settler nation state. The work of cultural practitioners is to stand in contingent collaboration with those variously located through structures like the triad of settler-­ native-­slave that explicitly account for Native lives and land. It is to account for the depth and land relations that ground the intersections that shape our daily, lived experiences. It is to cultivate frameworks that, likewise, understand global processes as always-­already playing out on the terrain of Indigenous territory and the dispossession, eradication, and erasure of First Nations people. It is to interrogate our investments in the settler nation state – and to begin to imagine a futurity ruled not through settler governance, but through a deepening awareness of the animacy of our radical relationality.

Notes 1 https://play.google.com/music/preview/T5jqqdgfclux2pzqyn5qwnyalaq?lyrics=1&utm_ source=google&utm_medium=search&utm_campaign=lyrics&pcampaignid=kp-­lyrics (accessed 27 December 2016). 2 Carroll (2003). 3 See www.sbnature.org/research/anthro/chumash/custm.htm (accessed 5  January 2017), for sweat houses and www.tongvapeople.org/?page_id=696 (accessed 5  January 2017), for “topanga” meaning. 4 For more on the pipeline protest at Standing Rock see http://standingrock.org/news/standing-­ rock-­sioux-­tribe-­-­dakota-­accesspipeline-­donation-­fund (accessed 5 January 2017); for an expansive understanding of the interconnectivity of land and human activism, see Fijikane (2021); for Winnemem Wintu, see www.winnememwintu.us/news-­and-­media (accessed 5 January 2017). 5 Tuck and Yang detail the “innocence” through which any easy idea of solidarity within the triad structure of settler-­native-­slave, pointing to “strategic and contingent collaborations” as more adequate to attend to the incommensurabilities among these identities and the social structures that produce them (Tuck and Yang 2012, pp. 1–40, 28). 6 Snelgrove, Dhamoon, and Corntassel (2014, pp. 1–32, 5).



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7 Crenshaw (1989, pp. 139–167). The piece was inspired by US Third World feminist thought, including the influential works of the Combahee River Collective Statement (1977), hooks (1981), Moraga (1983). 8 For a detailed reading of Yaqui violence, see Guidotti-­Hernandez (2011). For an overview of the enslavement of the Chichimoto, see www.houstonculture.org/mexico/jalisco_indig.html (accessed 25 January 2017).

References Ahmed, S. (2006). Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, and Others. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Aikau, H.K. (2015). Following the Alaloa Kīpapa of our ancestors: a trans-­indigenous futurity without the state. American Quarterly 67 (3): 653–661. Barker, J. (2008). Gender, sovereignty, rights: native women’s activism against social inequality and violence in Canada. American Quarterly 60 (2): 259–266. Barker, J. (2011). Native Acts: Law, Recognition, and Cultural Authenticity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Breinig, H. (2008, 2008). Survivance: narratives of native presence. In: Survivance: Narratives of Native Presence (ed. G. Vizenor). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Byrd, J.A. (2011). The Transit of Empire: Indigenous Critiques of Colonialism. University of Minnesota Press. Carrillo Rowe, A. (2017). Settler Xicana: postcolonial and decolonial reflections on incommensurability. Feminist Studies 43 (3): 325–536. Carroll, B. (2003). American Masculinities: A Historical Encyclopedia. New York: Sage. Coulthard, G. (2014). From wards of the state to subjects of recognition? Marx, indigenous peoples, and the politics of dispossession in Denendeh. In: Theorizing Native Studies (eds. A. Smith and A. Simpson), 56. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: a black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum 13: 139–167. Denetdale, J.N. (2007). Reclaiming Dine History: The Legacies of Navajo Chief Manuelito and Juanita. University of Arizona Press. Denetdale, J.N. (2008). The Long Walk: The Forced Navajo Exile. New York: Chelsea House. Fijikane, C. (2021). Mapping Abundance for a Planetary Future: Kanaka Maoli and Critical Settler Cartographies in Hawai’i. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Goeman, M. (2013). Mark My Words: Native Women Mapping Our Nations. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Gonzales, P. (2012). Red Medicine: Traditional Indigenous Rites of Birthing and Healing. Tempe: University of Arizona Press. Greyser, N. (2018). On Sympathetic Grounds: Race, Gender and Affective Geographies in 19th Century North America. Oxford@ Oxford University Press. Hernandez, N. (2011). Unspeakable Violence: Remapping U.S. and Mexican National Guidotti-­ Imaginaries. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Kovach, M. (2010). Indigenous Methodologies: Characteristics, Conversations and Contexts. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Lacy, M. and Ono, K. (2011). Introduction. In: Critical Rhetorics of Race, 1–20. New York: New York University Press. Landry, A. (2014). Native history: California gold rush begins, devastates native population. Indian Country Today Media Network. Published 24 January. http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork. com/2014/01/24/native-­h istory-­c alifornia-­g old-­r ush-­b egins-­d evastates-­n ative-­p opulation-­ 153230 (accessed 19 January 2017). Lewis, J. (2008). Cultural Studies: The Basics. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publishers. Million, D. (2013). Therapeutic Nations: Healing in an Age of Indigenous Human Rights. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

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Morgensen, S.L. (2011). Spaces Between Us: Queer Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Decolonization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. O’Sullivan, T., Hartley, J., Saunders, D. et al. (1994). Introduction. In: Key Concepts in Communication and Cultural Studies, 2e (eds. T. O’Sullivan, J. Hartley, D. Saunders, and J. Fiske). New  York: Routledge. Rifkin, M. (2011). When Did Indians Become Straight?: Kinship, the History of Sexuality, and Native Sovereignty. New York: Oxford University Press. Rifkin, M. (2012). Erotics of Sovereignty: Queer Native Writing in the Era of Self-­Determination, Kindle edn. University of Minnesota Press. Rifkin, M. (2014). Settler Common Sense: Queerness and Everyday Colonialism in the American Renaissance. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Simpson, A. (2014). Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Simpson, A. and Smith, A. (2014). Introduction. In: Theorizing Native Studies (eds. A. Simpson and A. Smith), 1–30. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Snelgrove, C., Dhamoon, R.K., and Corntassel, J. (2014). Unsettling settler colonialism: the discourse and politics of settlers and solidarity with indigenous nations. De-­colonization: Indigeneity, Education, and Society 3 (2): 1–32, 5. Tuck, E. and Yang, K.W. (2012). Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 1 (1): 1–40, 28. Turner, G. (1990). British Cultural Studies: An Introduction, 3e. New York: Routledge. Veracini, L. (2010). Settler Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Veracini, L. (2011). Introducing: settler colonial studies. Settler Colonial Studies 1 (1): 1–12. Vizenor, G. (2008). Aesthetics of survivance. In: Survivance: Narratives of Native Presence (ed. G. Vizenor), 1–24. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Wolfe, P. (2006). Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native. Journal of Genocide Research 8 (4): 387–409. Yellow Bird, M. (2004). Cowboys and Indians: toys of genocide, icons of American colonization. Wicazo Sa Review 19 (2): 33–48. Yep, G. (2016). Toward thick(er) intersectionalities: theorizing, researching, and activating the complexities of communication and identities. In: Globalizing Intercultural Communication: A Reader (eds. K. Sorrells and S. Sekimoto), 86–94. Los Angeles: Sage.

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Studying AsiaPacifiQueer Communication: An Autoethnographic Critique of Japanese Queer Reimagining(s) of Hawai’i Shinsuke Eguchi University of New Mexico

Autoethnography is a strategy that seeks to disrupt the hierarchical economy of colonial images and representations. (Muñoz 1999, p. 82) On 6 August 1945, 15-­year-­old Michiko, who later became my grandmother, had experienced the atomic bomb explosion almost 500 m from the city of Hiroshima where the Peace Memorial is currently located. Surviving Hiroshima’s aftermath and the United States and its allied occupation of Japan (1945–1952), Michiko married my grandfather. In December 1955, she gave birth to her first daughter, who later became my mother. Two years later, Michiko gave birth to another daughter, my aunt. While raising her two daughters, Michiko sometimes shared her story of having fallen in love with a man whose last name was Takahashi before she married my grandfather. Her first relationship did not go well. Takahashi moved (back) to Hawai’i. While Takahashi proposed to Michiko and asked her to move to Hawai’i with him, she did not feel right leaving Hiroshima during Japan’s crisis following the Pacific War. She wanted to be around her family after she had survived the atomic bomb that almost killed her. Michiko did not provide Takahashi’s background details. Given the post-­Pacific War context of Japan, I imagine Takahashi could have been a US soldier staying in/around Hiroshima, a Japanese migrant who had returned to Hiroshima before or during the internment, or a local whose family worked on an immigration paper to bring him to Hawai’i. Regardless, it was her dream until her death in December 2011 to visit Hawai’i to see what her life could have been. My late grandmother’s fantasy about Hawai’i implicates the historical continuum of Japaneseness that fantasizes Hawai’i as a paradise of the Pacific Ocean. By Japaneseness, I mean a strategically homogenized (or particularized) condition of Japanese identity (Toyosaki and Eguchi 2017). Take, for example, the migration from Japan to Hawai’i. It began around the fall of the Edo-­Tokugawa Samurai period in 1868 that stimulated the industrialization of Japan (e.g. Ogawa 2015; Oharazeki 2016). The agricultural economies, particularly the sugarcane plantations, necessitated migrations from Japan to Hawai’i for manual laborers (e.g. Conroy 1953; Takaki 1990). After Hawai’i became a US territory in 1898, some Japanese migrants relocated to the mainland from Hawai’i (Woo  2000). Consequently, the 1907 Gentleman’s Agreement made the Empire of Japan voluntarily restrict migration from Japan to the United States. Subsequently, the 1924 National Origin Acts that set up a method of The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication, Second Edition. Edited by Thomas K. Nakayama and Rona Tamiko Halualani. © 2024 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2024 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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national quotas, prohibiting migrations from non-­Western nations, restricted migration to the United States (Woo  2000). However, over one-­fourth of a percent of the population of Hawai’i were already Japanese migrants and Japanese Americans by then (Okihiro  1994). Because of the diasporic ties, Japanese popular discourses about Hawai’i could be seen in print by this time (Yaguchi and Yoshimura 2004). In the 1930s, the Empire of Japan became a major military power through its colonization and settlement of various areas of the Asia Pacific region and came into conflict with the US This Japan-­United States tension led to Japan’s 1941  military attack on Honolulu’s Pearl Harbor, which became the catalyst to bring the United States into the Pacific War with Japan (Kawaii 2005). After the incident, the US government ordered incarceration of all Japanese migrants and Japanese Americans into internment camps (Okihiro 1994). Such camps, including the Honolulu internment camp opened by 1  March 1943, were found in and across Hawai’i (The Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai’i n.d.). During the war, the Empire of Japan restricted their citizens’ consumption of Western popular culture, including Hawaiian songs (Yaguchi and Yoshimura 2004). The Empire of Japan’s surrender on 15 August 1945, a result of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, brought back the public consumption of Western popular culture (Suganuma 2012). However, it was not until 1964 that popular discourses about Hawai’i as a paradise of the Pacific Ocean became fashionable again. The 1964 governmental liberalization of international travel that allowed Japanese citizens to participate in tourism developed the contemporary path for visiting Hawai’i (Yaguchi and Yoshimura 2004). In addition, the 1970s and 1980s boosting of Japan’s economy that helped the citizens afford international travel made Hawai’i a popular destination (Yaguchi and Yoshimura 2004). Moreover, the launch of the jumbo jets such as the B747 that offered a lot of passenger seats created good value flights for tourists from Japan to visit Hawai’i (Yaguchi and Yoshimjra  2004). Hence, by the late 1990s, almost one-­third of tourists to Hawai’i originated from Japan (Kim and Agrusa 2008). Today, the popularity of Hawai’i for tourists from Japan continues while numbers of of Japanese tourists have fluctuated (Brasor and Tsubuku 2016). All Nippon Airways (ANA), a major airline, introduced three gigantic A380 passenger aircrafts used exclusively for its Tokyo-­ Narita and Honolulu route in May 2019 (Magin 2019). Multiple Japanese, US, and other airlines have also offered many regular nonstop flights between Honolulu and Japan’s major cities until the COVID-­19 pandemic (see Toriumi  2019). To recover from the impact of COVID-­19 on tourism, the travel industry sensationally relaunched its campaign for traveling to Hawai’i in the spring/summer 2022. Hence, the current situation points to high Japanese demand for traveling to Hawai’i. Given the significance of Japaneseness that fantasizes about Hawai’i, I turn my attention to the self that implicates the social, cultural, political, and historical in this chapter. Specifically, I am interested in interrogating how my queer reimagining(s) of Hawai’i reify and resist the historical continuum of Japaneseness working with cisheteropatriarchy, ethnocentrism, and globalization. Hence, I perform an autoethnography that connects among self (auto), culture (ethno), and research (graphy). As Boylorn (2008) reminds me, “Autoethnography does not attempt to speak on behalf of others but instead makes the researcher the research subject. Turning the ethnographic gaze in on itself, autoethnography allows the marginalized voice to speak for itself” (p. 414). To perform my autoethnography productively, I also juxtapose my questioning and critique of the self to Japanese queer YouTube-­vlogger-­created contents of Hawai’i. During the process of developing an intersubjectivity, I pay attention to how my reimagining(s) of Hawai’i recondition the logic of settler colonialism of Hawai’i. Tuck and Yang (2012) argue, “Settlers are diverse, not just of white European descent, and include people of color, even from other colonial contexts” (p. 7). Japanese migrants and Japanese Americans are one of the largest groups of Asian settlers in and across Hawai’i (e.g. Fujikane  2008; Hall  2015; Saranillio  2013). Thus, there is a historically structured path



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designed for tourists from Japan to recycle settler colonialism during their visits Hawai’i. Therefore, I problematize my implications of participating in settler colonialism in my autoethnography. The methodological process of starting from the self (micro) to the relational (meso) to the structural (macro) described above represents the work of critical intercultural communication as “processes and practices of articulation” (Halualani and Nakayama 2010, p. 7, emphasis in original). I interrogate how the structural conditions and relations of power organize and alter everyday intercultural interactions and experiences and everyday intercultural interactions and experiences reify and resist the structural conditions and relations of power. As Carrillo-­ Rowe (2010) reinforced, intercultural communication is about working with the structures and conditions of power, capital, and inequality that produce hierarchal relations of differences (such as race, gender, sexuality, class, nation, language, coloniality, and the body). Here, I urge the readers to recognize that such articulation proposed by Halualani and Nakayama (2010) requires the researcher/scholar/writer’s self. Quite frankly, the researcher/scholar/writer is the one who subjectively engages in a critical articulation about intercultural communication. However, various scholars continue to strategically hide themselves in performing their articulations in academic writing platforms (McIntosh and Eguchi  2020; Pindi  2020). They go along with norms of the discipline that value social scientific approaches rooted in rationality, objectivity, and truth. Still, the political move lacks the promotion of honesty, transparency, and reflexivity (Calafell  2020). It also recenters the Eurocentric productions of knowledge about communication (Yep 2020) and ignores the culturally specific significances of narrative sensemaking that drive performative aspects of articulations about communication (Toyosaki 2020). Hence, scholars such as Alexander (2012), Calafell (2015), Chandrashekar (2018), and Johnson (2014) call for approaching the body as a referencing point to carry out the intellectual investment. Thus, I showcase my autoethnographic critique of Japanese queer reimagining(s) of Hawai’i to encourage performative approaches in critical intercultural communication further. However, I must also acknowledge the limitation of my critique. Unfortunately, I cannot perfectly question and critique everything that needs to be critiqued in this single essay. Hence, I choose to be transparent about my focus of this essay. It is about the way of juxtaposing my reimagining(s) of Hawai’i to the Japanese queer YouTube-­vlogger contents of Hawai’i implicates the continuum of Japaneseness that gestures toward settler colonialism through our performances of queerness as a temporal moment of nonnormative sexual and gender transgression. As Muñoz (2009) suggested, this conceptualization of queerness operates as an ideality that points out what is missing from the present. The conditions and structures of power constrain the present moments through which queerness is temporally imagined (e.g. Eng  2010; Ferguson 2019; Halberstam 2011). Hereafter, impossible possibilities of queerness re/direct the attention to seek out how to unsettle the “settled” mappings of power in the present moment (e.g. Chamber-­Letson 2018; Keeling 2019). Hence, queerness calls for considering both forgotten possibilities of the past and ideal versions of the future to troubled conditions of the present (Gopinath 2018; Muñoz 2009). Queerness is a placelessness that has the border-­ crossing in the making (e.g. Calafell 2015; Chávez 2013; Eguchi 2022). Thus, the limitation of my autoethnographic critique points to the paradox of queerness as an impossible possibility. What I fail to account and critique is my queer error that points out and requires constant revisions of the present-­ness. My queer error is a key point of this essay teaching what is missing from the present moment where everyone is not free from power, capital, and inequality. In what follows, I first detail my vision for examining (dis)connections among Japan (Asia), Hawai’i (Pacific), and queer to expand AsiaPaciQueer Communication as a field of inquiry. Second, I discuss how I develop intersubjective connections with the Japanese queer YouTube-­ vlogger contents of Hawai’i. Then, my autoethnographic critique follows. Lastly, I discuss the implication of my queer error to the study of critical intercultural communication.

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Studying AsiaPacifiQueer Communication To actualize my autoethonographic critique of Japanese queer reimagining(s) of Hawai’i, I borrow Martin et al.’s (2008) notion of AsiaPacifiQueer that examines minoritized sexualities and genders in and across Asia and the Pacific. The concept of AsiaPacifiQueer not only problematizes global and transcultural flows of the US queer formations but, most significantly, troubles the way intra/interregional linkages alter, shape, and reinforce localized queer modernities. Martin et al.’s (2008) proposal of AsiaPacifiQueer speaks back to the United States-­ based theorizations of Queer Studies rooted in whiteness. Proposed by United States-­based scholars, the large sets of Queer Studies reproduce the liberal assumption of individual agency and sexual freedom through which people can be who they want to be regardless of differences (Johnson 2001). The minoritized sexual and gender subjects are encouraged to come out of “the closet” and to publicly enjoy their human rights (McBride 2005). By the closet, I mean a condition of being where the subjects are assumed to conceal their minoritized sexualities and genders stigmatized by the logic of cisheterosexism. However, this closet paradigm ignores, erases, and marginalizes the way differences shape historically specific and culturally saturated modes of minoritized sexualities and genders in and across borders (Chávez 2013). In addition, the closet paradigm functions as the settler colonialist logic of whiteness that represent non-­white, non-­western minoritized sexualities and genders as “backward” (Puar 2007). The US queer formations that privilege the liberal assumption of individual agency and sexual freedom “whiten” minoritized sexualities and genders in and across non-­Western nations and cultures. Hence, AsiaPacifiQueer aims to intervene global circulations of the US queer formations, including Queer Studies. Martin et al. (2008) are not only interested in countering the US queer formations through their demonstrations of local perspectives. They are also concerned with the way intra/interregional linkages organize its localized productions and constitutions of sexual and gender modernities. The modernities that emerge through intra/interregional linkages are disjunctive (Gopinath 2018; Suganuma 2012). The articulations of local sexual and gender modernities, which are often unintelligible, require cultural borrowings in the historical continuum of globalization that normalizes the US queer formations. Hence, AsiaPacifiQueer examines “complex processes of localization and interregional borrowing” (Martin et al. 2008, p. 6). This reinforces the way the collection of Australian-­based scholars has advanced the notion of AsiaPacifiQueer due to their geopolitical proximity to Asia and Pacific. However, it is important to highlight that, founded by the British settlers, Australia is a white, Western settler-­ colonial nation located in Asia and the Pacific. Australia is geographically the south of both the West and Asia and the Pacific (Martin et al. 2008). However, Martin et al.’s (2008) notion of AsiaPacifiQueer unfortunately appears to privilege Asia over the Pacific. The chapters included in their edited anthology cover issues and concerns of minoritized sexualities and genders in Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand. These representations erase Pacific from AsiaPacifiQueer. The closest to the Pacific Martin et al. (2008) approach is the Philippines. This phenomenon that conflates Asia and the Pacific not only fails to take into account that “Pacific Islander Studies has its own scholarly association, its own experts, its own history, and its own set of tools for analysis” (Ono 2020, p. 269), it also reestablishes how the globalization that distributes historically unequal flows of wealth, income, and power hierarchizes nations and cultures in and across Asia and the Pacific (e.g. Chen 2019; Hall 2015). Thus, Martin et al.’s (2008) notion of AsiaPacifiQueer silencing the Pacific troubles me. Accordingly, I turn my attention to the historically specific and cultural saturated flows of power between and betwixt Japan and Hawai’i to expand the notion of AsiaPacifiQueer. Hawai’i is a geopolitically contested location in the Pacific Ocean (Halualani 2002). In 1893, the US military-­backed insurgents, mostly comprised of non-­indigenous settlers, overthrew



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the Kingdom of Hawai’i governed by Queen Liliʻuokalani (Chen 2019). Consequently, Asian migrant settlers demanded their active involvement in the new settler government and infrastructure (Saranillio 2013). Yet, the US annexed the Republic of Hawai’i, controlled by white settlers, in 1898. Despite Kānaka Maoli resisting the US occupation of Hawai’i, the consolidation of Hawai’i with the US became a catalyst of ongoing settler colonialism rooted in liberalism and multiculturalism (Saranillio 2013). During the territorial period (1900–1959), Asian migrant settlers actively participated in the settler colonialism of Hawai’i even when the US racist laws that supported white supremacy subordinated them (Fujikane 2008). As Saranillio (2013) asserted, “white settlers were strategically seeking to converge their interests with certain East Asian settlers and forge a more liberal multicultural form of settler colonialism” (p. 287). While Hawai’i became the fiftieth US state in 1959, the settlers from Asia have continued partaking in the settler colonialism of Hawai’i. Das Gupta maintained, “In the case of Hawai’i, settler colonialism depends on encouraging non-­white immigrants, whose arrival on the islands is thoroughly mediated by labor extractive practices, to invest in statehood and fill US citizenship” (Lee-­Oliver et al. 2020, pp. 241–242). Hence, Fujikane (2008) calls the phenomenon Asian settler colonialism, that is, “a constellation of the colonial ideologies and practices of Asian settlers who currently support the broader structure of the US settler state” (p. 6). In fact, the Japanese diasporic presence is a political and economic factor that drives tourists from Japan to visit Hawai’i (e.g. Kim and Agrusa 2008; Yaguchi and Yoshimjra 2004). Tourists from Japan who temporarily stay in Hawai’i unwittingly participate in and receive the benefits of Asian settler colonialism. Hence, I take into account the settler colonialism that maintains the ongoing dispossession of Kānaka Maoli to critique my Japanese queer reimagining(s) of Hawai’i. Still, my scholarly move may invite some pushback. For example, Ono (2020) suggests that the US-­based Asian American scholars who refer to the Pacific without an in-­depth awareness of Pacific Islander Studies become “settler colonialists who have wittingly and unwittingly participated in the continuing colonization of indigenous people of the Pacific” (p.  269). I  concur with Ono’s perspective that speaks with the US paradigm of settler colonialism. Simultaneously, as a queer scholar born and raised in Japan, I also feel the significance of studying Halualani’s (2008) assertion that the material realities of globalization produce transnational flows of capital, culture, labor, people, ideas, goods, and technologies between Hawai’i and Japan. Because tourism from Japan is a major source of income for Hawai’i (Brasor and Tsubuku 2016), the political economy of globalization does not separate Hawai’i from Japan and Japan from Hawai’i. There continue to be intra/interregional flows of power, capital, and inequality between and betwixt Asia and the Pacific (e.g. Hall 2015; Na’puti 2019; Na’puti and Bevacqua 2015). Consequently, I find it necessary to critique my Japanese queer reimagining(s) of Hawai’i that gestures toward its legacy of settler colonialism. For this reason, I centralize the concept of queerness as a border-­crossing methodology to examine (dis)connections among Japan (Asia), Hawai’i (Pacific), and queer. In this process, I privilege communication as processes and practices of articulation to exemplify my vision for studying AsiaPacifiQueer. Now, I enter into a digital world where I develop intersubjective connections with Japanese LGBTQ YouTube-­vlogger-­created contents of Hawai’i.

Entering into a Digital World Because I have come to Seattle for my sabbatical during the spring of 2020, I am still here on the US Independence Day  – Saturday 4  July 2020. Right now, as a queer Japanese migrant-­ becoming-­US citizen, I am occupying the traditional land of the first people of Seattle, the Duwamish People. So, while I am sad to know the tremendous rate of fatality associated with COVID-­19, I am okay with the global pandemic that tones down the Independence Day ­celebration.

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It does not signify freedom for multiple indigenous groups whose lands continue to be occupied by settlers. Then, I question my implication of participating in the US settler colonialism while I gaze toward the scenery of Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood from my apartment window. I wanted to temporarily escape from my home base in Albuquerque, the traditional homelands of the Pueblo of Sandia. I thought I could be close to Japanese American cultures and communities in Seattle. Just like Honolulu and Los Angeles, Seattle has a long history of migration from Japan that has formed a visible presence of Japanese American cultures and communities (Oharazeki  2016). Simultaneously, my longing for Japaneseness is an embodied product of what Fujikane (2008) said is Asian settler colonialism. In the mid/late-­1800s, the white settlers’ control and occupation of Native Lands required labor economics that brought Japanese migrants to the US. Ongoing histories of Japanese Americans are tied to the Native struggles over lands and sovereignties. Here, I am reminded of Tuck and Yang’s (2012) saying that “the settlers make Indigenous land their new home and source of capital, and also . . . the disruption of Indigenous relationships to land represents a profound epistemic, ontological, cosmological violence” (p. 5). Hence, I must keep in mind that my longing for Japaneseness occurs through the ongoing dispossession of multiple indigenous people. Still, my apprehension about challenging myself kicks in. So, I am running away from making myself uncomfortable. Since I became a US citizen on 15 March 2019, I have been questioning if my choice was right for me. Quite frankly, I often ask myself, Did white supremacy (in)visibly guide my desire to naturalize? So I sit down on my couch and open my MacBook to distract myself. Then, I go to YouTube to search for new content produced by New  York-­based Delta Airlines’ Japanese gay flight attendant vlogger Rickilicious [リキリシャス], who is married to a white man. I love the airline industry because of my aspiration to travel. So, I follow Rickilicious. However, I have a love-­hate relationship with him. He is good at putting on a stereotypical act as a “feminine” and “soft” Japanese male queer. If I could have acted like him, I would have been perhaps successful in the US gay dating marketplace that reinforces the racialized gender expectation. So, I am jealous of him. As I am getting “irritated” by watching him again, I go through the list of “Up Next” video contents. Then I am drawn to the video “Let’s go find Kazue-­Chan’s boyfriend: I went to a gay club in Hawai’i” [“かずえちゃんの彼氏を探しに行こう”ハワイのゲイクラブに行ってきました!], produced by a Japanese gay male vlogger who goes by the female stage name Kazue-­Chan [かずえ ちゃん]. This 4-­minute 16-­second video, uploaded on June 4, 2017, features Kazue-­Chan visiting gay bar Bacchus Waikiki in Honolulu with his three friends. However, the video does not showcase Kazue-­Chan being in the bar. Later, Kazue-­Chan says this bar is a good place to meet up with “locals” as he sits in front of the bar. As soon as I hear the term “locals,” I question whom Kazue-­Chan’s imagining of locals includes and excludes. So, I watch another Kazue-­Chan’s video, “There are LGBTQ [people] in Hawai’i! I have participated in Honolulu Pride” [ハワイ にもいるよLGBTQ! ホノルルPRIDEに参加してきました], uploaded on 23 October 2019. In this 5-­minute 14 second video, Kazue-­Chan returns to Honolulu to participate in the LGBTQ Pride Parade and Festival. As Kazue-­Chan films the Parade, I am subjected to the image of the Pride participants marching around with business signs such as Alaska Airlines and Bloomingdales. This is a typical image associated with the commercialized capitalism of LGBTQ Pride Parade happening anywhere in the US (see Puar 2007). Still, I see various people of color who look like me participating in the Pride Parade. Yet Kazue-­Chan’s video content does not answer his imagination of “Hawai’i locals” offered in the first video I have watched. Thus, I am quite unsettled. So, I furthermore search for more Japanese LGBTQ YouTube-­ vlogger-­created contents that narrate Hawai’i. I insert keywords in Japanese such as gay (ゲイ [pronounced gei]), queer (クイア– [pronounced quiar]), LGBTQ [pronounced eru-­gi-­bi-­ti-­qu], Hawai’i (ハワイ [pronounced hawai]), and travel (旅行[pronounced] ryokoku) into the search engine. Doing so, I locate the five channels that are specific to Japanese LGBTQ YouTube-­vlogger-­ created contents of Hawai’i. Being exposed to YouTube-­vlogger-­created contents of Hawai’i other



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than Kazue-­Chan’s, I come to gain knowledge of four themes; desiring whiteness; unfamiliarity with the ’āina; unhearing mo’olelo; and learning from error. Now I begin my autoethnographic critique with the first theme.

Desiring Whiteness While closely reading the YouTube-­vlogger-­created contents of Hawai’i I have come across, I question how both the vloggers and I have been subjected to embody the aspiration for the cosmopolitan queer lifestyle in the post-­Pacific War context of Japan through which the US and its allied occupation took place (1945–1952). By the cosmopolitan queer lifestyle, I mean a lifestyle historically associated with “a white, urban, leisure-­class gay male whose desire becomes globalized” (Pérez 2015, p. 27). The US tourism industry complex that works within the logic of capitalism stages the cosmopolitan queer subject to travel to consume non-­white, non-­Western spaces and bodies for pleasure (Puar 2002). The queer cosmopolitanism works with ongoing histories of the US empire and settler colonialism expanded under its military power (Pérez 2015). Under the contemporary globalization that strategically promotes the transnational flows of US queer formation as the advance and progressive modernity of whiteness, Japan’s queer cultures certainly adapt the cosmopolitan queer lifestyle rooted in liberal capitalism (Suganuma 2012). I have observed that Japan’s queer cultural platforms such as magazines and websites circulate images of traveling to foreign countries, for example. This phenomenon not only reinforces the historical continuum of Japaneseness that aspires to the US Americanization of Japan’s social lifestyle (e.g. Darling-­ Wolf  2000; Toyosaki 2011; Sekimoto 2014). It also significantly reifies the circulations of the US queer formation that normalizes the leisure-­class consumption of tourism (e.g. Pérez  2015; Puar  2002). The contemporary globalization that circulates the US queer formations emerged from whiteness as an invisible and universal power shapes Japanese queer cultural (re)productions of lifestyle trends and tourism. Consequently, being inspired to be liberal, the Japanese LGBTQ YouTube-­vlogger-­created contents of Hawai’i I have come across stray away from Pacific War memories, which symbolize the conservative and militant images of Japaneseness being in conflict with the cosmopolitan queer lifestyle. No vloggers I have come across narrate Japan’s 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor and the Japanese internment camps even though memories of these critical incidents are quite significant to ongoing histories of Japanese Americans in Hawai’i. Indeed, this is a tactically redefined product of Japan’s sociality trying to catch up with US liberalism to distance itself from Japan’s past (Eguchi and Kimura  2021). Catching up with the US imperial branding of whiteness is used to measure and prove Japan’s Global North power, privilege, and branding equivalent to the Western nations in the current age of globalization. To exemplify my argument, I turn my attention to gay male vlogger Kanichi, who goes by the stage name Kyoto Shounen to Kyoto Cat no Nichijyou (京都少年と京都CATの日常 [meaning everyday life of Kyoto boy and Kyoto CAT]). Kanichi uploads four episodes of visiting Honolulu with his Japanese cisgender female friend. The episodes showcase how they perform a typical four-­day sightseeing plan for Honolulu being commodified and sold by travel guidebooks. They walk around Waikiki, shop at Ala Moana Center, have breakfast and coffee at Island Vintage Coffee, dine at Kailua Beach, bicycle around Kailua Town, observe big turtles at North Shore, and more. These are Honolulu’s ordinary tourist activities. However, centering implications of the body in the US colonial settlement of Hawai’i, I project my queer qualms onto Kanichi, who carries out a typical four-­day sightseeing plan on O’ahu. Here, I am concerned with how both Kanichi and I are orchestrated to unwittingly perform transnational Japanese desires for the cosmopolitan queer lifestyle that normalize the ongoing dispossession of Kānaka Maoli across time, space, and context.

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Take, for example, I used my savings to visit Honolulu between 1 July and 5 July 2009 with my cisgender female Japanese friend similar to Kanichi. My frequent exposures to Japan’s media and popular cultural images of Hawai’i encouraged me to visit Honolulu. During the New Year holidays, Japan’s talk shows report celebrities who visit Hawai’i for their winter breaks. The scenes of reporters interviewing the celebrities who come out from the arrival hall of Honolulu’s Daniel K. Inoue1 International Airport are quite common. The presentations of these celebrity interviews come with tourism marketing snapshots of mostly white bodies lying on the Waikiki Beach and Brown bodies dancing hula kahiko. Growing up, little did I know that these snapshots were the direct products of settler colonialism occupying Hawai’i. Still, I wanted to visit Honolulu just like the celebrities I see through New Year holiday talk shows. Because we went through Japan’s popular travel guidebooks to plan what we would do in Honolulu, we ended up doing tourist activities like Kanichi. This is where I have queer qualms about my own participation in Hawai’i’s tourism industry complex that operates the dispossession of Kānaka Maoli. As a racialized queer subject born and raised in Japan, I was uncritically drawn to the logic of whiteness, materializing what a Hawai’i vacation should look like. I had no idea how the logic of Japanese fantasizing Hawai’i recycles the architecture of US settler colonialism. As I articulate my embodiment of Japaneseness desiring whiteness, I am reminded of how my aspiration for the cosmopolitan queer lifestyle, including going to a gay beach, can contribute to the ongoing dispossession of Kānaka Maoli as I watch another video produced by a YouTube Channel called All Kit Channel (オ–ルキットチャンネル). Two Female to Male (FTM) transgender vloggers, Kanata (奏太) and Eito (英翔), upload a video titled “[Hawai’i] We went to the beach where gay people gather!!” (【ハワイ】ゲイが集まるビ–チに行ってみた!!) on February 5, 2019. Claiming their transness as former girls (元女子), they walk around Queens Beach, located on the East of Waikiki Beach toward Kapiolani Park Beach. Queens Beach is known as Honolulu’s only gay beach. When I watch the video, I am inspired by Kanata and Eita from Japan stepping onto the gay beach. They disrupt the gay beach normalizing cisgender power and privilege. Then, by characterizing Queens Beach as Futsu (普通 (meaning ordinary)), they discuss how a beach acts as a romantic place for meeting up with (new) people. At this juncture, they say gender and nationality do not matter when people want to meet up [at a beach]. This prompts me to question who occupies gay beaches. Then I think that everyone does not have equal access to the white, leisure-­class, cisgender, and able-­bodied architectures of gay beaches. Many people are left out of gay beaches.

Unfamiliarity with the ’āina Here, I have queer qualms about how the gay beach visitors are unaware of participating in the settler colonialism under the name of pride in the age of homonationalism. By this, I mean a liberal and progressive operation of gay pride used to advance US nationalism (Puar 2007). Similar to Kanata and Eita, I failed to develop my holistic and spiritual relationship to the ’āina [meaning, love of the land] when I visited Queens Beach in July 2009. I did not think of my interconnectedness with everything around me. Still, Silva (2004) reminds me of ’āina as an expression that not only cultivates and fosters love for the land and earth but also maintains a long-­lasting love for the Hawai’ian nation. While turning my attention to the cosmopolitan queer lifestyle, I neglected to learn ongoing histories of ’āina as I stepped onto O’ahu island. This is the LGBTQ Asian settler colonialism of Hawai’i. Chang (2013) asserted, “By attracting visitors and temporary residents, however, the tourism industry creates short-­lived experiences that prevent people from developing familiarity with the ’āina” (p.  136). Hence, by going to Queens Beach, I perform the error of my Japanese queerness recyclizing whiteness working with the LGBTQ settler colonialism of Hawai’i.



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Another layer of the problem of leaving out familiarity with the ’āina implicates how globalization that promotes the consumption of luxury goods shapes the current landscape of Japan’s travel industry complex. When Japanese people think of going to Hawai’i, they think of going to a shopper’s paradise resort in the United States. Yaguchi and Yoshimura (2004) suggested that since the mid-­1980s “tourists from Japan began enjoying shopping at places that had little, if anything, to do with people or things Hawai’ian” (p.  91). As Japan’s economy grew in the 1980s, Hawai’i became another consumption site, like New  York and Los Angeles, for tourists from Japan. Globalization made high-­end commodities produced by Western boutiques like Gucci and Louis Vuitton available in Hawai’i. Hence, Japanese gay male tourists like Kanichi who created the video content of Hawai’i as a shopper’s paradise “can enjoy a temporary break from their pattern of daily consumption back home and engage in a kind of spending spree that is permissible only on special occasions” (Yaguchi and Yoshimura 2004, p. 91). Therefore, even before entering the islands, Japan’s travel industry complex that markets vacations to Hawai’i orchestrates tourists from Japan to participate in the settler colonialism of Hawai’i through the consumption of global capital and goods. Moreover, Japan’s geographical proximity to Hawai’i creates a convenient idea of Hawai’i as the closest US state where tourists from Japan can easily and reasonably visit. For example, tourists from Japan can go to Hawai’i for weekends because of Japan’s geography. Nonstop flights from Japan to Honolulu are mostly around seven to eight hours. There have been many flights between Japan and Hawai’i before the COVID-­19 pandemic that shut down international travel (Toriumi 2019). Hence, the airfares to Hawai’i are much more reasonable than the airfares to other US cities on the mainland such as New York and Washington DC (Yaguchi and Yoshimura  2004). Kanata and Eito remind me of this in another video titled “[English prohibited] It was too hard to speak Japanese only in Hawai’i . . . lol” ([英語禁止]ハワイで日本語しか喋れないのがキツすぎた…笑), uploaded on 3 February 2019. They say their nonstop airfare to Honolulu was 23,000 yen (almost US$ 222).2 Indeed, this price is reasonable compared to the nonstop airfares to the ­mainland United States. Thus, Japan’s travel industry capitalizes on Hawai’i as the nearest part of the  United States where tourists from Japan can reasonably visit and easily satisfy their desires to consume (Yaguchi and Yoshimura 2004). This is why the campaign for traveling to Hawai’i is sensationally coming back in the post-­Covid 19 recovery period of Japan’s travel industry. Consequently, Japan’s travel industry complex of Hawai’i reproduces the effects of Asian settler colonialism. Given the strong networks of Japanese migrants and Japanese Americans in Hawai’i since the mid-­1800s, tourists from Japan feel ease at traveling to Hawai’i. They can speak Japanese to manage their sightseeing activities such as tours, dining, and shopping (Yahuchi and Yoshimura 2004). In fact, Kanata and Eito try to manage in Honolulu through speaking only Japanese in the aforementioned video. They visit a Japanese-­owned restaurant for breakfast in Waikiki. Then they speak Japanese only to non-­Japanese people while spending time at a pool, ordering food at a store, and hiking at Diamond Head. While they are staged to fail speaking only Japanese for humor, I find the video interesting. Growing up, I have seen various media programs that feature celebrities traveling to Hawai’i. These travel programs introduce businesses where tourists from Japan can speak Japanese only. Even when I went to Honolulu, I could get by in Japanese if I wanted to. There were many businesses catering to tourists from Japan. Still, this linguistic comfort, created for tourists from Japan, is a product of Asian settler colonialism of Hawai’i that marginalizes Kānaka Maoli’s struggles. The ­globalization that promotes the consumerism and materialism takes tourists away from learning about the ’āina. So settler colonialism thrives. Hence, the erasure of ’āina from my Japanese queer reimagining(s) of Hawai’i is a product of global capitalism that normalizes the cosmopolitan queer lifestyle emerging from the logic of whiteness.

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As I have articulated my queer error to learn the culturally significant value of “āina to Kānaka Maoli, I turn my attention to an interracial gay couple, YouTube vloggers Tsukasa&Jonas, based in Tokyo. Tsukasa is a doctor involved with Jonas, who is a mixed-­race (Vietnamese + white) male from Switzerland. The video titled ‘Escape to Kauai Part 1’ uploaded on 8 May 2020 under the COVID-­19 pandemic, showcases their family trip to Kauai Island in Hawai’i that took place in July 2019. As soon as Tsukasa arrives at Lihue, the video focuses on the nature of Kauai Island such as beach and sunset ocean scenery. The next day, Tsukasa and Jonas go on a door-­off helicopter Kauai tour. While on their tour, Tsukasa and Jonas turn their camera to the dynamic, magical, and unforgettable landscape of the entire island. Here, I am drawn to their camera view of the island that is vivid and graphic, as the helicopter does not have doors. The helicopter takes them to the Na Pali Cliffs, where the well-­known movie ‘Jurassic Park’ was filmed. As soon as they end their tour, they express how memorable and inspiring the island’s panorama is. They describe their tourist experience as speechless. At this juncture, my body is reacting to what I have seen through Tsukasa&Jonas” narration of Kauai Island. I want to go to Kauai Island! I want to experience a door-­off helicopter tour! I want to see the gifts of nature in Kauai Island!

Unhearing mo’olelo While being drawn to Tsukasa&Jonas’s video content, I question if my wanting to see the view of Kauai Island from a door-­off helicopter needs to be checked. Who owns the view? Who gets to ride in a helicopter? As soon as these questions emerge, I type “Kauai Door-­Off Helicopter Tour” in the Google search engine. Going through a couple of tour companies’ websites, I learn that Kauai’s door-­off helicopter costs a little over US$ 300 per person for about an hour ride. I say to myself, it is kind of expensive. All tourists cannot get to go. Thinking this, I am troubled with how the gay male tourists from Japan like Tsukasa and Jonas would not develop their familiarity with ’āina even when they experience their speechless helicopter tours during their short stays in Hawai’i. On the one hand, I find Tsukasa sharing his interracial gay couple life with Jonas important. As McLelland (2000) suggested, the industrialized culture of Japan that has emerged since 1868  has shamed public discussions of both nonnormative sexualities and genders. Simultaneously, there have been visibilities of onē-­kei (オネエ系 [queeny or sisterly]) talent in the post-­World War II context of Japan’s entertainment industry (see, for example, Eguchi and Kimura  2021). This genre is a cisheterosexist essentialization of nonnormative talents, including male-­to-­female (MTF) transgender, non-­binary, cross-­dressing, and male same-­ gender loving subjects. The logic of Japan’s cisheterosexism collectively abnormalizes and unnaturalizes the onē-­kei talent as pejorative. In this context of Japan, Tsukasa&Jonas offers an alternative space of queer possibility. Someone like Tsukasa, whois a doctor and a part of Japan’s corporate system, openly and frankly exposes his nonnormative sexuality in social media venues like YouTube. This is powerful when Japan’s ethnocentric, cisheterosexist modes of social conformity where everyone is encouraged to be the same easily marginalizes nonnormative sexual and gender subjects in and across many labor organizations (Eguchi and Kimura 2021). Hence, Tsukasa performing his same-­sex intimacy with Jonas through their YouTube video content of Hawai’i can be powerful for the audience in Japan. On the other hand, Tsukasa&Jonas does not offer historically specific and culturally saturated knowledge of Kauai Island through their accounts of traveling to Hawai’i. They broadcast the panorama of the island without offering “mo’olelo (“story, tale, history, tradition, legend”) of the important relationship between kānaka maoli (“Hawaiian person”) and the ’āina (‘land, earth’)” (Chang 2013, pp. 135–136). There is no specific lesson about Kauai Island being offered by Tsukasa&Jonas either. Accordingly, I have a queer qualm about the way Tsukasa&Jonas promotes the capitalist consumption of the nature of Kauai Island that



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ignores mo’olelo that builds a bridge between kānaka maoli (“Hawaiian person”) and the ’āina to the viewers. Both Tsukasa and Jonas uncritically participate in the US queer formation of the cosmopolitan lifestyle that is not available to all minoritized sexual and gender subjects around the world. Here, it is important to recognize that Tsukasa and Jonas’ global mobility, financial privilege, and the cultural capital associated with the Global North (e.g. Japan and Switzerland) undoubtedly organize how they collectively perform their same-­sex intimacies through their YouTube content on Hawai’i. Everyone does not get to ride Kauai’s door-­off helicopter and produce the YouTube-­vlogger-­created contents of it like Tsukasa and Jonas. Put simply, everyone cannot easily travel from Japan to Hawai’i. Traveling to Hawai’i is still a leisure-­class privilege that is not available to everyone in the current political economy of Japan where income and wealth inequalities persist, for example. Perhaps, Tsukasa and Jonas are given social, cultural and economic privileges to become and be more “Americanized” to be cosmopolitan queer subjects than they realize. Therefore, Tsukasa&Jonas unwittingly joins in the settler-­colonial conditions and structures of the tourism industry that can harm ongoing histories of Native Hawai’ian cultures.

Learning from Error However, I hope Tsukasa&Jonas’ unhearing of mo’olelo of the relation between Kānaka Maoli and the ’āina in their video contents offers a queer error through which tourists from Japan begin to recognize their (unwitting) participation in settler colonialism as they travel to Hawai’i. Here, Tsukasa&Jonas’ queer error can be “a way refusing to acquiesce to dominant logics of power and discipline and as a form of critique” (Halberstam 2011, p. 88). Consuming Tsukasa&Jonas’ video contents that fail to hear of mo’olelo, I turn my attention to Japanese spiritual practices that may allow bridge-­building with Native Hawai’ians valuing their interconnectedness with everything around them. Drawing on both Shintoism and Buddhism, Japanese cultures value the philosophy of wa (和[meaning, harmony]) that teaches each individual to maintain his/her/their interconnectedness with community and environment. The philosophy of wa values a human’s organic relationship with nature. Bringing the philosophy of wa that highlights a harmonious coordination with people and environment, I question if we can acknowledge and do something about our ignorance of hearing mo’olelo of the relation between kānaka maoli and the ’āina as we physically step onto the Native Hawai’ian (is)lands. Without hearing mo’olelo, the tourists from Japan are simply non-­white tourists who help strengthen the settler colonialism of Hawai’i. Hence, I want to be hopeful of Tsukasa&Jonas’ queer error to point out the settler-­colonial present that governs impossible possibilities of queerness, providing an alternative cartography. Hence, Tsukasa&Jonas’ queer error pedagogically holds me accountable as I reimagine Hawai’i as a paradise of the Pacific Ocean. While articulating our unhearing mo’olelo of the relation between Kānaka Maoli and the ’āina through Tsukasa&Jonas’s video content, I notice another YouTube blogger, Hawai’i no Jino sun (ハワイのジ–ノさん), being suggested in my screen. By clicking his account, I see much of his video content about Hawai’i. However, when I look into his “about,” it does not tell me the detailed picture of who he is. So I go back to the “home” section and click a link to his Instagram to gather the information about Jino. Going through his account, I am drawn to a photo showcasing a sign of aloha in rainbow colors displayed on the wall of a building in Waikiki. Then I consider the possibility of Jino being queer. Hence, I go through more of his photos that subtly use rainbow colors here and there. At this point, I feel his nuanced performance of Japanese queerness. I am reading some queer tips through Jino’s narrations of Hawai’i. Still, I do not want to make any assumptions about Jino. So I message Jino to see if I may include his video contents under the LGBTQ category. He replies, “Yes!” I then look into his video contents more. In so doing, I develop some appreciation for Jino’s video content. Jino pays close attention to things to

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do like locals because he lives in Honolulu. At least, he introduces small businesses and features the nature of the (is)lands. Yet, I am also unsettled with how Jino’s narrations of Hawai’i do not offer hearing mo’olelo of the relation between kānaka maoli and the ’āina. Jino unwittingly participates in the settler colonialism of Hawai’i that maintains Native struggles over lands and sovereignties. It is his queer error. Hence, I still continue to struggle with my queer reimagining(s) of Hawai’i as I am stuck with one question: What are we going to do about this? I must keep in mind that decolonization that is not a metaphor “is accountable to Indigenous sovereignty and futurity” (Tuck and Yang  2012, p.  35). I am also reminded of Tuck and Yang (2012) saying, “The Native futures, the lives to be lived once the settler nation is gone – these are the unwritten possibilities made possible by an ethic of incommensurability” (p. 36). Still, this is another space of futurity where impossible possibilities of queerness collude with decolonization. Muñoz (2009) argued that “queerness is not yet here; thus, we must always be future bound in our desires and designs. The future is a spatial and temporal destination” (p. 185). Hence, to answer my own question that emerged from writing this essay, I turn my attention to what Chávez (2013) advocated for coalitional politics through examinations of queer migration. She asserted, “By understanding queer as orienting us not toward the ‘not yet’ but rather toward coalition, we find a vital alternative to both inclusionary and utopian politics” (p. 7). As Ferguson (2019) reminds, the emergence of queer politics is multi-­dimensional to begin with. Queer politics is to simultaneously fight against historically marginalized and often stigmatized issues such as homophobia, transphobia, heterosexism, racism, classism, ablism, incarceration, colonialism, settler occupation, and more. Hence, along with Japanese queer YouTube vloggers, I must be committed to consider how queerness methodologically operates as a coalitional term that orients me toward other social movement groups. I am always in need of revising my queer politics in order to develop “shared critical dissatisfaction” (Muñoz 2009, p. 189, emphasis in original) with people who seek after the unwritten possibilities of the future. To do so, I must be always attentive to and productively work with queer errors I make.

Conclusion(s) In this chapter, by juxtaposing the self to Japanese queer YouTube-­vlogger content related to Hawai’i, I have attempted to question and critique my reimagining(s) of Hawai’i that reify the logic of settler colonialism. More specifically, I have showcased how I perform the always-­already-­ness of Japaneseness aspiring to the West, particularly the United States. Such embodied performances demonstrate the cosmopolitan queer lifestyle that commodifies the white, urban, leisure-­class consumption of tourism. Simultaneously, impossible possibilities around my reimagining(s) of Hawai’i ironically point out the erasure of ’āina. Generating love of the land is a major component of Kānaka Maoli’s cultural and ecological orientation. Hence, my reimagining(s) of Hawai’i failing to recognize Native Hawai’ian struggles over (is)lands are the embodied products of intercultural communication that materialize the global and transcultural flows of power, capital, and inequality. Consequently, to be willing to learn from error is vital for engaging in intercultural communication as the multi-­level processes and practices of the self (micro), the relational (meso), and the structural (macro). Accordingly, I re/turn my attention to the notion of queer error emerged from my autoethnographic critique. By writing this essay, I have no intention to act as if I know everything about the topics I have covered. Given the primary focus of this essay is to create an additional platform to speak with Japanese queers to be reflective, I for sure remain wanting to learn more about experiences among Hawai’i’s locals, in general, and Kānaka Maoli, in particular. However, these learning desires of mine are methodologically beyond the scope of my



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autoethnography. Hence, my questioning and critique of Japanese queers traveling to Hawai’i is grounded in the methodological paradox of queerness as an ideality to begin with. Queerness is a minoritized sexual and gender desire for change in the present moment where power, capital, and inequality that produce hierarchal relations of differences organize intercultural communication. And such desire that can never be free of power relations often unwittingly accompanies with error. Intercultural communication is a never clear, neat and linear process; it is always already a complex, contradictory, and messy process. Hence, queer error is a critical product of intercultural communication that teaches queers why they cannot be truly queer yet in the present. Thus, studying impossible possibilities of queerness has the potential to make the significant contribution to shift the study of critical intercultural communication further. Hence, I end this chapter by reiterating my vision for studying AsiaPacifiQueer Communication that recenters the methodological paradox of queerness. As I mentioned earlier, Martin et al.’s (2008) notion of AsiaPacifiQueer pays attention to intra/interregional flows that fashion localized sexual and gender modernities. However, while troubling the US queer formations, Martin et al.’s (2008) notion of AsiaPacifiQueer ignores the Pacific. This is also a queer error. Still, Pacific Islanders Studies scholars (e.g. Hall  2015; Halualani  2008; Na’puti 2019; Na’puti and Bevacqua 2015) have suggested how intra/interregional flows of power between Asia and the Pacific that materialize the capital and inequality shape the material conditions of the Pacific Islands. As a queer scholar born and raised in Japan, I am required to acknowledge that the colonial rule of Japan’s political, economic, and cultural power shapes the historically contested forces of intra/interregional linkages in and across Asia and Pacific. Hence, by emphasizing communication as a process of articulation, I advocate for examining connections and disconnections among Asia, the Pacific, and queer further. My vision for studying AsiaPacifiQueer Communication requires scholars holding accountable ongoing histories of colonialism and settler colonialism that shape impossible possibilities of queerness in and across Asia and the Pacific. With AsiaPacifiQueer, I hope that critical intercultural communication scholars continue to centralize queerness as a border-­crossing methodology to trouble the colonized cartography of Asia and Pacific. After having become a US citizen, I think of my grandmother Michiko a lot. Had she moved to Hawai’i with Takahashi, my mother would not have been born. So I would not have been here either. Michiko might have become a US citizen after the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 was passed. Still, the very notion of migrant-­becoming-­citizen takes place within the settler-­colonial system that sustains the ongoing dispossession of multiple indigenous people. Perhaps this is why I could not feel fully happy during the naturalization ceremony that took place on 15 March 2019 in the Albuquerque convention center. I am a settler colonialist in the traditional homelands of the Pueblo of Sandia. Hence, I can never forget working with an ongoing interplay of tensions between power, privileges, and disadvantages surrounding my body.

Notes 1 The late Daniel Ken Inouye was a US senator representing the state of Hawai’i. He was the first Japanese American to serve in both the US House of Representatives and Senate. 2 Currency rate as of 17 November 2020.

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Re-­imagining Intercultural Communication Amid Multiple Pandemics Kathryn Sorrells California State Unversity, Northridge

Today, our world is “home” to nearly 7.5 billion people. Increasingly, we – the 7.5 billion people of the globe – find our everyday lives, our work, our identities and imaginations as well as the health and wellbeing of our families, communities, and planet deeply interconnected and inter-­reliant. While rapid advances in communication and transportation technologies have coalesced with neoliberal economic and political policies over the past 40 years dramatically accelerating interaction and inter-­ relations among people from diverse cultures and ­locations, the Covid-­19 pandemic has underscored and amplified our awareness of global interdependence in unprecedented and paradoxical ways. As nationstates attempt to shut down borders and wealthy nations hoard vaccines, it becomes clearer and clearer that the pandemic knows no borders and greedy stockpiling by the wealthy nations will only prolong it. The coronavirus pandemic has laid bare the ideological and material conditions at the core of our neoliberal global society. Deeply rooted in the history and practices of colonization and on full display in the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic, neoliberalism valorizes capital and profits over human life and human needs; exploits, extracts, and disposes of ­everything – people, the environment, culture, services, life and death – through the marketplace; and uses racial, gender, class, and national/documentation differences to magnify ­systemic inequities and maintain power. In the context of neoliberal globalization, conservative, right-­wing politicians and authoritarian leaders across the globe have aroused and harnessed populous anger, discontent, and resentment  – responses to the contradictory conditions of  neoliberal globalization  – to advance ethnonationalist movements predicated on ­anti-­immigrant/anti-­minority, white supremacist/ethno-­supremacist and antidemocratic rhetoric, practices, and policies (Mishra  2017). Neoliberalism, according to Henry Giroux (2021), is the underlying pandemic.1 As I write this chapter, the experience and impact of Covid-­ 19  looms large in every ­community around the globe. Unlike any for a century, the pandemic stilled global travel and slowed global trade. The pandemic and responses devastated communities, particularly ­communities of color in the United States, immigrants and their children, and low-­income countries around the world, disproportionately stealing lives, livelihoods, shelter, health care, and sustenance. The plight of “essential workers,” a label valuing the work while devaluing the people, contrasted with the privileged working online at home. Asian and Asian American

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communities in the United States were targeted with vile race and gender-­based hate speech, crimes and violence. Climate change disasters displaced 25  million people in 2019 (UNHCR  2020). During all the injustices experienced through the pandemic, the global health care and environmental crisis, flagrant incidents of racialized anti-­Black state violence triggered massive protests against police brutality in the United States. A multiracial coalition, masked against the coronavirus, supported the movement for Black Lives demanding racial/ economic/gender justice in the summer of 2020. Echoes for intersectional justice resounded around the globe from Palestine to France and from Russia to Tunisia. Yet, as symbols of colonialism, racism, and white supremacy were toppled in the United States and around the globe, the world watched the violent storming of the US Capitol by self-­identified white nationalists and Trump supporters, ending with five people dead in January 2021. Amid the pandemic and global crises of systemic inequalities, state-­sanctioned violence, and militarism, the rise of ­ethnonationalism and antidemocratic politics, and environmental degradation – we must ask, what is at the core of these intersecting crises? What paradigm shifts are needed? What role does intercultural communication play in addressing these multiple crises? In this chapter, I draw attention to the global crises we face as a result of neoliberal globalization and reveal the distinctly interconnected, contradictory, precarious, and inequitable ­conditions in which intercultural communication occurs today. I propose four areas of focus to re-­imagine the study and practice of intercultural communication to address both the harsh challenges and the creative possibilities inherent in our contemporary context. I begin by sketching out the theoretical foundations, assumptions, and unique perspectives offered by a critical approach to re-­imagining the study of intercultural communication amid the pandemic and global crises. Then several scenarios are introduced to provide the background and ­exigency for situating intercultural communication amid the crises of neoliberal globalization and employing a critical perspective. To address the complex, contradictory, interconnected, and contested nature of the context of neoliberal crises, I elaborate four areas of focus to ­re-­imagine the practice and study of intercultural communication. The chapter culminates with a discussion of intercultural praxis, which integrates the four areas of focus as we ­re-­envision intercultural communication amid the pandemic and neoliberal crises.

Foundations and Assumptions The proposal to re-­imagine intercultural communication amid the pandemic and the crises of neoliberal globalization is grounded in and informed by cultural studies (Appadurai  1996; Tomlinson  1999; Winant  2001; Žižek  2020), postcolonial, ethnic studies, and feminist ­theories (Butler 1993; King et al. 2020; Mohanty 2003; Said 1978; Spivak 1988) as well as research on globalization from various disciplinary perspectives (Inda and Rosaldo  2002; Nederveen Pieterse  2019; Stiglitz  2019; Yúdice  2003), neoliberalism, racism, and the pandemic (Brown  2019; Chomsky and Polychroniou  2021; Harvey  2016; Hill  2020; ­ McGhee  2021; Wilkerson  2020; Wolff  2020; Žižek  2020), critical pedagogy (Freire  1998; Giroux 2021; hooks 1992) and studies in nonviolent movements for social justice (Ackerman and Duvall  2000; Barber  2016; Butler  2021; Chenoweth  2021; Hill  2020; Mohanty and Carty 2018). This transdisciplinary approach complements existing critical research in communication studies and intercultural communication as referenced throughout the essay. In re-­imagining intercultural communication amid the pandemic and the crises of neoliberal globalization, I assume an overtly critical and “political” perspective as it is not possible to take a neutral, disinterested position in talking and theorizing about or engaging in intercultural communication. Every participant in an intercultural interaction, every cultural text, or cultural product that is read or consumed and every attempt to enact and theorize interpersonal and intergroup interactions, relationships, identities, alliances, and conflicts is situated in



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particular historical, social, economic, and political contexts; consequently, we cannot remove ourselves from the convergence of conditions and forces that constitute our lives and intercultural ­relations in the context of the post/pandemic crises of neoliberalism (Brown  2019; Collier et al. 2001; Shome and Hegde 2002a; Žižek 2020). Similarly, I assume a posture of examination and critique regarding the context and consequences of theory making and knowledge construction/production. The field of intercultural communication is rooted in Western, White perspectives, colonial modes of thinking and imperial knowledge production (Asante 1987; Miike 2003; Mendoza 2005; Shome and Hegde 2002b). Masking these underpinnings obscures the role power plays in processes of representation and the construction of knowledge as well as how the intercultural field continues to serve neocolonial and imperialist interests. Additionally, aligning with foundational assumptions from critical approaches, I challenge the false dichotomy of theory and activism by pairing critical knowledge construction with informed action for social change. Broome et  al. (2005) envisioned the intercultural field ­taking an “activist turn” linking our scholarly efforts with “action that attempts to make a positive difference in situations where people’s lives are affected by oppression, domination, discrimination, racism, conflict, and other forms of cultural struggle due to differences in race, ethnicity, class, religion, sexual orientation, and other identity markers” (p.  146). While a “activist turn” has, in my assessment, not yet been fully manifest, there is a “bearing toward” activism and social justice as critical intercultural research intersects with intercultural communication pedagogy (Alexander et  al.  2018; Edmondson et  al.  2019; Spitzman ­ based organizations and partnerships for social justice and  Balconi  2019), community-­ (Chávez 2021; Heuman 2015; DeTurk 2015), international/intercultural relations for social building, global justice (Collier  2014; Zenovich and Cooks  2018), virtual community-­ ­citizenship, digital activism, and resistance (Martens et  al.  2020; Sobré-­Denton  2016) and intercultural competence (Martin 2015). Therefore, taking a critical intercultural perspective means that I must situate my understanding of and actions regarding intercultural communication within an interconnected web of social, political, economic, and historical contexts. Intercultural communication does not occur in a vacuum outside relationships of power. Whether in interpersonal, group, community, organizational, or nationstate interactions, uneven power relations, historically constituted and constantly renegotiated, frame and inform intercultural communication. For me, making structural inequities explicit, revealing how institutional and discursive systems work to advantage some and disenfranchise others and emphasizing the complex and contradictory nature of our positionalities in different contexts is crucial. It is also vital to highlight the full human agency of individuals and groups who negotiate inequities, making choices even when options are limited and who create meaningful lives in the midst of devastating conditions. I encourage us all to challenge the tendency to reduce the complexity of actors in the global context to simplistic categories of victims, heroes, demons, or saviors. Several questions emerge as pivotal from a critical intercultural perspective: first, who benefits materially and symbolically from existing relations of power and who is served by how we make sense of inequitable power arrangements? Second, how are current inequities linked to colonial, postcolonial, and imperial conditions? Third, what role can each of us play within our spheres of influence to challenge inequities, leverage our resources, and create a more socially just world? Conscious of the how knowledge construction in the field of intercultural communication can serve white, male, heteronormative, Western, colonial, and imperialist agendas, I strive to engage in scholarly, pedagogical, and community processes and practices that not only challenge and resist hegemony but proactively create spaces for inclusive coproduction of knowledge and collaborative activism. Thus, this chapter on re-­imagining the field of intercultural communication is an invitational gesture to engender critical insight, scholarly self-­reflection, and innovative alternatives and to motivate individual and collective action toward social justice.

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Intercultural Communication Amid the Pandemic of Neoliberalism Over the past 40 years, neoliberal economic and political policies have coalesced with rapid advances in communication and transportation technologies to dramatically accelerate interactions and inter-­relations among people from diverse cultures and locations. The coronavirus pandemic and global economic fallout that followed deepened our awareness and embodied experience of global interdependence and inter-­ reliance. The coronavirus pandemic also exposed the ideological and material crises at the core of our neoliberal global society (Giroux 2021). Neoliberalism is a form of political economy that endeavors to restore the class power of the global economic elite. The political project of neoliberalism promotes free markets, reduced government intervention, and regulation, a shift from government/public ­sector responsibility to individual responsibility and the privatization of public spaces, issues, industries, and resources (Harvey 2005, 2016). Characterized by a growth in multinational corporations, an intensification of international trade and international webs of production, distribution, and consumption, assaults on labor and labor unions as well as the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people from their homes, jobs, and countries, neoliberal ­globalization has exponentially increased and dramatically impacted intercultural interactions worldwide. Deeply rooted in the history and practices of colonization, neoliberalism reveres capital, profit, and property over human life and needs. The mandates by state and national leaders to re-­open the economy in the midst of a raging pandemic at the expense of the lives and wellbeing of those on the front lines, “essential workers,” and the most vulnerable, the elderly, the poor, and incarcerated illustrate clearly the logic of neoliberalism. The Trump administration’s abdication of responsibility to govern and administer aid, for example when states competed with each other and with the federal government for personal protective equipment (PPE), reflect the ideological and material conditions of neoliberalism. The disproportionate loss of life for people of color, the poor and migrants as well as the disparate loss of employment for women in the United States graphically demonstrate how race, class, gender, nationality, and documentation status are exploited through neoliberalism magnifying pre-­existing economic, social and health disparities and inequities while further concentrating privilege and wealth among the few. Prior to the pandemic, the gap between the wealthy and poor had increased within countries and around the world. In 2020, the world’s 2153 billionaires controlled the same wealth as 4.6 billion people or 60% of the world’s population and the unpaid labor of women – cooking, cleaning, caring for children and the elderly – continues to be “the ‘hidden engine’ that keeps the wheels of our economies, businesses, and societies moving” (Oxfam 2020). The conditions of living in the context of neoliberal globalization include elevated uncertainty, polarization, and tension. Increased displacement and labor migration, magnified ­economic inequity and insecurity, elevated risks from climate change and pandemics along with real and perceived ethnic, racial and religious tension have led to a backlash against globalization in recent years. Anti-­immigrant, protectionist, and populist rhetoric and policies, fueled by job insecurity, xenophobia and long histories of racism, have given rise to new forms of ethnic nationalism, isolationism and violence around the world. Despite the promises or perhaps, precisely because of the unfulfilled promises of liberal capitalism and democracy for universal prosperity and individual human rights, we are living in “the age of anger” as defined by public intellectual Pankaj Mishra (2017), where “authoritarian leaders manipulate the cynicism and discontent of furious majorities.” Conservative, right-­ ­ wing politicians and authoritarian leaders across the globe arouse and harness populous anger, discontent, and resentment – responses to the contradictory conditions of neoliberal globalization – to advance ethnonationalist movements predicated on anti-­immigrant/anti-­minority, white supremacist/ ethno-­supremacist and antidemocratic rhetoric, practices, and policies (Mishra 2017).



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Amid the visible and palatable white supremacy of the Trump administration and all the injustices experienced through the pandemic, flagrant incidents of racialized anti-­Black state violence triggered massive protests against police brutality in the United States in the summer of 2020. The militarization of the police similar to the militarization of the United States-­ Mexico and borders around the world advances brutal rhetoric, polices, practices, tactics, and equipment to contain economic and social issues, which further normalizes an inhumane culture of violence and death, an erosion of civil liberties and the destruction of human rights. The rise in ethnonationalism, authoritarianism, and militarism globally targets and scapegoats immigrants, women, and people of color, as well as religious and sexual minorities. Increased economic inequity resulting from neoliberal globalization has created a political arena where those most disadvantaged economically are now, even more than ever, targeted as the “problem,” or “cause of discontent.” While the specter of the “Other” has long been used to incite anxiety, fear, and hatred, the conditions are particularly ripe to edge democracies toward more authoritarian forms of governance in subtle and more blatant ways. The coronavirus pandemic and response to it exemplify the crises of neoliberalism  – magnified inequity, exploitation, and disparities based on race/gender/class/sexuality/nationality, increased ­ climate-­driven migration, displacement and ecological destruction, a global rise of ethnonationalism, militarism, and the culture of violence and death. The roots of the pandemic are the policies and practices that have shredded the social safety net and public institutions – what Noam Chomsky (2020) calls the “neoliberal plague.” The pandemic and the crises of neoliberalism have altered the context for understanding, theorizing, and engaging in intercultural communication. In each scenario below, consider how neoliberalism globalization shapes intercultural interactions and the various trajectories of the imagination needed to understand, theorize, and act responsibly in the global context.

Scenario One In a virtual classroom at a university in Southern California during the coronavirus pandemic, students studying intercultural communication joined the class weekly through video and audio devices from various places around the globe  – from California to the Midwest and east coast of the United States to Japan, Azerbaijan, China, France, and Pakistan. Students ­represented a wide spectrum of backgrounds, experiences, and identities including Korean-­ Azerbaijani, Japanese, Uighur, French, Pakistani, Latinx, Armenian American, African American, Asian American and European American – all with distant or more recent stories of migration, displacement, and “home.” Students’ experiences of the Covid-­19 pandemic varied greatly as well.

Scenario Two In 1989, laborers – primarily men – began traveling from the small town of Villachuato in Michoacán, Mexico to work in a meatpacking plant in Marshalltown, Iowa, United States. As economic conditions in Mexico worsened, larger numbers made the 3000 mile trek to el  norte, and by the late 1990s, more than half of the employees at the third-­largest pork processing plant in the world were Latinos (Grey and Woodrick 2002). María González came in the early 1990s with her mother and sibling when she was three years old to Marshalltown, Iowa. Life was not easy as an undocumented family. With support from locals, María started Immigrant Allies, a non-­ profit organization, which advocates for immigrants’ rights (Potter 2019).

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Scenario Three Avengers: Endgame, the 2019 blockbuster film based on the Marvel Comics superhero team, is one of the highest-­grossing films of all times. As one after another superhero appears in the spectacle, they each represent a megabrand generating millions of dollars (Buckmaster 2019). The film is a dazzling advertisement for products where advertisement and entertainment become interchangeable. As senior editor at Salon Keith Spencer (2018) notes, superhero films, which have spiked in popularity in the last 20 years along with their expensive productions and billion-­dollar revenues, not only reflect neoliberal capitalism, “the superhero genre embeds within itself the values that make neoliberalism function.”

Scenario Four In the summer of 2020, a multiracial coalition, masked against the coronavirus, supported the movement for Black Lives demanding racial/economic/gender justice. Flagrant incidents of anti-­Black state violence triggered massive protests against police brutality in the United States. Echoes for intersectional justice resounded around the globe from Palestine to France and from Russia to Tunisia. Even as symbols of colonialism, racism, and white supremacy – statues of Robert E. Lee and Christopher Columbus – were toppled in the United States and around the globe, the world watched the violent storming of the Capitol by self-­identified white nationalists and Trump supporters, ending with five people dead in January 2021.

Scenario Five On 16 March 2021, eight people were killed in Atlanta, Georgia, by a 21-­year-­old white man at an Asian-­owned massage parlor. Six of the people killed were Asian, all but one were women. The shootings continue a long history of anti-­Asian violence. Since the start of the pandemic, verbal and physical assaults have increased strikingly with 3800 documented ­incidents, the majority against women (Nguyen  2021) and hundreds of cases of explicitly racist speech such: “You are the virus”; “Go back to China”; and “You are infected” (Cai et al. 2021). The scenarios illustrate the dynamic, dis/placed, hybrid and contested nexus of peoples, cultures, markets, and relationships of power that are, on the one hand, deeply rooted in colonial histories and discourses and yet, are reconfigured and re-­articulated in the context of neoliberal globalization. Cultural subjects – immigrants, international students, migrant workers, protestors and activists, corporate managers, border security, consumers, residents and tourists  – and cultural symbols  – superhero films and “hands up, don’t shoot” gestures  – ­coalesce and collide in unprecedented ways producing spaces of agency, resourcefulness, and alliance as well as tensions, contestations, and conflicts. These intercultural interactions are situated locally in particular spaces and are simultaneous closely linked to and yet dislocated from particular places globally; the interactions are enmeshed in contemporary circumstances while also inextricably coupled with historical conditions. Multiple contexts intersect, layer, clash, and inform each other as temporal and spatial dimensions are traversed and compressed in the context of neoliberal globalization. The vignettes point to the ways people who are positioned very differently in terms of cultural, racial, national, and economic power – material and symbolic forms of power within highly inequitable systems – are engaging with and consuming each other’s cultural forms, ideologies and identities, developing relationships and struggling through conflicts, building alliances, as well as laboring with and for each other in the context of neoliberal globalization.



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Sheltering-­at-­home or creating “homes” where they could during the pandemic, students in the intercultural communication class connected with each other through advanced technologies with a common focus, yet, the students were positioned quite differently in terms of their access to resources – internet and broadband capacities, health and medical services, work and/or financial support, space and time for schoolwork in addition to language proficiency and other academic preparedness. The pandemic has brought global inequities, reconfigured yet closely linked to colonial histories, into full relief. Migrants cross borders of place, culture, status, and language, propelled by the forces of neoliberal globalization. Labeled a “border crisis” by some or “immigration crisis” by others, rhetoric regarding migrants and asylum-­ seekers from Central America is highly polarized and political. Understood as a hemispheric “refugee crisis,” the Biden administration is focused on underlying causes – failed economies, violence, and environmental disasters exacerbated by climate change (Martin 2021). Avengers: Endgame broke all global records its opening weekend taking in US$1.2 billion with US$859 million coming from outside of North America and over a third of that from China (Deutsche Welle 2019). Chinese fans, primarily millennials born into one-­child families, spent their formative years reading Marvel comic books admiring and aspiring to the individualistic mindset of Marvel superheroes (Davis 2019). The uprisings in the summer of 2020 with anti-­racist protests in over 700 cities and towns across the United States was, as Matthew Countryman (2020) historian of Black social movements argues, unprecedented in scope coalescing anti-­racist, women’s, LGBT, anti-­corporate and anti-­war, as well as workers’ rights and economic justice protest traditions into the “long river of struggle in America.” As Countryman notes, the spark for the uprising was the horrific murder of George Floyd; yet, the fuel was the worst economic and public health crisis in decades and the rise of white nationalism fanned by the divisive Trump administration. The pandemic revealed the decay from four decades of neoliberal privatization and divestment from the public safety net. The Asian women murdered in Atlanta, “living at the nexus of race, gender and class,” are part of a long, disturbing history of Western imperialism, Chinese Exclusion Acts and US military intervention in Asia. Stereotyped as both hypersexual and ­passive, Asian women “become an object of hatred, and lust, a thing to loathe, then desire” (Jeong 2021). Clearly, the pandemic and crises of neoliberalism have intensified and underscored the conditions that enable, constrain, and constitute intercultural communication. As the scenarios above suggest, the neoliberal global context is characterized by increasing interconnectedness and interdependence, which magnifies divisions, conflicts, and violence even as global interdependence calls for cooperation and shared resources. Neoliberal economic and political ­policies have amplified global inequities within and across nationstates exacerbating existing injustices that limit and exclude access to housing, health care, education, a working wage, services, and opportunities. Increased disparities serve to structure and bind intercultural relationships in terms of power, privilege, and positionality, where, for example, the wealthy classes across national boundaries who can pay for access to vaccines and readily flee the impact of climate change have more in common with each other than they do with those who live in the same metropolitan area. The rise of ethnonationalism and authoritarianism in the United States and around the world – Hungary, Turkey, India, Poland, Brazil and the Philippines – rolls back civil rights for marginalized groups, attacks voting processes, judicial independence, and freedom of the press as well as supports, whether tacit or explicit, vigilante violence against domestic opponents (Chenoweth 2021). The pandemic and the crises of neoliberalism have led to the rise of mutual aid organizations as well as stronger and more sustained multicultural/multiracial alliances for intersectional justice. To make sense of, address and theorize about the complex, contradictory, and increasingly inequitable context of neoliberal globalization, we need to utilize critical perspectives and activate our creative potential to re-­imagine the study and practice of intercultural communication.

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Re-­imagining Intercultural Communication Amid the Pandemic and Crises of Neoliberalism I propose four key areas for re-­imagining intercultural communication amid the crises of ­neoliberalism. First, we need to revisit and revitalize our definitions of culture. Second, we must make visible the continuities as well as disjunctures between historical and contemporary patterns of interaction, institutional control and representational power. Multifocal vision that attends to both the legacy of colonization, Western domination, and US hegemony as well as non-­Western hegemonies and emerging centers of capital and cultural production is required. Third, the links between the local and the global, forming interconnected yet fragmented and fractured webs in the global context, need to be drawn and underscored with particular consideration to the interplay among micro, meso and macro levels of interaction. Finally, we need to ground the study and practice of intercultural communication in critical engagement, democratic participation, and social justice. While addressed separately in the discussion here, the four areas of focus are all inter-­related and necessary to re-­imagine intercultural communication amid the pandemic and crises of neoliberal globalization.

Revisiting Culture Along with traditional anthropological definitions defining culture as a system of shared ­meanings, cultural studies perspectives have gained traction in the field of intercultural communication over the last 20 years (Nakayama and Halualani 2023). Defining culture as a site of contestation where meanings are constantly negotiated (Grossberg et  al.  1992), cultural studies definitions, informed by Marxist theories of class struggle and exploitation, reveal how culture can function as a form of hegemony, or domination through consent, as articulated by Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci (1973). Hegemony operates when the goals, ideas, and interests of the ruling group or class are so thoroughly normalized, institutionalized, and accepted that people consent to their own domination, subordination, and exploitation. Cultural studies theorists argue that individuals and groups have the potential to challenge, resist, and transform meanings in their subjective, everyday lives. Fiske (1992) states, “The social order constrains and oppresses people, but at the same time offers them resources to fight against those constraints” (p. 157) noting that individuals and groups are consumers and producers of cultural meanings and can act in counter-­hegemonic ways. Culture, then, is the “actual, grounded terrain” of everyday practices, representations, discourses, and institutions where meanings are produced, consumed, negotiated, and contested (Hall  1997). Understanding culture as dynamic, fluid, contested and negotiated – as a site of struggle – is particularly applicable and generative amid the crises of neoliberalism. Additionally, revisiting American Studies scholar George Yúdice’s (2003) definition of ­culture as a resource is highly relevant in the context of neoliberal globalization as culture, today, is inextricably linked to transnational, national, regional and community economies and politics. In the twenty-­first century, culture is a resource for economic and political exploitation, agency and power, which is mobilized and instrumentalized for a wide range of purposes and ends. Culture, in the form of symbolic goods such as movies, music and tourism as well as intellectual property, is increasingly a source of global trade and a resource for economic growth. Mass culture and art industries contribute more than US$800 billion a year to the US economy with the industry driven by the export of movies, television and video game (Florida 2019). Culture is also targeted for exploitation by capital in the media, consumerism, and tourism. As cultural and racial groups are profiled for marketing, group-­based differences are constituted and commodified, reifying racial and cultural biases and stereotypes grounded in histories of colonialism



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and imperialism. “Today many once overtly racist practices are now interwoven into the logic of postcolonial contemporary marketplaces through taken-­for-­granted marketing strategies such as target marketing, (reverse) redlining, and consumer ­profiling” (Poole et al. 2021). Cultural products, such US superheroes and hip hop culture, are commodified and appropriated functioning in complex and contradictory ways as sites of cultural hegemony, economic, racial and gender exploitation, as well as locations of enunciation, empowerment, and opposition (Rose 2014; Johnson et al. 2019). As one after another superhero appears in the spectacle of Avengers: Endgame, they each represent a megabrand generating millions of dollars (Buckmaster 2019). The film is a dazzling advertisement for products where advertisement and entertainment become interchangeable. While the spectacle of computer-­generated imagery (CMI) and other special effects may captivate viewers’ attention, the values of late capitalism or neoliberalism – individualism, privatization, the financialization of the economy, the articulation of everything into the marketplace, and the rise of technocracy over democracy – are engrained in and through the film (Spencer 2018). Ideologies central to the functioning of neoliberal US culture  – such as individualism; freedom of choice; the supposed irrelevance of race, gender, and class; and the valorization of late capitalism – are encoded and normalized in the superhero film. In the context of neoliberal globalization, culture is also utilized as a resource to address social issues. While culture is used discursively, socially, and politically as a resource for ­discriminatory and dehumanizing rhetoric, practices, and policies, culture is also mobilized as a site of individual and collective empowerment and resistance. In the summer of 2020, ­galvanized by the brutal murder of George Floyd and increased visibility of state-­sanctioned violence directed at people of color, a multiracial coalition swelled in support of demands made by the Black Lives Matter movement to end anti-­Black and racist police brutality and structural racism more broadly. While criticized as “woke-­washing,” branding that appropriates Black and/or other social justice activism, companies and organizations across the United States were pressed to engage in conversations about racism and intersectional oppression (Poole et al. 2021). After lobbying from civil rights groups, the Major League Baseball (MLB) pulled the All-­Star game in 2021 from a suburban Atlanta location as a response to and reproach of Georgia’s newly passed law that restricted voting rights, which President Biden called “Jim Crow on steroids” (Draper et al. 2021). As Yúdice presciently noted, in the context of neoliberal globalization, “the understanding and practice of culture is quite complex, located at the intersection of economic and social justice agendas (Yúdice 2003, p. 17).” As illustrated in the first scenario, culture is a resource for the students in the virtual classroom in terms of their backgrounds and identities, languages, and their interconnected yet contested histories; culture is a negotiated site in the students’ relational positionalities in a virtual US classroom, in the alliances formed, and in their linked yet asymmetrical colonial/ imperial pasts. Transmigrants, migrants, and diasporic groups engage and dispute collective cultural identities as they negotiate “homes” of familiarity, spaces of belonging, and sites for the formation of resistance, agency, and political empowerment (Mercado 2015; Pido 2017). As transmigrants like María González from Michoacán, Mexico struggle for their right to ­survive, they draw on culture as a resource for collective economic and social agency as well as political mobilization even as they are culturally/racially denigrated and used to fuel anti-­ immigrant policies and bolster white nationalism. Central American children and families, fleeing poverty, violence, political instability, and environmental degradation in their own countries, are refugees of the economic and political policies of neoliberalism, directly linked to settler-­colonialism, enslavement, and gendered racial exclusion (Walia 2021). Revisiting the cultural studies definition of culture as a site of struggle and re-­animating our understanding of culture as a resource that is exploited, mobilized, engaged, and appropriated enables us to grapple with the multifaceted and layered dis/junctures of intercultural communication in the context of neoliberalism.

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Role of History and Power Martin and Nakayama (1999, 2000), Nakayama and Halualani (2010, 2023) and others have called attention to the importance of situating intercultural communication within historical contexts and relations of power. The broad historical context of the past 500 years of colonization, Western imperialism, and US hegemony, which includes the anti-­colonial and independence struggles, and civil rights movements are critical for understanding intercultural communication today; and, the current global conditions of the pandemic and crises of neoliberalism also require simultaneous attention to new and reconfigured sites of economic, political, and cultural power (Shome and Hegde 2002a; Walia 2021; Wallerstein 2000; Wolff 2020). For example, we cannot make sense of the patterns and conditions of migration today without placing neoliberal globalization within the broader context of settler-­colonialism; yet, the particular patterns and conditions of migration today where migrants are expelled, displaced, exploited, and criminalized to serve global capitalist interests and racist nationalist rule require attention (Walia 2021). We cannot understand the impact on intercultural relations of neoliberalism policies and practices that benefit corporations and consumers in wealthier nations as well as elites in poorer countries without recognizing how these policies and practices ­re-­articulate a twenty-­first-­century version of the exploitation of labor that built and consolidated the economic wealth and political power of Europe and the United States during the colonial period (Shome and Hegde 2002b); and, we cannot ignore how the rise in ethnonationalism globally – Trump in the United States, Modi in India, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Orbán in Hungry, and Duterte in the Philippines – combines with the logic of neoliberalism to create a “neofascist movement ruled by fear but still governed by neoliberal reason” (Kelly  2021). Grappling with the intercultural challenges faced by people around the world in the midst of the pandemic and crises of neoliberalism requires us to see current struggles – disproportionate death among people of color in the United States and marginalized groups around the world, disparate access to health care in the United States and worldwide, vaccine hoarding by wealthy nations driven by capitalist interests – as embedded in and structured by racist, classist, white supremacist, patriarchal, heteronormative, and ethnocentric ideologies forged and institutionalized through the last 500 years of colonization, Western imperialism, and US hegemony; and we must also see how these categories of difference and relationships of power are reconfigured through the pandemic and the crises of neoliberalism (Shome and Hegde  2002a; Walia 2021; Winant 2001; Žižek 2020). In each of the five scenarios presented earlier, history plays a foundational and yet nuanced role in shaping the assumptions, meaning-­making processes, and actions in the intercultural interactions. Relations of power established, negotiated, and historically contested continue to structure economic and political conditions today. The notion of “race” as a biological ­concept has been thoroughly discredited (Graves 2005); yet, sociologist Howard Winant (2001) notes: Race has been fundamental in global politics and culture for half a millennium. It continues to signify and structure social life not only experientially and locally, but nationally and globally. Race is present everywhere: it is evident in the distribution of resources and power, and in the desires and fears of individuals from Alberta to Zimbabwe. Race has shaped the modern economy and nationstate. It has permeated all available social identities, cultural forms, and systems of signification. Infinitely incarnated in institution and personality, etched on the human body, racial phenomena affect the thought, experience, and accomplishments of human individuals and collectives in many familiar ways, and in a host of unconscious patterns as well. (p. xv)

In the one month from the start of testimony in the trial of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd on 24 March 2021 to the announcement of the guilty verdict on 20 April 2021, 64 people were killed at the hands of law enforcement in the United States. The majority of the



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deaths were Black and Latinx people including 20-­year-­old Duante Wright killed at a traffic stop in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota; Adam Toledo, a 13-­year-­old Latinx youth killed with his hands up complying with police demands in Chicago, Illinois; and Ma’Khia Bryant, a Black teenager in Columbus, Ohio. With an average of more than three killings per day, mothers, family members, and community organizers are asking, “How many more losses must we mourn?” (Eligon and Hubler 2021). For the first time in history in the state of Minnesota, a white police office, Derek Chauvin, was convicted for the murder of a Black person. The ongoing insistence of Black Lives Matter and the anti-­racist uprising in the summer of 2020 forced off the blinders, at least temporarily, of a white supremacist society that is deeply rooted in the violent policing of Black bodies and the ongoing denial of that fact. Police forces in the United States grew directly out of the control and surveillance of enslaved Black people. White people patrolled Black people with the explicit goal of upholding slavery and white supremacy. In the Jim Crow era, police enforced Black codes – laws and policies intended to control the lives and movement of Black people – and participated, actively and tacitly, in terrorizing Black people through lynching. Taking full advantage of the loophole in the Thirteenth Amendment “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted,” the practice of criminalizing Black people during Jim Crow era still continues today. Black people are incarcerated at more than five times the rate of white people, where individuals, corporations and the state profit from the unpaid and underpaid labor of incarcerated people (Alexander 2012; Butler 2018; Muhammad 2019; Stevenson 2019). The colonial, white supremacist, and capitalist foundation of policing in the United States is not new; yet, the public acknowledgement and naming by those in positions of power, such as President Biden, is new. White Americans attitudes about race and policing shifted noticeably following Black Lives Matter protests in 2014 and again after the uprising in the summer of 2020 (Tesler  2020). The impact of the pandemic and the excesses of neoliberalism have exposed the dramatically disparate access to life, to safety, to accountability and to justice based on race as well as other categories of difference. Contemporary intercultural encounters and relationships are deeply embedded in and framed by the symbolic and material conditions of neo/colonization, imperialism, and neoliberal globalization as illustrated by the rise of anti-­Asian violence experienced during the coronavirus pandemic around the world and in the killing of six Asian American women in Atlanta, Georgia in March 2021 described in the scenario. While the shooter may claim he did not target the women because they were Asian, a long history of military conquest and media representation has objectified, hypersexualized, and exoticized Asia and particularly Asian women in the United States for over a century. As racism and sexism intersect, the Asian woman, portrayed as the object of desire and sexual conquest, for the White male imaginary, repeatedly becomes the “problem,” the “temptation” that must be removed as in the claim of the shooter in the Atlanta case, and the “disease” that must be banished and ejected (Nguyen  2021). Despite rhetorics of racelessness, color-­blindness, multiculturalism, and diversity that circulate in the context of neoliberal globalization, anti-­Asian sentiment, and assaults and hate crimes against Asians rose in Western countries  – France, Germany, Sweden, United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and the United States – during the pandemic. Campaigns like #JeNeSuisPasUnVirus in France and #NoSoyUnVirus in Spain, founded to raise awareness about the rising violence against people of Asian descent, state painfully what should be obvious and true for all human beings – I am not the virus (Thiessen 2020). Efforts in the current moment to deny, obscure, or erase through rhetorical or procedural means the racist, white supremacist, capitalist underpinnings of the legal, criminal justice and law enforcement institutions in the United States not only maintains centuries of historical injustice, and asymmetrical relations of power that have produced our current conditions, it also stalls movement forward toward transformative justice. Naming and owning the legacies of colonization, US imperialism and their links to current global conditions in the study of

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intercultural communication de-­ naturalizes and de-­ normalizes US/Western hegemony. We must challenge the dehistoricizing and depoliticizing of scholarship in the field of intercultural, which produces systematic distortions of the world. Critiques from postcolonial and cultural studies reveal how knowledge construction is an interpretive, invented, and value-­ laden representational process bound by relations of power (Collier 2002; Mendoza 2005; Nakayama and Martin  1999). Thus, it is critical to contest concepts and frameworks that decontextualize intercultural interactions; we must re-­imagine the study of intercultural communication to account for the ways historical and current conditions and relations of power are layered and stitched together amid multiple pandemics and the crises of neoliberalism.

Local/Global Connection and Multilevel Analysis As the pandemic and the crises of neoliberalism underscore our global interconnectedness and interdependence, the complex networks of connectivity between the local and the global become more apparent  – especially when disrupted. People, products, ideas, identities, ­cultural forms, and practices are situated in particular local spaces and are simultaneously ­connected with particular and situated places around the globe through communication technologies, social media, and streaming platforms as well as through extensive social networks, memories, and imaginations (Hegde 2016; Ong 2006; Pido 2017). The video of the brutal murder of George Floyd, a Black man by a White police officer, that went viral on social media galvanized the world. The brutality of the immediate loss of yet another Black man in Minneapolis resonates with the painful experiences of anti-­ Blackness, anti-­ Muslim, and ­anti-­Otherness felt by so many worldwide. The horror and suffering also reverberates with ­centuries of historical trauma from colonization to occupation. Black Lives Matter protests, erupting in cities and small towns across the United States, became rallying cries against racism and police brutality from Europe to the Middle East and from South Africa to Asia. In the context of the pandemic and crises of neoliberalism, highlighting the continuities across time – from the past to the present – as well as across place – from the local to global communities and positionalities – is critical. Each scenario illustrates interesting, complex, and provocative links between the local and the global and the need for a multilevel analysis to understand intercultural communication. The globalization of capital, goods, and labor has linked Villachuato, Michoacán, Mexico, and Marshalltown, Iowa, United States to a global economy dominated by the United States. These communities are no longer marginal to the world economy; rather, they are part of an uneven global capitalist expansion (Grey and Woodrick 2002). Like many towns across the United States and Mexico, the lives and livelihoods of people from Villachuato and Marshalltown are intertwined and interdependent in the global context (Woodrick  2015). Drawing on world systems theory (Wallerstein 2000) for a macrolevel analysis, colonization and military force were used historically to establish conditions for the accumulation of capital by European powers and the United States. Today, the conditions are established and maintained by trade agreements negotiated through global bodies of governance and by militarized border regimes and control (Walia 2021). Yet, as “free” trade agreements, instituted by multilateral institutions at the global level, benefit elite classes and multinational corporations, at the local level, social networks of ­families and communities “actively pursue transnational social space, the ‘trans-­locality,’ to sustain material and cultural resources in the face of the neoliberal storm” (Smith and Guarnizo 2006, p. 7). Mesolevel approaches to migration and intercultural adaptation suggest that migrant networks pass along knowledge and experience about safe migration routes, work, housing, and other services through interpersonal communication with friends, family relations, and community connections. The Villachuato-­Marshalltown connection exemplifies transnational communities, which are characterized by intertwining familial relationships



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across locations, identification with multiple “homes,” and the ability to mobilize collective material and symbolic resources (Goldring 1996; Smith and Guarnizo 2006). Through remittances and fund drives organized by migrant networks that link several locations in the United States, wages made by workers are used to improve their Mexican community. Interestingly, the characteristics that define transnational communities are often the source of intercultural misunderstanding and conflict on the microlevel. Transmigrants’ social, ­cultural, economic, and political allegiance to and sustained contact with their community in Mexico disrupt and resist hegemonic assumptions of US superiority and the desirability of assimilating to and living in the United States, escalating tensions between the dominant group and transmigrants. The individual and collective agency of Villachuato transmigrants expressed through their desire to travel between the two communities and remittances and fund drives sent to support the community in Mexico are all strategies that challenge and subvert the assumed unidirectional power of US national and corporate interests. Yet, as children of migrant families like María González described in the scenario are born in the United States, families make decisions to seek permanent residence. Despite frequent comments like “go back to your country” or “you’re not welcome here,” María finds the love and support of community members more powerful than the negative and hateful words she has to contend with. With support from locals in 2006, María started Immigrant Allies, a non-­profit organization, which continues to advocate for immigrants’ rights (Potter 2019), supporting intercultural adaptation not only for transmigrants but also for Marshalltown residents who are changed over time as part of transnational communities. As the analysis of the scenario suggests, we need to re-­imagine pertinent themes in intercultural communication – identity construction, the use of language, cultural forms and cultural spaces, interpersonal relationships, as well as migration, adaptation, and intercultural conflict – in ways that underscore the connections between the local and the global, that highlight ­parallel, asymmetrical and shifting positionalities in terms of power and that emphasize the interrelationship among micro, meso, and macro levels of experience and analysis.

Social Justice A central goal in critical approaches to intercultural communication includes challenging ­systems of domination, critiquing hierarchies of power, and confronting discrimination to create a more equitable world. Redefining culture as a site of contestation where meaning-­making is a struggle not a stable entity and where culture is understood as a resource, exploited for economic development and activated for empowerment, allows us to address the symbolic and material realities of inequality, difference, and marginalization. Situating intercultural communication within broad and specific historical, political, economic, and social contexts and drawing out the roles power, positionality, and privilege play also advance this goal. We challenge inequity and injustice on systemic and interpersonal levels by attending to the interconnected and yet fractured links between the local and the global and by engaging a multilevel (macro/meso/micro) analysis. Yet, as we re-­imagine intercultural amid the pandemic and crises of neoliberalism, we also need to couple our critical analysis and theorizing with proactive engagement and collective action for social justice. “As a critical practice, pedagogy’s role lies not only in changing how people think about themselves and their relationship to others and the world, but in energizing students and others to engage in those struggles that further ­possibilities for living in a more just society” (Giroux 2004, pp. 63–64). In her book Another World is Possible If. . ., scholar and activist Susan George (2004) asserts: My answer is that another world is indeed possible – but only when the greatest possible number of people with many backgrounds, viewpoints and skills join together to make it happen. Things change when enough people insist on it and work for it. No one should be left out and feel they

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cannot contribute. No one who wants to help build another world should, for lack of knowledge or connections, remain on the sideline. (pp. xii–xiii)

The field of communication studies broadly and intercultural communication in particular are positioned well to provide processes and practices that engage multiple and diverse voices, build alliances and solidarity across various and shifting positionalities, and imagine a world where equity and justice are the norm not the exception (Allen et  al.  2002; Alexander et al. 2018; Arnett and Arneson 2014; Broome et al. 2005; Chávez 2013; Collier et al. 2001; Frey and Carragee 2016; Swartz 2008, 2012). As we confront the callous challenges of neoliberalism laid bare by the pandemic and as we mobilize the powerful resistance and creative potential emerging globally, we need re-­double our efforts to re-­imagine the field of intercultural communication as a site of intervention, democratic participation, and transformation. Amardo Rodriguez (2008) stresses that hierarchies of power that sustain inequities and injustices are not inevitable or natural but rather are created, reinforced, and justified through communication. Pestana and Swartz (2008) propose communicative imagination, an orientation that highlights the role communication plays in our lives and enables the actualization of  human potential, the development of solidarity across difference and the promotion of ­participatory democracy. Gust Yep (2008) explicates the notion of intervention  – forms of communication activism such as protests, boycotts, canvassing, sit-­ins, teach-­ins, street theater as well consciousness-­raising in classrooms, churches and family gatherings, and emergent opportunities in informal settings – where pressure is exercised “on the fault lines of a network of power” (p. 196). Alexander et al. (2018) use the metaphor of “breathing,” as Black men cry out “I can’t breathe” and cases of police brutality extinguish the lives of people of color, to address the “psychological, physiological, political, sociological, and environmental aspects of communication in/as social justice and activism” (2018). The authors’ performative essay creatively and critically points to communication, one of the most basic human functions, “as a tool of resuscitating possibility,” sustaining life and enabling social transformation. Along with Gordon Nakagawa, I introduce intercultural praxis, a process of engagement that joins critical, reflective, and engaged analysis with informed action for social justice (Sorrells and Nakagawa  2008; Sorrells  2022). Intercultural praxis provides a blueprint for integrating the four areas of focus discussed in this essay in our scholarly, activist, and everyday lives as we re-­imagine intercultural communication amid the pandemic and crises of neoliberalism. All moments in our day – when we make choices about what we consume from food to popular culture and from news to education, when we make decisions about when we intervene to challenge sexist, racist, homophobic, classist, and other discriminatory language, structures, and inequitable conditions, and when we develop relationships and build alliances with friends, coworkers, bosses, and strangers – provide opportunities to engage in intercultural praxis. Intercultural praxis operates as engaged communicative action informed by an understanding of the positionalities and standpoints of the communicators and is exercised within and is responsive to particular, concrete temporal and spatial contexts that produce historical and sociopolitical, as well as local and global conditions. Through six inter-­related points of entry – inquiry, framing, positioning, dialogue, reflection, and action – intercultural praxis utilizes our multifaceted identity positions and shifting access to privilege and power to develop allies, build solidarity, imagine alternatives, and intervene in our struggles for social responsibility and social justice. From these points of entry, intercultural praxis may manifest in a range of forms such as simple or complex communication competency skills; oppositional tactics; and creative, improvisational, and transformational interventions. For example, as students joining the intercultural communication class from around the world made connections and developed friendships, a critical consciousness of their differing positionalities historically and as students at a US university in Southern California emerged, leading them to understand each other more deeply and intervene as allies



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against racism, sexism, and religious prejudice. While life was not easy for María Gonzalez’s undocumented family, María learned English quickly and translated for her mother at an early age. Despite frequent comments through the decades like “go back to your country” or “you’re not welcome here,” María finds the love and support of community members more powerful than the negative and hateful words she has to contend with. With support from locals, María started Immigrant Allies, a non-­profit organization, which advocates for immigrants’ rights (Potter 2019). Social change movements grounded in intersectional justice such as the Black Lives Matter Movement and the Poor People’s Campaign challenge hegemonic and undemocratic practices and provide spaces for learning about and creating intercultural alliances for collective resistance (Barber 2016; Yamahtta-­Taylor 2021). Henry Giroux (2021) persuasively argues in Race, Politics, and Pandemic Pedagogy: Education in a Time of Crisis for critical pedagogy, needed more now than ever, to address historic injustices exacerbated by neoliberalism, the rise of ethnonationalism, and state-­ sanctioned violence: We still have the opportunity to reimagine a world in which the future does not mimic the ­predatory neoliberal present. What is crucial to remember is that no democracy can survive ­without an enlightened citizenry. Moreover, solidarity among individuals cannot be assumed and must be fought for as part of a wider struggle to break down the ideologies and modes of ­pedagogical repression that isolate, depoliticize and pit individuals and groups against each other. (Giroux 2021, p. 208)

In addition to communicative approaches and models mentioned above, we must, also, avail ourselves of practices and wisdom such as those offered by therapist and author Resma Menakem (2017) that address historical racial trauma, the embodiment of white supremacy and somatic healing processes through body-­based practices. Creative collaborations and possibilities open up as critical race and ethnic studies scholars Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang’s (Tuck and Yang 2018) invite us to think about justice as “a collective improvisational practice?” What would a world of “racial equality” mean as imagined by Judith Butler (2021) in her book The Force of Non-­violence? Butler connects an ethic of nonviolence with a collective political struggle for social justice as she critiques individualism, rooted in liberalism and neoliberalism, as well as analyzing the psychological functions of violence. In the twentieth century, civil resistance or nonviolent resistance movements were more than twice as effective as violent campaigns in achieving their goals and sustaining long-­term peace and democracy (Chenoweth and Stephens 2012). According to Chenoweth (2020), 2019 may have seen the largest wave of mass, nonviolent movements in recorded history as people see nonviolent resistance as a viable option for social change, as technologies support communication for organizing, and as “the market for violence is drying up” (p. 72). Nonviolent resistance is also supported by value and expectation shifts toward fairness and human rights, and as the rise of authoritarianism globally provides new motivation to resist. Each provide direction and insight to re-­imagine intercultural communication as a site of democratic participation, intervention, and transformation amid the pandemic and crises of neoliberalism.

Conclusion People from different cultures have been engaging with each other for many millennia; however, the amount and intensity of intercultural interactions, the degree of interdependence, and the inequitable terms of engagement in the context of the pandemic and the crises of neoliberalism are unprecedented. The manifest and latent challenges as well as the contestations and opportunities demand our full imagination and engaged creativity. Re-­imagining

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intercultural communication in our current context requires flexible, multidimensional focus and analysis; respect for (or the ability to look again at) the ways intercultural exchanges are deeply shaped by colonial, neocolonial, and imperial histories, discourses and relations articulated and reconfigured today; recognition of how de/­ of  power and yet are re-­ re-territorialized cultural subjects and objects are simultaneously situated in particular locals and yet are linked through travel, communication, and memory to specific geographic and cultural spaces around the globe; and a deep commitment to create counter-­hegemonic spaces of agency, alliance, and activism among people who are positioned very differently. In this chapter, I identified the theoretical foundations and assumptions of a critical perspective for re-­imagining the study of intercultural communication in the context of globalization. Several scenarios provided the context for situating intercultural communication amid the crises of neoliberal globalization. I elaborated four areas of focus for re-­imagining the practice and study of intercultural communication including revisiting our definitions of culture, situating intercultural communication in historical contexts and within relations of power, underscoring the links and disjunctures between the local and the global, and grounding the study and practice of intercultural communication in social justice. Intercultural praxis was briefly outlined as a way to integrate the four areas of focus as we theorize and practice intercultural communication in the context of globalization. When we understand communication as a “humanity-­making, world-­making practice,” Rodriguez (2008) argues, “our humanity unfolds and the world becomes potent with possibilities” (p. 14). Dedicated to all 7.5 billion people who call our world “home,” the normative conception at the heart of re-­imagining intercultural communication in the context of neoliberal globalization advances an ethic of critical engagement and democratic participation for justice and social responsibility.

Note 1 This essay draws from and articulates the foundations for a larger body of work entitled Intercultural Communication: Globalization and Social Justice (2022) with Sage Publications.

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Sorrells, K. (2022). Intercultural Communication: Globalization and Social Justice, 3e. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Sorrells, K. and Nakagawa, G. (2008). Intercultural communication praxis and the struggle for social responsibility and social justice. In: Transformative Communication Studies: Culture, Hierarchy and the Human Condition (ed. O. Swartz), 17–43. Leicester: Troubador. Spencer, K. (2018). Peak superhero? Not even close: How one movie genre became the guiding myth of neoliberalism, Salon. www.salon.com/2018/04/28/how-­superhero-­films-­became-­the-­guiding-­ myth-­of-­neoliberalism (accessed 7 April 2021). Spitzman, E. and Balconi, A. (2019). Social justice in action. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning 19 (5): 1–17. Spivak, G.C. (1988). Can the subaltern speak? In: Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (eds. C. Nelson and L. Grossberg), 271–313. Chicago: University of Illinois. Stevenson, B. (2019). Slavery gave America a fear of black people and a taste for violent punishment. Both still define our criminal-­justice system, New York Magazine. www.nytimes.com/interactive/ 2019/08/14/magazine/prison-­industrial-­complex-­slavery-­racism.html (accessed 16 March 2021). Stiglitz, J. (2019). People, Power and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. Swartz, O. (ed.) (2008). Transformative Communication Studies: Culture, Hierarchy and the Human Condition. Leicester: Troubador. Swartz, O. (ed.) (2012). Social Justice and Communication Scholarship. New York: Routledge. Tesler, M. (2020). The Floyd protests have changed public opinion about race and policing. Here’s the data. The Washington Post. www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/09/floyd-­protests-­have-­ changed-­public-­opinion-­about-­race-­policing-­heres-­data (accessed 20 April 2021). Thiessen, T. (2020). France in grips of racism epidemic, as coronavirus fans anti-­Asian hysteria. Forbes. www.forbes.com/sites/tamarathiessen/2020/02/11/france-­in-­grips-­of-­racism-­epidemic-­as-­ coronavirus-­fans-­anti-­asian-­h (accessed 23 April 2021). Tomlinson, J. (1999). Globalization and Culture. Oxford: Blackwell. Tuck, E. and Yang, W.K. (eds.) (2018). Toward What Justice? Describing Diverse Dreams of Justice in Education. New York: Routledge. UNHCR (2020). Twin scourges COVID-­19 and climate change threaten world’s displaced and stateless. www.unhcr.org/en-­us/news/press/2020/12/5fc8013a4/twin-­scourges-­covid-­19-­climate-­ change-­threaten-­worlds-­displaced-­stateless.html (accessed 10 February 2021). Walia, H. (2021). Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism and the Rise of Racist Nationalism. Chicago: Haymarket Books. Wallerstein, I. (2000). The Essential Wallerstein. New York: New Press. Wilkerson, I. (2020). Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. New York: Random House. Winant, H. (2001). The World Is a Ghetto: Race and Democracy since WW II. New York: Basic Books. Wolff, R.D. (2020). The Sickness Is the System: When Capitalism Fails to Save us from Pandemics or itself. New York: Democracy at Work. Woodrick, A.C. (2015). Revitalizing a midwestern city: immigrants in Marshalltown. National Civic Review 104 (1): 13–14. Taylor, K. (2021). From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation, 2e. Chicago: Haymarket Yamahtta-­ Books. Yep, G.A. (2008). The dialectics of intervention: toward a reconceptualization of the theory/activism divide in communication scholarship and beyond. In: Transformative Communication Studies: Culture, Hierarchy and the Human Condition (ed. O. Swartz), 191–207. Leicester: Troubador. Yúdice, G. (2003). The Expediency of Culture: Uses of Culture in the Global Era. Durham, NC: Duke University. Zenovich, J.A. and Cooks, L. (2018). A feminist postsocialist approach to the intercultural communication of rape at the ICTY. Central States Communication Association 69 (4): 404–420. Žižek, S. (2020). Pandemic!: Covid-­19 Shakes the World. New York: Polity.



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Further Reading Brown, W. (2019). In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West. New York: Columbia. Butler, J. (2021). The Force of Non-­violence. London: Verso. Chenoweth, E. (2021). Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know. New York: Oxford University Press. Frey, L.R. and Carragee, K.M. (2016). Seizing the social justice opportunity: communication activism research at a politically critical juncture – epilogue. International and Intercultural Communication Annual 10: 4027–4033. Giroux, H.A. (2021). Race, Politics, and Pandemic Pedagogy: Education in a Time of Crisis. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Hartsock, N.C.M. (1998). The Feminist Standpoint Revisited and Other Essays. Boulder, CO: Westview. McGhee, H. (2021). The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together. New York: One World.

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Therapeutic Media Representations: Recreating and Contesting the Past in Poland Jolanta A. Drzewiecka Università della Svizzera italiana, Lugano, Switzerland

The publication of the Jan Tomasz Gross’ book Neighbors (2002) about the murder of Jewish Poles by the gentile Poles living in the town of Jedwabne under Nazi orchestration was a watershed moment in discussions about relations between gentile and Jewish Poles in the past. An intense debate about the book and its implications erupted in the Polish media in 2001 before the book was about to be published in the United States. The debate was characterized by discursive mechanisms that blocked and disabled this new knowledge as well as, more sparse, recognition of the specificity of the Jewish Poles’ experiences in the past (Drzewiecka  2014). Many works by Polish historians followed, including works about the murder of Jewish Poles emerging from hiding after the Nazi forces were defeated (e.g. Engelking 2011; Grabowski 2011; Gross 2011). This essay examines how the “difficult past” was represented by the newspaper 15 years after the debate and the discursive features of this representation. I found that several articles prompted “recognition of and response to the incommensurable character of the historical experience of others,” that Simon (2006, p. 188) argues is key to the renegotiation of democratic institutions and commitments. To elucidate the dynamics of the presentation of the knowledge about the past, I combine the Discourse-­ Historical Approach (hereafter DHA) (Reisigl and Wodak  2009; Van Leeuwen and Wodak  1999; Wodak  2015) with scholarship on journalism and memory (Edy  1999; Meyers 2019). Based on the former, I identified the discursive strategies of nominalization and perspectivization performed in the texts. I further identified two new forms of the intensification strategy: irony and haunting. Finally, employing media research on journalistic uses of history, I discuss how historical knowledge was recontextualized and illuminate three storytelling strategies: reporting distortions, personal stories, and recovering Jewish presence, that encouraged a critical reading of the past. These storytelling strategies exposed and delegitimated distortions and erasures. While presented as a historical approach to text analysis, DHA asserts the importance of analyzing the historical context of any text and the events it represents through the concept of intertextuality, thereby one can analyze how historical knowledge is recontextualized in media texts. Further, analysis consists in integrating available historical knowledge to elucidate meanings and discursive strategies in a text and can also involve analyzing diachronic change in types and genres of discourse (Reisigl and Wodak 2009). But this still offers rather limited tools for analysis of how the past is represented as DHA relies on standard Critical Discourse Analysis tools. I expand its analytical power by identifying how newspaper texts linked events in the The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication, Second Edition. Edited by Thomas K. Nakayama and Rona Tamiko Halualani. © 2024 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2024 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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present to findings of historical research, and, in critical discourse theory terms, recontextualized historians’ works in the media. I further offer two forms of recontextualization: recounts and references. Linking, recounts and references activate the knowledge of the past and make it more difficult to labour ignorance of the past violence, and further, prompt recognition of the continuing legacy and relevance of historical knowledge for the present.

Public Memories and Intercultural Communication The “past/history-­present/future dialectic is one of the key dynamics of intercultural communication” (Martin and Nakayama  1999) but historical contextualizing of intercultural relations and interactions is still relatively marginal in the field. This limited attention to history results in impoverished understanding of how power and ideology operate in constitution of differences (Drzewiecka et al. 2016). While history is explicitly named in the dialectic, memory is a related but separate process implicated in the past-­ present/future dialectic as memories turn to the past but are produced in response to present needs or exigencies and oriented toward our desires for the future (Irwin-­Zarecka  1990,  1994). Public memories are rich discourses engaging ideas from history selectively and creatively in different forms and thus articulating relations among groups and ideologies that underpin them. From an intercultural perspective, analyzing how public memories are constructed involves attending to marginalized or silenced voices that at the grassroots level seek healing connections among groups to advance causes of social justice (Katriel 2016). Hassan (2016) exhorts communication scholars to pay attention to various forms of memoricide, an issue that is becoming only more urgent. Memories of violence during Shoa are just one such case in need of continued attention. As Katriel (1994) noted, memory and history are dialectically connected. Both history and memory are ongoing processes subject to new and conflicting interpretations. They are ­separate processes with an indeterminate connection between them. That is, what is forgotten or remembered and how has a tenuous relationship to historians’ interpretations and contestations. Such works certainly help call attention to erasures and absences but they do not guarantee that past events will be remembered or remembered according to the historical record and take into account its changing interpretations. Gross’s book reached beyond historian’s circles into the public sphere. It is credited with spurring many commemorative projects. He and other historians were also followed by many ground-­breaking works including those on the exploitation and murder of Jewish Poles who were in or came out of hiding from the Nazis (Engelking 2011; Grabowski 2011; Gross 2011). Engagement with the past that recognizes “the incommensurable character of the historical experience of others” encourages reexamination of social relations as central to the renewal of democratic commitments and institutions (Simon  2006, p.  188). As Taylor (1992) noted, recognition is a vital human need and precondition for justice in pluralistic societies. In relation to memories, Simon (2006) argues, examining “difficult pasts” poses many pedagogical possibilities and risks. Recognition of the “incommensurability” of experience and remembering involves accepting a loss “of what is familiar and recognizably reassuring in order to consider the prospects of remembering and living otherwise” (Simon 2006, p. 188). Memories of violence can become pedagogical tools (Owen and Ehrenhaus 2010). But a necessary challenge of dominant memories held by dominant groups risks misrecognition and “a conceit of redemption.” Simon (2006) embraced Adorno’s (1974) idea of the importance of redemptive knowledge without conceit that redemption is possible. Hence, constructing redemptive ­narratives, as Dibley (2005) argues, should be rejected. In their place, postcolonial forms of remembering that eschew authoritarian closures offer avenues toward joint futures (Hartnett et al. 2020).



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Media play an important role in facilitating both outcomes as they create useable pasts that serve certain political goals and identity projects (Jackson 2021; Zelizer 1995). Media tend to reproduce hegemonic versions of public memories in the service of dominant groups but also provide a platform for debates before a hegemonic closure is made (Hume 2010). In a foundational work, Edy (1999) did not find much opportunity for the media to encourage readers to see the past critically. She identified three types of stories with allusions to the past: commemorations, historical analogies, and historical context which tend to use history but nevertheless the past appears irrelevant or historical interpretations are presented as facts. More recently, Meyers (2019) found that journalists employed critical and even subversive storytelling strategies that encouraged rereading of the Israeli past. Levy and Sznaider (2011) argued that media might facilitate recognition of the other and thus reconciliation based on their study of the globalization of Holocaust memories. Global “memoryscapes” may construct connections across borders (Phillips and Reyes 2011). The development of digital technologies makes it possible to create and share archives across borders that contribute to global memoryscapes fueling intentions and debates (Houdek 2016). However, while viewers might be induced to feel belonging to a global community, they nevertheless tend not to challenge the primacy of nation as a moral community for remembering (Kyriakidou 2017; Lee 2016; Rapson 2012). Media memories of nations’ past reproduce imagined communities and the “national symbolic” which “transforms individuals into subjects of a collectively held history. Its transitional icons, its metaphors, its heroes, its rituals, and its narratives provide an alphabet for a collective consciousness of national subjectivity” (Berlant 1991, p. 20). As Browne (1999) argued, public memories are a barometer of anxieties over national symbolics. Selective amnesia silences past injustices maintaining dominant imaginaries of the nation (Hoerl 2012). In the Polish national symbolic, Jewish Poles figured as the internal Other (Bauman 1989). Jewish settlements in Poland started in the eleventh century becoming significant in Polish cultural and economic life over time but included in the national imagination only as the Other within. Tragically, 90% of the Jewish population perished in the Shoa and many survivors left, under duress. Even though a memorial commemorating Jewish genocide was erected in Warsaw, there was no mourning of Jewish Poles as Polish citizens targeted for extermination after the war ended. Even more, the specificity of the Jewish experience was erased, most notably in the Auschwitz Museum (Irwin-­Zarecka 1990, 1994). Although there were few Jewish Poles left, estimated at between about 5–15 000 in a country of 38 million, the conceptual category of “the Jew” as the Other, that had already been split from any real Jewish Poles – even when the community was large and significant in Polish cultural and economic life  – ­continued in Polish national imagination (Bauman 1989).

The “Jew” in the Polish National Memories The Polish national symbolic, animated by memories of bravery and suffering during World War II, was challenged by Gross’ book Neighbors. The book presented historical evidence that gentile inhabitants of the small town of Jedwabne rounded up their Jewish Polish neighbors into a barn and burned them alive, albeit under the Nazi orchestration that released ethnic hatreds. A subsequent investigation by the Institute of National Memory found that around 40 gentile Poles murdered around 350 Jewish Poles that day. But before this investigation was undertaken, an intense debate erupted in the media over the implications of the book for the nation and its history and Jewish-­gentile relations (Drzewiecka 2014). Damningly, Tokarska-­Bakir (2001) noted that “our memory is a place where there are no Jews,” recognizing that after the devastation of the Jewish Polish community, Jewish Poles were also erased from national memory. Numerous commentators proclaimed that Polish memory would never be the same. How Poland would be perceived internationally was a frequent concern expressed by the participants.

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As I found in my analysis, the debate was in great measure characterized by aphasic speech (Drzewiecka 2014). Aphasia is a dysfunction whereby dissociations and blockages make it possible to simultaneously know the past but speak as if not knowing it, as the symbolic limits make knowledge unspeakable (Stoler 2011). Most participants claimed that Gross’s findings were inconceivable and did not believe them through arguments plagued by defensiveness, misrecognitions, and metonymic reductions displacing meanings. Others accepted the findings but, while they expressed shame as a sign of their virtue, they immediately converted it into pride in the nation that can admit its sins and move on. However, they limited the implications of Gross’s findings to the past and perpetuated symbolic exclusions and distortions, ultimately displacing Jewish Poles from the nation. Mostly, they focused on healing the wound done to the nation. As a metaphor, aphasia calls attention to systemic linguistic dysfunctions that block and dissociate knowledge rendering it unknowable (Stoler 2011) or demonstrate a lack in the linguistic system, “the pathology of the symbolic,” that limits the ability to articulate certain ideas (Oushakine 2000, p. 994). Misrecognition of the other, the other’s experience and the implications of past violence and metonymic linguistic reductions were the key aphastic discursive mechanisms that structurally shaped what was discussed. They blocked the implications of the past violence protecting the gentile national identity as innocent and displaced “Jews” from the nation. There were, however, some promising strands in the debate that opened up further questions, brought up pertinent, heretofore ignored, information, and indeed recognized that Jewish Poles had a different historical experience from gentile Poles. Most powerfully, they drew connections to the present and challenged the all too easy but persistent and pernicious distinction between “Jews” and “Poles.” While they constituted a minority in the overall debate, they did create some openings for recognition of the “difficult past” opening the way for comprehending the legacy of racial violence. This debate strand just began the work that would have to lead to letting go of the fictional gentile national Polish self as it unblocked knowledge of the past. The inability to move beyond the labels: “Poles” and “Jews” or “Polish Jews” was a structural obstruction to both. Significantly, since the publication of Neighbors, important historical work revealed the violence and complexities in gentile-­Jewish relations, including violence against Jewish Poles who were in hiding or returning to their homes, and the theft of their property (e.g. Engelking 2011; Grabowski  2011; Gross  2011). Following my earlier paper that identified systemic impairments in the discourses about the past, this essay inquires into the discursive mechanisms present after the new important work of historians. Without drawing any causal links, this chapter examines what information was presented and what knowledge of the past was activated. Conversely, the chapter also queries if there were any and what discursive dysfunctions in the rendering of the Jewish Polish past. To this end, I analyzed news articles and op-­ed pieces published in the same newspaper as the original debate but 15 years later, in 2016.

Recognizing Jewish Polish Past The articles clustered around the following themes: reporting anti-­Semitic distortions, prompting recognition of incommensurability, and recovering Jewish presence.

Reporting Anti-­Semitic Distortions Several articles called attention to distortions or attempted distortions in the presentation of the Jewish Polish past. These included changes in commemorations of the anniversary of the Jewish ghetto uprising and the museum displays. Another article investigated anti-­Semitic mythologizing in a church publication. An erasure of Jewish Polish heritage was subject of



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another report. These articles performed the function of the press as “a watchdog” calling out issues of public interest thereby constituting anti-­Semitic distortions to the presentation of the past as issues of public interest. The change to the commemoration of the Warsaw ghetto uprising whereby the traditional sirens announcing the commemoration were to be mute was the subject of an op-­ ed (Karpieszuk  2016). The commentary challenged the official reason of compliance with noise ordinance and asserted that the commemoration was particularly important “during this difficult time, when one can hear anti-­Semitic commentaries on Polish Television [the state channel], when the breaks have been released, and the language of the public debates are reminiscent of claims from March’68” (Karpieszuk  2016). The article not only highlighted the subduing of the commemorations but also linked it to the past and to the current broader increase in anti-­Semitic language in the media. This contextualized the muting of the sirens giving it ­significance beyond the commemorations. A follow-­up news article informed about the scaled-­down independent commemorations in the absence of the government (Urzykowski 2016a, b). The article reported that the access to the main monument, which marked a starting point for a commemorative march, was blocked by official barriers. Several sources critical of the government’s restrictive decisions were quoted. Further, the article gave information about an appeal to remember from the Student Antifascist Committee providing a quote. The articles thus pointed out the actions that diminished the scale and character of the commemorations and gave voice to the opposition calling attention to the anniversary and to the silencing. Several articles focused on two relatively new museums and the political pressure exerted on them by politicians as well as changes introduced by the new leadership appointed by the government. The World War II Museum in Gdansk is a high-­profile museum whose new leadership implemented the proposed changes in the presentation of the Jewish-­gentile relations during World War II by the recently elected government. Under a telling headline: “‘Good change’ in the Museum of World War II wants to correct Jedwabne,” an article reported that the changes involved emphasized the role of Nazis in fomenting the violence in Jedwabne (Flieger 2016a). The new team also objected to presenting the Jedwabne massacre in the context of other Jewish pogroms and any indications of anti-­Semitism. Museums play a very important role in developing memories for the public. Following Tony Bennett’s insights based on Foucault, museums have long been considered sites of governmentality that attempt to unobtrusively regulate citizens’ conduct and thus construct a particular subjectivity (Bennett 2006) Museums have also been sites of contestation over how to present the past (Anderson 2018; Hasian and Wood 2010). The news article highlighted the proposed changes that would be very consequential to the public memory of the Jedwabne massacre. Crucially, it reminded readers of the findings of the investigation of the massacre carried out by the state Institute of National Remembrance, and showed that those findings were being sidelined. It also presented justifications for the original exhibit from the former director. It thus countered the proposed changes with factual information and rationale for the exhibit about to be changed. A later article reported “impressions” from the new exhibit which conveyed that “Poles were saving Jews. The end. Period” and that the visitors “leave with a notion that this was the only position Poles took towards Jews during the war” (Flieger 2016b). The article then reported from the work of historian Barbara Engelking that such a position was just one among seven, including: “one time help, long term help, denial of help, indifference and murder” (Flieger  2016b). The article thus highlighted the museological strategy of disconnecting knowledge produced by historians and presenting a redemptive narrative that would feed a sense of heroic national identity. The linking of the proposed or de facto changes to the ­historical knowledge not only substantiated the objections to the changes but invited the ­consideration of their significance for understanding the past.

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In 2005, a museum of the History of Polish Jews, Polin, opened in Warsaw to general approbation. An article reported that a senator objected to a new exhibit in the museum that presented the anti-­Semitic government battle in March 1968 (Sulowski 2016). Then, amidst student protests, the Polish government engaged in anti-­Semitic scapegoating for its failures and drove many Jewish Poles to emigrate. The senator asked a minister to intervene because the exhibit “shows a false context and joins a political discussion by taking a stance on one side of the conflict,” presents “defamatory contents” and thus does not serve the cause of reconciliation between “Poles and Jews” (Sulowski 2016). The article noted that the exhibit connected the past to contemporary examples of the language of hate, including an anti-­Semitic tweet about the Jewish background of a senator whose father was Jewish. The article then pointed out that it was the senator’s father who had changed the last name and informed readers that criticizing his father for his involvement in the communist structures had been met with strong criticism. At the end, the article informed that the museum’s director offered to guide the tweet’s author through the exhibit presenting the problem of anti-­Semitism. The article exposed the still not uncommon absurdity of suspecting or exposing someone as Jewish in Poland, namely being Jewish as a liability, as anti-­Semitic. Like Karpieszuk’s (2016) piece above and the exhibit itself, this article also connected the anti-­Semitism of March 1968 to the present. Anti-­Semitic mythologizing was a subject of an investigative piece following a complaint from one of the readers about article presenting “profanation of the holy wafer by Jews” in the church of Bożego Ciała by a monthly magazine of a Wroclaw archdiocese (Wiśniewska 2016a, b, 31 August). As the article noted, while recounting the old myth, the author did not distance himself from it or the tablets illustrating the “event” and their inscriptions that were reproduced in the article. Although the author acknowledged that the “story” was used as a justification for anti-­Semitic attacks, he did not question the veracity of the story and at times treated it as if it were factual. The spokesman of the archdiocese questioned by the journalist rejected the accusations arguing that the author presented the past with a historian’s distance. The article ended with a quote from the guide who stated: “in face of the increasing wave of nationalism, neofascism, and racism and xenophobia, rewarming of Middle Aged anti-­Semitic legends is like playing with fire.” This last quote highlights the significance of the various changes and distortions regarding the presentation of the past in the present in the various articles published by the newspaper. The presentation of the work of historians challenged misconceptions and myths. The articles did not simply add this information to create a balanced representation or an illustrative analogy but specifically delegitimated the distortions through historical knowledge. This linking not only presented but also activated the historical knowledge. The historical knowledge troubles, as we see below.

Anti-­Semitic Ghosts Wyborcza reminded readers of anti-­Semitic violence perpetrated by the state and gentile Poles in the years immediately before and after World War II. Articles presented findings of historical research as well as personal experiences. They showed that Jewish Poles suffered not only from the Nazis but also from their fellow nationals. In effect, they spoke against some recent efforts to equalize the World War II experience of Jewish and gentile Poles (Machcewicz 2012). The articles included reports of findings presented in new historical works creating an ­important interface between historians and the public. There were also opinion pieces that conveyed historical knowledge and personal experiences that were animated by personal affect. These texts utilized the discursive strategies of nominalization, perspectivation, irony, and haunting.



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New findings from historical research were presented in two articles. One reported an investigation of a massacre of a group of 26 “Jews” who were traveling in a truck out of Poland toward Palestine (Kuraś 2016c, 4 May). The research was conducted by the paper’s journalist, Jerzy Wójcik, and published in a new book. The massacre was conducted by a partisan division acting under orders to execute a soldier, who was hired to protect the group of Jewish Poles, for a crime he had committed earlier. The partisans executed the Jewish Poles as well, killing 11 and injuring seven (including children). While some managed to escape, one of them, a 10 year old boy, was helped by one of the partisans. The article recounted painful details and named the victims referring to them as “inhabitants of Poland,” taking the phrase from another historical account. It then recounted incredulity, denials, mitigations, and accusations of defamation expressed at a public meeting with the book’s author because the partisans are considered national heroes who fought against fascism and communism during World War II. But, as the article reported, some audience members also stated, “you have to write about how it was.” The article then emphasized the historical importance of the findings. It recontextualized not only the research results but also the contestation shedding light on the various defenses and refusals of knowledge. Findings from a new dissertation, to be defended at the University of Warsaw, examined violence against the Jewish population in the mountain region, Podhale, were recontextualized for the readers (Kuraś 2016a, b). The article concentrated on attacks on an orphanage in the small resort town of Rabka. Children who survived the Holocaust, ill or undernourished, were transported there for recuperation in June and July 1945, soon after World War II ended. The orphanage was attacked three times by local groups incited by a local priest and a teacher whose students participated in the attacks. Their goal was to reportedly scare the Jewish population into leaving Poland. As the article reported, the children thought that the attacks were carried out by Germans and the war was still going on. However, the article noted that they also experienced hostility from the local population when out on walks during the day. This important information prompted readers to consider that the war did not end for Jewish Poles when it ended for gentile Poles. The orphanage had to be guarded by the police, soldiers, and volunteers. Already on 28 August that same year, the orphanage was closed and the children were moved elsewhere for their safety. The article recounted stories of several children and the circumstances under which they lost their parents as well as a comment from one of the guards who protected them. These affectively animated stories, showing the traumatic effects of the violence of Shoa followed by anti-­Semitic violence from gentile Poles, brought first hand accounts and details from the targeted persons. The article named the children, some of the guards, and the instigators of the attacks. The nominalization personalized the effects of the violence. The paper reported that the official verdict read that the target of the attacks was the new socialist state police thus denying its anti-­Semitic purpose. The priest was sentenced and after spending four years in prison was treated as an anti-­communist hero. The teacher was sentenced to five years but never went to prison due to an amnesty. Like the article discussed above, this one brought historical research to the attention of the readers, presented information about the past violence and the effort to obscure its nature and personalized its traumatic effects. Two op-­ed pieces presented historical information from a personal perspective and drew connections between the past and the present. Under a headline, “Anti-­Semitic ghosts of the Three Crosses square,” an op-­ed contributor reminded readers that anti-­Semitic nationalist violence in Warsaw in 1922 was carried out under slogans such as “Long live Poland free of Jews” and aimed to remove “Jews” from the nation (Szczęśniak  2016). The violence was spurred in part by the election of Gabriel Narutowicz as the first president of Poland after the country regained its independence following World War I; he was assassinated five days after being elected. The article noted: “He received support of Jews, Ukrainians, Belorussians, and

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Germans from the national minorities block. So, simply, the citizens of the second Polish Republic.” “Jews” were identified as “citizens” of Poland which invoked their full rights even as they were not named “Poles.” The author referred to a historical work that described those events, adding: “Read – you will feel anger.” The author noted her reluctance to pass through the square in Warsaw where the violence took place, wondering if it was affected by its violent past: “Maybe phantoms of the beaten up and killed, or the passive policemen and the passive politicians appear here,” she rhetorically asked at the end (Szczęśniak 2016). When the phantoms were invoked, the past was brought into a simultaneity with the present highlighting the unresolved questions surrounding troubling events and warning of a compulsion to repeat the past (Derrida 1994). The idiom of haunting appeared in another headline: “In Poland once again a demon of anti-­Semitism has been aroused” (Kutz  2016) introducing an opinion piece that reminded readers of the politics of the anti-­Semitic cleansing in March 1968. In response to protests by students, the government blamed “Jews for its failings and forced many people to leave.” The piece also connected that past to the violence increasing at the time. The author, who lived through those events, reminisced about his colleagues who had to or chose to leave, marked as other, alienated and victimized by anti-­Semitism. He observed: “the biggest turpitude of the March explosions was that they targeted the most assimilated group.” It thus countered the discourse about “Jews” self-­segregating and living in their separate communities in Poland. The issues facing Jewish-­gentile Polish relations center on the past and the ongoing constitution of “Jewish” otherness that continually defines the Polish subject. The places and past events haunt. Haunting is a state in which what has been unresolved, repressed, concealed, or even erased at a social level, makes itself felt and alive in the present because “disturbed feelings cannot be put away” (Gordon 1997, p. xvi). Thinking about past events through the idiom of haunting is an alternative way of seeing and engaging because ghosts are unrepresentable (Auchter 2014). The specter represents what is invisible, as Derrida puts it, “We do not see who looks at us” (Derrida,  1994). Ghosts and demons trouble in these two articles. They point to events that had not been properly recognized and to the fractured self’s dependence on the other. But a ghost also “presents itself as a sign to the thinker that there is a chance in the fight for the oppressed past” (Gordon 1997, p. 64). References to ghosts and haunting in these pieces gesture to undertones troubling the persistent symbolic violence in the representation of the troubled past. The ghost disturbs, when repressed; it returns, prompting us toward recognition of the other. Kutz (2016) briefly mentioned one of the persistent accusations against “Jews” for their leftist and communist leanings which are conceived as a “crime” against Poland and identified with the Soviet oppression (Śpiewak 2012). In this articulation, “Jews” are conceived as internal enemies, never to be trusted, and associated with anything that is alien to the nation. Kutz simply stated, “Poles from Jewish backgrounds were always leftists because it is difficult to imagine a Jew-­nationalist.” This very simple statement is rich with implications as it constructs an oxymoron that efficiently and directly “gets” at the nature of the exclusionary nationalism that targeted Jewish Poles as enemies of the nation. The author similarly simply added that Jewish Poles who escaped to the Soviet Union survived Shoa and that they were not accepted to the Western-­oriented Polish army in exile. He referred to a historical book that described those issues but was censored for 25 years. This strategy of very short and direct statements had a pronounced illocutionary force that I identify as a new version of the intensification-­mitigation strategy (Wodak 2015): irony. The strategy works because it activates knowledge that is present, even if denied, while its simplicity disarmed protestations and pierced through denials. The author then stated that “it is impossible to separate the history of Poles and Jews because they are the same Poles, only tied to different ethnic cultures. The multi century long history of Jews in Poland is part of Polish history. [. . .] And the time has come to unite, not to divide” (Kutz 2016). Drawing attention to the entanglement of the



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two groups’ histories challenged the tendency of separation. Even more, the categorization of “Jews” as “Poles” includes them in Polish history. In addition to the commentary by Kazimierz Kutz, a film director and a writer, who witnessed the student protests and subsequent anti-­Semitic cleansing of March 1968, Wyborcza published three interviews with other witnesses. One of them was Marian Marzyński, a filmmaker who had moved to the United States. The interview offered both personalization and perspectivation of the “cleansing” (Piekarska  2016). These two strategies are animated by personal recollections conveying experiences of anti-­Semitism as an ever lurking threat to inclusion, and cultural integration and attachment. Marzyński talked about his emigration forced by “moral blackmail” as troubling him to this day as he maintained close connections to Poland and feels torn between the United States where he lives and Poland. He also troubled by the present stating: “I come to Poland and it turns out that nothing has changed in 50 years,” a statement that headlines the interview. Marzyński commented on the pronouncements of equal suffering of Jewish and gentile Poles during World War II by the then Polish prime minister. He speculated that the government statements aimed to “create a new situation when the sleeping demons wake up and connect with the government.” He then offered an example of an encounter with a young man dressed up as a soldier from World War II who started to “spew slop” upon hearing that Marzyński was Jewish. The “sleeping demons” point to the unresolved nature of the troubling events that can be sidelined but do not go away affecting the present. In addition to these longer pieces, there were also shorter articles or passing references that nevertheless had potential to affect. While such passing references would not normally be objects of sustained analysis, they played an important role in activating knowledge. An article discussing the decommunization act, that aims to penalize and remove ties to the Polish communist past, among other goals, noted that one of its targets was a street bearing the name Professor Stanisław Kulczyński who, as the paper noted, was the only rector who did not consent to the “ghetto lawkowe” separating Jewish Polish students from gentile Polish students (Kozioł  2016a). This short sentence, an apparition from the past, reminded readers of the segregation of Jewish Polish students at Polish universities. An infusion of this reminder is important precisely because it is not treated as a full subject on its own but is integrated within a broader story. This makes it harder to ignore or pass over this history which is integrated in the larger history of the country.

Recovering Jewish Presence Polish national history includes practices of dismantling and absorbing Jewish Polish heritage after the destruction carried out by the Nazis. Many sites and artifacts of Jewish heritage are now being recovered and destruction of sites, such as the blowing up of the Grand Synagog in Warsaw, are commemorated. The articles expressing this theme gave information about such recoveries as well as the converse, the attempts to erase Jewish presence, thereby recovering it in news. Jewish cemeteries are among the few visible traces of Jewish material presence in Poland. Nevertheless, they had also been subject to destruction. A short news article reported that matzevas, found on an abandoned property, were returned to a cemetery (Kozioł 2016b). The matzevas could not be read but were most likely were removed from one of the two Jewish cemeteries that were “liquidated after the war” when a bazaar and then a lawn were created on the site of one of them and a park on the site of the other. The article adds that for the past several years, matzevas were being found in different places in the region, sometimes as parts of new structures, such as a wall or a fountain. This information provided factual evidence of the presence of Jewish Poles and their culture in Poland and simultaneously the profound

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disregard for and violence to Jewish sites and heritage after World War II when very few Jewish Poles survived. These recovered dismembered matzevas haunt, reminding of “troubles” that could not be erased. While the recoveries are ongoing, there are also ongoing erasures of the contribution of Jewish Poles to Polish national culture. Such an erasure was a subject of an investigative piece focused on an apartment cooperative, “Spółdom,” that was established by Jewish Poles (Domagała 2016). Its current authorities, who “are proud of its hundred year history,” did not mention its Jewish Polish founders anywhere on their internet page or the physical property. When it was first founded at the end of the 1920s, the 36-­apartment “Spółdom” was innovative for its time. The article reported memories of a woman who lived in the cooperative and reminisced about its community feeling and the refuge its communal space provided to other Jewish Poles who did not live there but escaped there from anti-­Semitic attacks elsewhere, particularly in 1937–1938. The article told stories of other named inhabitants. The main focus of the article was the erasure of the Jewish Polish founders of “Spółdom.” It reported that the current information on its internet page stated its long history and talked about families losing their apartments which were taken over by the occupying Nazis, but said nothing about those families being Jewish or that many were transported to concentration camps. It also did not list the name of its first director, Lejba Gelibter. The article quoted a cultural institution director who stated, “for me, a person who for the last several years tries to talk about the past, about Jews who lived next to us, [. . .] this hurt me very much.” The cooperative’s director defended their presentation of the cooperative’s history saying that they never denied that the founding members were of “Moses faith” and since they were “Poles,” there was no need to state it. When pressed by the journalist, he responded that he may add that the creators were “Poles of Moses faith” but would not use the word “Jew.” This assertion was left without explanation. The paper then quoted the response from the cultural director who observed that based on that logic, “we should never talk about history of Jews because they were citizens of the Polish state. [. . .] In this way, everything can be carried towards the absurd.” This investigative piece confronted issues of recognition and naming. While the cooperative’s director defended erasing Jewishness by stating inclusion in Polishness, the cultural institution director’s statement categorized “Jews” as living next to Poles and thus excluded them from Polishness and placed them next to “us” – not us. The article thus confronted two exclusionary discursive practices, one that misrecognizes Jewish Poles as “Poles” by erasing their Jewishness, and the other one that places them “next to us,” as citizens but without naming them as “Jewish Poles.” The article reported that the cooperative director said that he would remove names of the cooperative presidents from the website, thereby avoiding having to name Jewish Poles and thus continuing the erasure. A postscriptum added to the article in 2018 stated that the names of all the presidents had been removed and there was no information about its Jewish creators. The article itself recovered the Jewish presence and called attention to the erasure.

Conclusions The newspaper performed an important “watchdog” function calling the reader’s attention to distortions and erasures of Jewish Polish historical facts, reminded them of anti-­Semitic violence in the past, and recovered information about Jewish Polish presence in the past. More than simply providing information, the paper constituted the Jewish Polish past and anti-­ Semitism in the past and in the present as issues of public interest. The linking of the past and the present activated knowledge and contributed to discourse that enabled the recognition and talking about the past. It invited a recognition of the violence suffered by Jewish Poles at the hands of gentile Poles. It was particularly important that the paper reported the findings



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of historical research as well its reception by audiences. The paper recontextualized the historical research in two forms: recounts and references. Some articles focused specifically on historical works recounting their findings. While they obviously could not discuss all of the findings, they provided sufficient detail to challenge persistent national myths. The paper also referenced historical information in relation to present events it was reporting. Here, the historical information and naming the historians as authorities on the subject delegitimated the distortions. Recounts and references activated historical knowledge by bringing it to readers’ attention, critically important in the face of institutional efforts to disable such knowledge. The recognition of the Other, a key element of democratic relations, was facilitated through discursive strategies of perspectivization and nominalization inviting readers to see the actual people behind the past events. This facilitated recognition of the different and incommensurable historical experience of Jewish Poles that Simon (2006) finds critical to the pedagogic character of memory and democratic institutions. However, all the events were presented within a national frame and the nation was the assumed moral community. This in itself does not necessarily constrain the pedagogic potential of the newspaper’s intervention into the formation of memory of the Jewish Polish past and gentile-­Jewish relations. What does constrain it is that the newspaper texts “danced” toward a recognition of Jewish Poles as Poles without overcoming the pernicious separation of “Jews” and “Poles,” a dysfunction in naming, that is discursively dominant in public discourses. The chapter further identified two forms of the CDA intensification strategy: irony and Semitic metonymy of Judeocommune haunting. Irony counteracted a persistent anti-­ hardened through circulation and sticky with negative affect. It was effective through its simplicity of capturing complexities of history in an impossible oxymoron. Haunting signals issues that have not been properly addressed but merely pushed aside and reappear demanding attention. Haunting appears specifically in the text via idioms of ghosts, demons, and apparitions invoked to convey issues that have been repressed or ignored but which make themselves felt, return to attention, and hover just below the surface of other texts. Haunting emerged as a form of criticism to address such issues beginning with Derrida (1994) and applied by Auchter (2014) and Gordon (1997) among others. Here, I identify it as a form of discursive strategy in which the texts themselves invoke the idiom of haunting to signal issues from the troubled past. In this sense, the texts showed a commitment to an ethical engagement with the past by journalists and columnists operating as memory agents (Meyers  2019). By making the past present and significant in different ways, the articles analyzed here invite readers to consider, perhaps even grapple with, what demands the past places on the present. From a critical intercultural communication studies perspective, present and future relations among groups are at stake in the analyses of what and how we remember as well as what we forget, as captured by the “past/history – present/future” dialectic (Martin and Nakyama 1999) but are still left largely unexamined by IC scholars. Power relations, a key concept for CICS, are negotiated in the present but also through how we live with the entanglements of heterogenous histories. As the growth of nationalism, populism, and fascism threaten us with history repeating itself, attention to silences, erasures, and distortions of as well as linking to the past might reinvigorate the “critical” in critical intercultural communication. It is important to highlight cases where individuals, groups, and/or the media invite us toward deeper historical consciousness, while we also remain critical of such efforts and how they might perpetuate some exclusions while opening other paths. Analyzing what and how is publicly remembered, offers critical intercultural scholars an understanding of not only how the past is wielded toward different goals but also unfolds the layers of present relations for deeper analysis that might point us toward “how to live in the present with each other” through renewed learning from as well as attention and accountability toward the past (Simon 2006).

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Kyriakidou, M. (2017). Remembering global disasters and the construction of metropolitan memory. Communication, Culture and Critique 10: 93–111. Lee, J. (2016). The “sacred” standing for the “fallen” spirits: Yasukuni Shrine and memory of war. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 9: 368–388. Levy, D. and Sznaider, N. (2011). Cosmopolitan memory and human rights. In: The Ashgate Research Companion to Cosmopolitanism (eds. M. Rovisco and M. Nowicka), 195–210. Aldershot: Ashgate. Machcewicz, P. (2012). Spory o historię, 2001–2011. Kraków: Znak. Martin, J. and Nakayama, T. (1999). Thinking dialectically about culture and communication. Communication Theory 9: 1–25. Meyers, O. (2019). The critical potential of commemorative journalism. Journalism 22: 1682–1701. Oushakine, S. (2000). In the state of post-­soviet aphasia: symbolic development in contemporary Russia. Europe-­Asia Studies 52: 991–1016. Owen, S. and Ehrenhaus, P. (2010). Communities of memory, entanglements, and claims of the past on the present: reading race trauma through “the Green Mile.”. Critical Studies in Media Communication 2: 131–154. Phillips, K.R. and Reyes, G.M. (2011). Global Memoryscapes: Contesting Remembrance in a Transnational Age. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. Rapson, J. (2012). Mobilising Lidice: cosmopolitan memory between theory and practice. Culture, Theory and Critique 53: 129–145. Reisigl, M. and Wodak, R. (2009). The discourse-­historical approach (DHA). In: Methods for Critical Discourse Analysis (2nd rev. ed.) (eds. R. Wodak and M. Meyer), 87–121. London: Sage. Simon, R. (2006). The terrible gift: museums and the possibility of hope without consolation. Museum Management and Curatorship 21: 187–205. Śpiewak, P. (2012). Żydokumuna. Poland: Czerwone i Czarne. Stoler, A.L. (2011). Colonial aphasia: race and disabled histories in France. Public Culture 23: 121–156. Taylor, C. (1992). The Politics of Recognition. In: Multiculturalism and the Politics of Recognition (ed. A. Gutmann), 25–74. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Tokarska-­Bakir, J. (2001, 13–14 January). Obsesja niewinności. Gazeta Wyborcza (13–14 January), p. 22. Van Leeuwen, T.V. and Wodak, R. (1999). Legitimizing immigration control: a discourse historical analysis. Discourse Studies 1 (83): 118. Wodak, R. (2015). Critical discourse analsis, discourse-­ historical analysis. In: The International Encyclopedia of Language and Social Interaction (ed. K. Tracy). Wiley. Zelizer, B. (1995). Reading the past against the grain: the shape of memory studies. Critical Studies in Mass Communication 12 (214): 239.

Gazeta Wyborcza Articles Flieger, E. (2016a, 2 February). “Dobra zmiana” w Muzeum II Wojny Światowej chce poprawić Jedwabne. Flieger, E. (2016b, 6 February). Muzeum II Wojny Światowej w nowej odsłonie: Pilecki urósł, Kolbe “ewangelizuje Żydów,” Polska sama wygrała wojnę Domagała, M. (2016, 7 February). Żydowska spółdzielnia mieszkaniowa. Wymazana część historii miasta. Karpieszuk, W. (2016, 2 February). PiS-­owi trudno uczcić żydowski zryw. Rocznica powstania w getcie warszawskim bez syren. Kuraś, B. (2016a, 4 May). Wniosek z dziennikarskiego dochodzenia: “Ogniowcy” mordowali Żydów. Kuraś, B. (2016b, 10 June). “Skupiska żydowskie przepędzi się. . . .” Napady w Rabce na dzieci ocalałe z Holokaustu. Kuraś, B. (2016c, 4 May). Wniosek z dziennikarskiego dochodzenia: “Ogniowcy” mordowali Żydów. Kutz, K. (2016 3 February). W Polsce znów wzniecono demona antysemityzmu. Kozioł, M. (2016a, 3 February). Ustawa dekomunizacyjna zaskarżona. Kozioł, M. (2016b, 5 February). Macewy z Bema wróciły już na cmentarz.

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Piekarska, M. (2016, 3 February). Marian Marzyński: Przyjeżdżam do Polski i okazuje się, że przez 50 lat niewiele się zmieniło. Sulowski, K. (2016, 3 February). Senator PiS o Muzeum Polin: “Stało się narzędziem politycznym.” Prosi o interwencję ministra. Szczęśniak, A. (2016, 2 February). Antysemickie duchy placu Trzech Krzyży. Urzykowski, T. (2016a, 5 February). “Ognisty wybuch uniósł się do chmur.” Dziś 74. rocznica zburzenia Wielkiej Synagogi. Urzykowski, T. (2016b, 4 February). Niezależne obchody rocznicy powstania w getcie warszawskim. Bez prezydenta i rządu. Wiśniewska, K. (2016a, 31 August) Information and tablets portraying profanation of the holy wafer by Jews in the church of Bożego Ciała in Poznan. Wiśniewska, K. (2016b, 31 August). Żydzi, profanacja i cud. Ksiądz-­historyk odgrzewa antysemickie opowieści.

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A Call for Transformative Cultural Collaboration: Jewish Identity, the Race-­religion Constellation, and Fighting Back Against White Nationalism Miriam Shoshana Sobre University of Texas at San Antonio

Introduction In Black Feminist Thought, Patricia Hill Collins (1990) informs us that “Partiality and not universality is the condition of being heard; individuals and groups forwarding knowledge claims without owning their position are deemed less credible than those who do” (p. 236). As a white Jewish person with Sephardic and Ashkenazic family, I need to be able to continue conversations about the intersectionalities of oppression that implicate me and other Jewish people on the side of the oppressors as well as the oppressed. As I begin this chapter, I want to make clear that by some estimates (e.g. DellaPergola  2011), 80% of currently-­living, self-­ identified Jews in the United States also self-­identify as White-­Ashkenazic Jews. And from that perspective, many Jews have been the beneficiaries of White privilege, both in the United States and to a lesser extent, in Europe. When examining Judaism as a race, a religion, a nationality, a diaspora, a culture and an ethnicity, there is an incredible amount of sticky and slippery interstices, overlapping positionalities of privilege and oppression that will take more than an essay to work through. Finally, while I am critiquing some critical intercultural theoretical approaches in this chapter, this is by no means meant to detract from the searing importance of anti-­racism, particularly when that racism continues to lead to violent attacks on Black lives in this country and beyond. This essay, a revised portion of a chapter from Sobre (2023) book on Jewish identity in the United States, is my way of entering the conversation of critical intercultural communication scholars (another category I self-­identify as a member of), who often do not include religious and spiritual identities in our theorizing and activist work. During my work for this book project, I have interviewed over 70 people who self-identify as Jews and mostly US Americans, who also self-­identify as Black, Asian, Latinx, Middle Eastern, Arabic-­speaking, queer, conservative, Modern Orthodox, Reform, Reconstructionist, Sephardim, Ashkenazic, Mizrahi, Atheist, and Agnostic – and in conducting these interviews, I only scratched the surface in terms of the lived experience of being Jewish AND (many other identities). However, this essay is not empirical but rather theoretical in nature. That said, I am writing this because after listening to so many varied Jewish voices, I feel very The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication, Second Edition. Edited by Thomas K. Nakayama and Rona Tamiko Halualani. © 2024 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2024 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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strongly that members of non-­mainstream religions (in US America and other parts of the world) that also have ethnic ties and cultural identities, often face a form of Oppression Olympics in critical intercultural communication. This involves some oppressive factors that have been at best overlooked and at worst vilified by members of our profession, which claims to embrace and engage difference but only seems to do so at times through certain intersections while dismissing others. I am addressing the particular case study of Jews in US America because this is a group I am a part of; also, the incidences of antisemitism in the United States from 2016 through today have increased to over 2000 a year, the highest they have been in this country since the Anti-­Defamation League began keeping track in 1979 (Wright et al. 2021). Further, calls by Trump-­empowered White Nationalist groups demand the eradication of the Jewish people. While, as I have noted, those who identify as Jewish in the world today are overwhelmingly white, I want to problematize the notion that all Jews are white and wealthy, as well as the idea that if someone is NOT white and Jewish, then they must only be “half” Jewish, the other half being Black, Latinx, Middle Eastern, etc. There is also the question of Israel, its divisive nature for US American and other Jews, and the idea that Palestinians should not be held accountable for German crimes against humanity through racist policies in Israel spurred by the colonialist actions of the United Kingdom (who administered Palestine between 1920 and 1948). US American Jews have been slave holders, abolitionists, and targets of hate groups. We have been cast as suspicious, told we are not White enough/too ethnically different, told we are racially inferior, told we are too White, told we are paranoid, unworthy of taking parts in conversations about cultural oppression as it is assumed that antisemitism no longer exists in the world, even as it grows in various populist regimes around the world right now. We have been accused of lying about the Holocaust, killing Jesus (this is one I’ve heard personally more than once), and myriad other presumptuous and at times cruel assumptions have been made about this group throughout its history, both in the United States and beyond. The recent events during the Trump administration, who gave light and voice to racist and antisemitic groups around the country, culminated in the Pittsburg Synagogue shooting and finally the insurrection that unfolded on 6 January 2021, when rioters breached the United States Capitol building.

The Capitol Insurrection and a Rationale On 6  January 2021, an insurrection took place in the United States Capitol Building in Washington DC. This violent event was hatched and facilitated by primarily white nationalists and Trump supporters, and is widely recognized to be a direct result of Trump’s Stop the Steal rhetoric and an organized rally where Trump spoke earlier that day. This rally and its aftermath incited acts of violence including injuring 140 people and killing five, as well as extreme death threats against Vice President Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi, among several other politicians present. This insurrection was carefully planned during the weeks between Biden’s clear defeat of Trump in the presidential election and the day that the Senate was set to certify Joe Biden as the 46th president of the United States. While the vicious events included participants who identify as female, Black, Jewish, and other nondominant group members, the bulk of the thousands of rioters identified with pro-­Trump, neo-­Nazi and White Nationalist movements, including the Proud Boys and the Oath-­keepers. The rioters displayed both Confederate flags and Nazi emblems, including one protester wearing an Auschwitz t-­shirt and others displaying the acronym 6MNE, or 6  million is not enough, referencing the Holocaust. This event, although widely castigated by both Democrats and Republicans, and investigated by the FBI, did not lead to any large-­scale political sea change, leaving the politicians shaken but not stirred enough to condemn Trump of sedition in his second impeachment trial. Further, there



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were most certainly people inside the Capitol who helped the rioters breach the building, and in the aftermath his Republican allies acquitted him, even after watching a frightening minute video interspersing Trump’s rally rhetoric with the chilling acts of the 14-­ insurrectionists. This insurrection represents a boiling point in the country’s problematic history of violence and racism – particularly when fomented by a megalomaniacal agitator and stewed in the relative isolation of a global pandemic. And yet, in the weeks afterwards, many conservatives polled actually supported the riot, and Trump and other high-­level right-­wing conservatives  were fairly exonerated from blame. This speaks to a myriad of issues that the United States has yet to actually, realistically deal with in its legislation, penal, and education systems. It speaks to the failure of the concept of a culturally pluralistic democracy being able to exist in a peaceful state. While none of this was particularly surprising, it represents a failure on our part as critical intercultural communication scholars, to address additional intersectional issues on top of the color line. Using the case of Jews living in the United States as a jumping off point, this chapter discusses the limitations of both critical intercultural communication and postcolonial studies to address multiple areas of intersectional oppression in the United States beyond the black/white binary of the color line. Today, with violence erupting in the US Capitol and throughout the world, making distinctions about who is more oppressed and pitting oppressed people against one another (as is often the case in critical intercultural communication scholarship) has reduced the efficacy of the constructs of critical and cultural theory as a whole. Thus, this chapter will apply critical intercultural constructs to the case study of Jews in US America in the current moment to reframe some issues in critical race and critical intercultural theory so they are more inclusive of multiple others and intersectionality, which we say we do but I argue here we have failed at in some cases. This chapter does not intend to diminish the oppression of other nondominant groups by any means. Indeed, as will be discussed at the conclusion, I hope to illustrate that critical research and activism should be working to cohere various oppressed groups, and members of multiple oppressed groups, rather than competing for who is the most oppressed of all. I believe that as critical intercultural scholars, we can do the work of bringing members of nondominant groups together, sharing a common goal – that of listening to, speaking as, and giving voice to marginalized people along lines of multiple intersecting oppression. I would like to widen the scope of critical intercultural communication theory to include oppressed groups beyond the original Black/White binary of the color line, more in the spirit of BIPOC but widening the scope even further. Additionally, I intend to argue why playing Oppression Olympics, as well as engaging in colorism, diminishes the strength and scope of critical intercultural communication scholarship – especially in terms of educational, advocacy, and policy recommendations that can help the people our research represents. How can we critique and rise up against the common threat of White Nationalism and Trumpism if we argue among and between ourselves? First, this chapter will define critical intercultural communication and address some of the major constructs where its theorizing could include a broader scope of intersectional people. Then, I will include specific information about Jewish identity in US America and how it can benefit from the application of critical theory and postcolonial frameworks. These kinds of frameworks can be used to create a more open dialogue that allows multiple kinds of Jewish voices to be heard and privileged, rather than the two assumptions that many non-­Jews seem to make: first, that antisemitism ended after reparations to the Jews from European leaders for the Holocaust by “gifting” Israel to Jewish Holocaust survivors – another extremely problematic result that came from other countries not being willing to take this diaspora in, and a colonial move by the British and US empires that succeeded in pitting Jews against Muslims rather than accepting refugees and asylum seekers in Westernized, Christian cultures. Second, I will address the claim that all Jews are white, wealthy, educated, and support Israel. Finally, I will draw some conclusions about how to create more inclusive spaces in

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critical intercultural communication studies, and how such spaces might make a difference in abating future violence due to lack of intercultural understanding of difference. Difference, as many intercultural scholars have noted (Khaeva and Tadtaeva  2019; Halualani  2018; Xu 2017), is something that needs understanding rather than diminishment, and educating people on the continued problematic politics of representation and existence (and freedom) can only improve critical intercultural perspectives, allowing more people to feel heard and understood – especially doubly marginalized people, who identify as not only non-­White but also non-­Christian.

Critical Intercultural Communication Critical intercultural communication has a rich history that is derived from Critical Race Theory (CRT), whiteness studies, feminist standpoint theory, intersectionality theory, and other concepts and constructs that focus on the roles of systemic power, oppression, and the idea of difference as something to be overcome or downplayed, rather than dealt with in a functional and even progressive manner. From a critical perspective, intercultural communication should always be focused on contextual power relationships, and it should also be rooted in the culture its theorists are writing from – critical studies in the United States is quite different than that in Europe. For instance, European cultural studies scholars examine cultural activity from a wide variety of contexts, drawing on “neo-­Marxist, feminist, psychoanalytic, and poststructuralist theories of hegemony and identity formation” (Lindlof and Taylor 2011, p. 58). In particular, after World War II in Great Britain, critical and cultural studies focused on issues of class and society; alternatively, in US America, cultural studies are concerned with postcolonialism and pragmatism, with the belief that people can speak back and subvert dominant culture in the creation of their identity. As such, critical intercultural studies in the United States focuses heavily on our history of slavery, Reconstructionism, and the Civil Rights Era, which led to a spotlight specifically on the color line (Adler 2017). European critical studies clearly focus on class and colonialism, as these have been the abiding issues throughout European history. Alternatively, according to Martin and Nakayama (2014), critical and cultural studies in US America focus primarily on race, ethnicity and interracial/ethnic encounters in the United States today (and in some cases within other locations, but the focus here is far more on the systemic differences across racial and ethnic groups rather than differences as predicated by nation-­state allegiances), as well as an understanding of politics, global and local political economies, nationalism, and the history of slavery in US America: Racial segregation – once the hallmark of Jim Crow policies affecting education and commerce – continues strikingly in the hearts of U.S. cities where large sectors of Blacks, Latinas/os, Asian Americans, and others are disproportionately relegated to often unfavorable geographical sectors of urban and suburban spaces. (de la Garza and Ono 2015, p. 281)

Today, how contextual and systemic aspects of racism in the United States impact intercultural encounters in this country and beyond it are key focal points of critical intercultural communication scholarship. While there is no unified project that encompasses critical intercultural communication throughout the world, the history of systemic racism, particularly of Blacks, Latinxs, Asians, and Native Americans in the United States, is specific to the context of US America. Critical theory spans multiple cultures, but CRT as it has developed is situated within the culture and context of racism, hegemony, and history of this particular country. In order to grasp the area and some of the critique this chapter will cover, certain specific theoretical constructs will be discussed below.



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Critical Race Theor(ies) CRT explores the power dynamic perpetuated by historical contexts, legal structures, and ­various other influential and interested parties that foster the oppression of certain races. Developed by Civil Rights activists, CRT asserts the following: racism is integral to the United States, both historically and currently; no one can be color-­blind when it comes to race ­(everyone is influenced in some way); the goal of illuminating and ending racism is not equality, but rather understanding that systems do not privilege various groups equally  – some people have privilege and others do not within a system that is inherently oppressive, which seeks to reify itself as much as possible (Orbe and Harris 2013). A CRT perspective can be found in people who are concerned that the election of Biden over Trump means we no longer have to look at race as an issue in this country; Trump was a symptom of the racism still festering at the surface in the United States, but his replacement is not a solution to the problem, and we cannot simply rest on our laurels now. CRT defines racism as built into the structure of society, providing the fabric of the systemic tapestry, where the general agreement is that racial inequity is “more than the collective pathology of individuals, that there is a ‘structure’ in place – comprised of institutions, policies and norms, that reproduces and maintains inequality” (Reece 2019, p. 4). CRT “provides a lens through which the experiences of people of color (POC) can be analyzed. It attempts to promote justice for them through the law and legal scholarship” (Dávila 2015, p. 444). The notion of race itself is a social construction; yet this does not make its ramifications any less real for those who benefit from racial privilege and those who are oppressed by systems that elevate certain racial groups at the expense of others – in particular, in the United States, at the expense of White Anglo Saxon Protestants (Smedley and Smedley 2005; Hamilton and Form  2003; Blumenfeld  2006). Interestingly, Hamilton and Form (2003) note that while most texts on race and racial categories deplore stereotyping, “their discussions of race, ethnicity, and religion provided little detail or nuance and thus were themselves effectively stereotypical in character” (p. 695). W.E.B. Du Bois’ and Frederick Douglass’ idea of the color line (the racial segregation present in the United States post-­Civil War) referred specifically (with obvious reason) to Black/white relationships; yet, as Appiah (2015) noted, “for Du Bois, Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans were on the same side of the color line as [Appiah] was,” and Nazi atrocities surpassed even the vindictive cruelty of the color line (para. 6). Even within the Black-­white binary, West Indian immigrants, who may appear Black, don’t identify as Black or African American (Hamilton and Form 2003). Thus, it is not surprising that CRT itself has long been critiqued for its focus on the Black-­white binary (Delgado and Stefancic  1998; Hamilton and Form  2003), which Robert Chang (1999) states outright when he writes, “America dreams of race in Black and white” (n.p.). The notion that anti-­racism can only be understood along a Black-­white continuum is further troubled by Alcoff (2003), who states, The discourse of social justice in regard to issues involving race has been dominated in the U.S. by what many theorists name the “Black/white paradigm,” which operates to govern racial classifications and racial politics in the U.S., most clearly in the formulation of civil rights law but also in more informal arenas of discussion. (p. 7)

Several scholars who identify as being of Latinx and Asian descent have discussed this issue of these two groups being constituted by the degree to which they are “near Black” or “near white” (Alcoff 2003; Chang 1999). Filipina scholar Kay Picart (2007) states: Ultimately, neither “Blackness” nor “whiteness” are monolithic terms, and it takes a lot of work to press the hybridities that comprise their rich texture into simple categories. To destabilize these dichotomies is to begin to re-­envisage radically a brave new world of political and jurisprudential possibilities. (p. 226)

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Underneath all of this however, particularly in the United States, the majority  – while ­ enerally straight, masculine, and Christian, is almost always assumed to have white privilege. g Indeed, in the United States, those who didn’t start out in the majority but weren’t physically marked as different or considered white-­passing, passed through stages of assimilation, which are described in the literature on White privilege.

White Privilege

Whiteness studies, similar to (and evolving from) CRT, also builds on research that race is a sociological construct and is not biologically determined. Race is assembled socially, historically, and culturally by people as individuals and as a society throughout every facet of our ­various social, cultural, and political institutions and is reflected at every level in art, literature, education, popular culture, and news media (Orbe and Harris 2013). The central idea is that being white, or appearing white (white-­passing), enables one to partake in systemic privileges, like employment and education (which should be rights, rather than privileges) that are reified and enforced across constitutive social and cultural institutions (Nakayama and Krizek 1995). As a field, whiteness studies began to emerge out of CRT in the early 1990s. This is not surprising, as a shift of the United States as a nation with a White Christian majority to one where POC represent the largest portion of the population began in the 1980s, and has long been forecasted to succumb to a majority of POC and/or non-­Christian whites by midway through the twenty-­first century (Hamilton and Form 2003). Indeed, it is this change in demographics that in many ways led to the election of Trump and the parallel rise in anti-­immigrant, anti-­ Black, anti-­Muslim, and antisemitic movements and actions in the United States. According to Alcoff (2003), the whitening of Jews in the United States can be seen as ­parallel to that of Irish and Italians, and yet Jews are considered targets by hate groups such as the KKK, the American Nazi Party, Westboro Baptist Church, and the Nation of Islam. And yet, such assimilation into a café crème US American “melting pot” was only available to those not marked as non-­white. Thus, Blacks, Latinx, Middle Eastern and Asian populations (e.g. those who were marked as different based on physical appearance) were never allowed to fully assimilate, although neither were they were not given a categorized identity on the US census for years. Some of this came from elite external systemic forces that believed that British, French and German were the only true white US Americans; but the fear of the Other also came from socioeconomic status. For example, Roediger (1991) observes that whiteness and racial identity emerged from the formation of the American working class: “Whiteness was a way in which white workers responded to a fear of dependency on wage labor and to the necessities of capitalist work discipline” (p. 13). The idea forwarded here is that assimilation was a means to avoid drudgery and backbreaking labor, which was a given for other ­non-­whites, at the basest levels in terms of African Americans imported to the US specifically for the purpose of slavery; but also, Latinx and Asian Americans who came for a variety of economic and political reasons yet were still pushed down beneath those groups of Southern, Central and Eastern European migrants, who eventually developed an (almost) complete acceptance into mainstream US American society. However, these migrants were primarily Catholic/Christian. To increase the confusion of these hierarchies, there is also between and within nondominant groups, ingroup or semi-­ingroup discrimination.

Nondominant Groups Fighting Against Each Other and Themselves Something of great concern to this essay and my argument in general is what happens when nondominant groups are pitted against one another, or against themselves. As civilization, particularly pluralistic communities, tends toward hierarchies  – racial, color-­based, gender-­ based, physical ability, political, religious, socioeconomic, and so on  – it is not immensely



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surprising that members of such communities are often grouped together and targeted by hate groups, with the notion that if we destroy each other, the hegemonic dominance of the hierarchical system will be maintained without a lot of work on the part of the majority group. This has led to between-­group and ingroup discrimination in life and in academia. I think we as critical intercultural communication scholars can address this – and indeed, have some obligation to do so.

Colorism

Given the history of categorization that is the social construction of race, and the “deviation of the norm” of skin color and belief system, centering whiteness, hegemonic English, and Christianity at the expense of nuanced differences inevitably leads to hierarchies of power within nondominant groups. This is known as colorism. Colorism is a form of ingroup ­discrimination, in which nondominant group members show prejudice against one another due to skin color (Orbe and Harris  2013). In relation to the concept of race as a social ­construction and the hegemonic centering of whiteness, Hunter (2007) states, “Colorism is concerned with actual skin tone, as opposed to racial or ethnic identity. This is an important distinction because race is a social concept, not significantly tied to biology” (p. 237). Similar to the Black-­white binary of CRT, Reece (2019) notes that The overwhelming majority of studies examining the extent of colorism tend to lean on simple explanations revolving around the historical preference for light skin – and other “Eurocentric” features such as thin lips, noses, and straight hair – because of their perceived proximity to whiteness and eugenic connection to multiracial slaves. (p. 5)

Blumenfeld (2006) explains that “geneticists tell us there is often more variability within a given so-­called race than between races and there are no essential genetic markers linked specifically to race” (p. 11). Thus, colorism is inexorably linked to the ideal and oversimplified central category of White Anglo Saxon Protestants, regardless of the ingroup doing the discriminating (this can also be seen in discussions of whitening beauty trends in places such as rural Japan, e.g. Darling-­Wolf 2004). With regard to skin tone, nondominant groups in the United States and many other parts of the world must deal with discriminatory practices and behaviors. As such, colorism is often marked by the dialectical concern to appear/pass as white, and the need to be authentically identified as a member of a nondominant group (e.g. Black enough, Latinx enough). Thus, the hierarchies that nondominant group members impose on one another exist as a function of the systemic categorization that privileges some groups and oppresses others. Colorism practices also lead to discriminatory behaviors between nondominant groups, which can be understood through the concept of Oppression Olympics.

Oppression Olympics

While not analogous to colorism, a parallel issue is the notion that members of nondominant groups are perpetually in competition for resources and identification with members of different nondominant groups (e.g. Blacks and Jews in Brooklyn, etc.). This is what Martinez (1993) defined as the Oppression Olympics, a strategic war between various nondominant groups in which said groups are set to destroy each other, thus eliminating themselves/one another without the White majority having to lift much of a proverbial finger. Such competitions, in Martinez’s (1993) words: pit brown against Black like athletes racing against each other in the Oppression Olympics. But other numbers show how much we share the same problems of being denied a decent life, education, health care, all human rights. In times of war, look who fights and dies for the U.S. out of all proportion to our populations: Black and brown people. To put it bluntly: we are both being screwed, so let’s get it together! (p. 30)

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Patricia Hill Collins, the originator of Black Feminist Thought, explains that we c­ annot rank positionalities as best to worst in terms of oppression, as everyone comes from a unique standpoint, and such oppression does not provide for an understanding of the dominant ideologies at work in such hierarchies. As described by Yuval-­Davis (2012), Collins “rejects any mechanistic construction of hierarchies of oppression and her resulting call for a dialogue of people from different positionings as the only way to ‘approximate truth’” (p.  48). Marginality is something that is experienced in myriad ways from myriad positionings, and understanding the center is paramount to understanding the periphery; however, the center is understood differently depending on the marginalized position. Additionally, religion is not generally included along the axes of intersectionality (which generally include race, gender, socioeconomic status, and political power). This is fascinating as so many cultures are dominated by religious and moral creeds that work to implement the positionality of other axes of oppression, such as gender, politics, and socioeconomic status (Yuval-­Davis 2012). While Jews cannot be positioned as such a monolith as Black or Brown, due to the very problematic nature of such differing dimensions of categories being layered on top of one another (and erroneously compared to each other), and are often in positions of moderate financial and political privilege, however, many people identify as Jewish AND; as such, being Jewish does not determine race, nationality, or socioeconomic status, and yet being Jewish is often conflated with all of these things. I argue that such Oppression Olympics between, for example, Blacks and Jews (as characterized in performance by such greats as Anna Deveare Smith and Spike Lee), serve to further isolate these nondominant groups from one another, so that those in power can more easily eliminate or discount them. Schraub et al. (2019) notes, “What Whiteness ‘does’ to Jewishness is act as an accelerant for certain forms of antisemitic marginalization even as it ratifies a racialized hierarchy within the Jewish community” (p. 379). Thus, both colorism (within-­group hierarchies) and Oppression Olympics (between-­group competitions) serve similar functions: to downplay or eradicate cultural groups that are viewed as threatening to the white, Christian, wealthy majority, which, in danger of losing its hegemonic position, strives to reify existing hierarchies at all costs. Versions of colorism and Oppression Olympics exists in Jewish culture as well, with White-­Ashkenazic Jews, or Hasidic Jews, or other such groups, making Jews of color, converts, or Jews who are not religious or orthodox enough feel less adequate, like imposters, like they do not belong. One of these is known in some areas of the Jewish community as Ashkenormativity (a term I learned through my interview processes for the book), and will be addressed below.

Ashkenormativity

Ashkenazic Jews today are generally those with German (and in some cases, French) origins, who settled along the Rhine river dating back to the Middle Ages (Wexler 1993). Interestingly, Ashkenaz also can be interpreted to mean descendants of Noah, as well as stemming from the Iranian land of Ashkenaz (Das et  al.  2016). In terms of genetic ancestry, Ashkenazic Jews are of Turkish, Caucasian and Iranian origin (Das et al. 2016). This combination of near-­East, Middle-­East/Eastern European ancestry has come to denote Ashkenazic Jews today as largely hailing from Central and Eastern Europe. However, Jews from other areas of Eurasia are not considered to be Ashkenazic; neither Jews of the Caucasus (Georgians and Azeris) nor Bukharan Jews consider themselves as Ashkenazic, but are generally grouped with the Mizrahis, or Oriental Jews. To this day, Ashkenazi Jewry is also a linguistic designation, meaning those who spoke the variant of Hebrew known as Yiddish (Weinrich 2008). Given the diasporic history of migration and extermination of Jews throughout the world, it is not ultimately surprising that there has come to be a majority of white, Ashkenazic Jews of Central and Eastern European origin in the total global Jewish population. Again, these linguistic and geographical designations have gotten to the point to where Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews are more likely to have to blend with or assimilate to Ashkenazic Jews and



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Jewish practices, rather than the other way around. This leads to the term “Ashkenormativity,” which works in similar ways to heteronormativity and hegemonic whiteness as well as linguistic hegemony. As stated by Watkins (2019): American Jews…tend to operate with language that describes Jews as being an ethno-­religious group, and in doing so, tend to essentialize Jewishness with Ashkenazi Jewish identity, history, and experience. Rather than seeking to exclude Jews of color, many Jewish institutions have been and are established without even considering the possibility that people of color, be they Jewish or not, would seek to enter them in the first place. With this dynamic in mind, it follows that a difference is not perceived in a particular space, either through deliberate exclusion or lack of exposure to racially and ethnically diverse Jews. In an American Jewish context, this can be referred to as Ashkenormativity. (pp. 19–20)

The lived experience of such Ashkenormativity was discussed again and again by interview participants who were Jewish but not white-­passing. This debate about the various intersecting aspects of what makes a group the center, rather than the periphery, as well as how nondominant groups themselves compare oppression levels and create hierarchies within their own groups, often focusing on normative concepts such as race, gender, language, physical ability, and religion, leads to a concerning notion: that even within nondominant groups, privilege is avowed and ascribed in a hierarchical fashion, both from outside and from within that group. Hence, the term Ashkenormativity excludes all those who don’t identify or adhere to the white, Ashkenazic traditions and lifestyle, as can be seen when Sephardic Jews worship in Ashkenazi synagogues but not vice versa, or more tellingly, when a JOC (Jew of color) comes to a synagogue or religious ceremony such as a Passover Seder, and is assumed to be someone’s guest, a convert, or adopted, and therefore not a “real Jew” (both circumstances that were described by participants in the interviews for my book). While such considerations occur in multiple other intersections of spirituality, religious belief, race, ethnicity, and nationality, the Jewish case provides a particularly significant area of study, as Judaism can be defined as a culture, an ethnicity, and/or a religion/spiritual practice (and many people, both within and outside the group, also identify it as a race). For example, Jews can be culturally Jewish and also be Atheist.

Critical Race Theory, Jews, and the Race-­religion Constellation To include people who identify as Jewish in discussions of CRT, implies that the notion of Jewish-­as-­race be assumed, which is of course, tricky (as really all racial distinctions are). In particular, the notion of the model minority, often ascribed to Jews and various (although certainly neither any nor all) Asian groups, portrays some nondominant group members, while never fully white, at least as having an opportunity to achieve an almost American Dream if they work hard, keep their heads down, and focus on education and commerce (Picart 2007). For Jews, things are muddy, as Judaism is often but not ultimately conflated with whiteness, which implies that Jews are indeed a race. This is due to the hegemonic concept of Ashkenormativity discussed above, which obliterate or at the very least decenter the voices of Jews of color or non-­Ashkenazi Jews (Blumenfeld 2006). By the nineteenth century, in the work of so-­called geneticists (or eugenicists), “Judaism had come to be viewed by the scientific community as a distinct racial type, with essential immutable physical characteristics,” also known as a mongrel or bastard race (Blumenfeld  2006, p.  11; Ferber  1997). Isolation in ­ghettos also often led to Jews intermarrying, which adds weight to the genetic and racial argument. Topolski (2018) notes that the intersection of race and religion is largely overlooked in discussions of intersectionality and race (p. 59). It is for this reason, using Jews in the United States as a case study, that I attempt to revisit ideas of CRT and intersectionality from the

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perspective of those with Jewish identities – who indeed are victims and targets of hate crimes but who may not always be marked as different. The Jews of Europe were far more likely than those in the United States to be seen as racially or ethnically different or less-­than, often remaining in enclaves rather than assimilating as they did up to a certain point in the United States (from their arrival dating back to Roanoke VA, through the implementation of anti-­ immigration legislation in the early twentieth century). According to Hochberg and Alon (2017), in Europe, “Like Muslims (Saracens), Blacks, and other colonized native populations, Jews were the others against which Western civilization defined and defended itself” (p. 180). So, one question then is this: why is religion so widely ignored, relegated to the margins or footnotes or one page in undergraduate intercultural textbooks, when religion is such a driving force of culture and hegemony? Further, how do religion, culture, ethnicity and race intersect with one another? This is particularly salient in the United States today not in the least for Jews but for other nondominant monotheistic religions, such as Islam (and to a lesser extent, unpopular or more segregated sects of Christianity, such as the LDS Church and Mennonites). We have had governmental and political actions taken against Muslims across the past three administrations. We claim to support Jews through the support of Israel, and yet the most virulent hate groups target Jews in their missions; these hate groups are, frighteningly, becoming closer to the center than the periphery in the end of the Trump administration, and after his second impeachment failed to find him guilty of insurrection and sedition, such groups are simply reconnoitering to gather strength. Further, the US American Christian Evangelical support of Israel relies on the notion that once the Christians are invited in, the Rapture will occur, and Jews will naturally be sent to hell. Beyond this, Ashkenormativity is at its worst in Israel, where Ethiopian and Mizrahi Jews experience racism and discrimination at great levels (e.g. Robbins 2020). We, as critical intercultural scholars, should be driving the calls for a systemic understanding of difference and marginalized groups, but we only do so peripherally, including religious beliefs as a footnote in studies that examine other aspects of intersectionality.

Conclusion: Where Do We (Possibly) Go from Here? In critical intercultural communication and other critical theoretical approaches, the argument is made that to speak for those whose groups we are not a member of is to be betraying that group (so only women should study feminism, only Blacks should study Black lives, etc.). Yuval-­Davis (2012) notes that this will only lead to silo-­ing of various marginalized groups off from one another, taking away the possibility of dialogue that may create unification across oppressed groups to stand up against a collective oppressor – such as, in the United States today, the kinds of groups that Trump fomented into the Capitol Insurrection – can cause as much harm as good. Patricia Hill Collins and Nira Yuval-­Davis both note that constant debate over whose positionality is the more oppressed does not get any of the oppressed groups far enough. Ally-­ship is certainly a way of connecting the marginalized and the dominant in ways that may allow for social justice action, but this is challenging as we do not want to force our voices on others as other voices may have been foisted on us in the past. While it is excruciatingly important for critical intercultural scholars to privilege the most marginalized voices in society, Yuval-­Davis (2012) explains that solely emphasizing “the importance of the lives of the most marginal elements in society can sometimes collude with the attempts of hegemonic centers to remain opaque while at the same time maintaining the surveillance of marginal elements in society” (p. 48). So, one contribution I can make, as there are clearly no easy answers to these thorny issues, and the increased thorniness of their intersections, is the idea of a transversal politics of solidarity. Just as the groups that attacked the Capitol on 6 January 2021 put aside various differences



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(including, to a certain extent, race and religion) to unite along the political lines of fear of the immigrant other, the liberalization of US America, globalization and cultural acceptance of difference, the desire for a clear hegemonic White Christian [and ironically, uneducated] majority, we as critical intercultural scholars and allies to one another’s positionalities of struggle and marginalization, need to coalesce into a united group against such strengthening populist movements. Clearly, these groups are connecting across various lines of difference to overthrow the current governmental system. Rather than fragmenting and arguing against ourselves and one another, can we potentially respond in kind, but through ally-­ship and ­connection rather than the current lack of cohesion? Thus, this essay advocates the development and teaching of more theory that allows us to connect with one another across difference – and because of difference, which at its heart is what intercultural communication is all about. Learning the history and background of various oppressed groups, and the ways people can be simultaneously privileged and disadvantaged, while still able to connect to one another and assist one another, to unite together – this is what occurred in the four terrifying years of Trumpism. Can we do this too, but in a way that fights for the marginalized rather than against us? Additionally, why do we work to decide which group or intersection of factors makes one more oppressed than another? History, socio-­politics, geographical location, coincidences of birth, and systemic issues all serve to pit us against one another. How can we change this? This chapter calls for ideas – and as such I will present one as well. One specific theory that can assist in this paradigm shift is that of transversal politics as an intersectional response to Oppression Olympics we continue to engage in. Transversal dialogic politics bases itself on critical theories, positionality, and standpoint theory, making the following three points: first, each positionality or standpoint involves an unfinished amount of perspective-­taking and information, and dialogue across different positionalities can increase the ability for perspective-­taking, empathy and ally-­ship. The second point is, as intercultural scholars know, that differences don’t have to be hierarchical and that when nondominant groups internalize the dominant group’s hierarchical practices, we internalize them and replicate them within and between our own groups to our detriment. Finally, we are all members of multiple different groups simultaneously, and almost all humans have some combination of privilege and disadvantage within our identities; however, systemic oppression oppresses all who do not or cannot conform to the dominant ideologies (Yuval-­ Davis 2012, pp. 50–51). With this in mind, we can advocate for our own marginalized groups, but can also connect with other marginalized groups to advocate together; further, we can work on understanding different positionalities through intercultural communication, or communication across and with people who are different, to learn from one another rather than spending our energy trying to out oppress one another, which generally equates to divide and conquer without the hegemonic majority having to do much at all. In conclusion, in the words of Yuval-­Davis (2012): Transversal politics … depends on shared values rather than on specific political actions, as differential positioning might dictate prioritizing different political actions and strategies. Transversal politics encompasses difference by equality and, while continuously crossing collectivity boundaries, the transversal solidarity is bounded by sharing common values. While politics of solidarity can be directed by care and compassion to defend any victim of racialization, discrimination, inferiorization, and exclusion, transversal solidarity is an alliance of mutual trust and respect, recognizing but transcending decentered differential positionings of power. (p. 52)

The politics of solidarity, and the ability to think, critique, connect, and advocate for people across and because of our differences (including our own groups and other groups), is what intercultural communication implores in our teachings. One should not have to identify only

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as Jewish OR Black, Muslim OR Asian, Christian OR queer, Latinx OR Atheist. This is only one theory and one direction for our work to go. But if we are going to fight against White Nationalism in a way that does not end in closed borders, populist nationalism, the conflation of white and Christian with US American citizenship, we need to stop fighting amongst ourselves and start advocating for all of us against our common threat of White, US American supremacy, best represented by Trumpism and the Capitol Insurrection. Unfortunately, this chapter ends with this call to connect: we have a common, violent, supremacist enemy. They will be back, and we need to be ready.

References Adler, M. (2017). Classification along the color line: excavating racism in the stacks. Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies 1 (1): 1–32. Alcoff, L.M. (2003). Latino/as, Asian Americans, and the black–white binary. The Journal of Ethics 7 (1): 5–27. Appiah, K.A. (2015). The race in the modern world: problem of the color line. Foreign Affairs 94: 1–9. Blumenfeld, W.J. (2006). Outside/inside/between sides: an investigation of Ashkenazi Jewish ­perceptions on their “Race”. Multicultural Perspectives 8 (3): 11–18. Chang, R.S. (1999). Dreaming in black and white: racial-­sexual policing in the birth of a nation, the cheat, and who killed Vincent Chin. Asian LJ 5: 41–61. Collins, P.H. (1990). Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge. Darling-­Wolf, F. (2004). Sites of attractiveness: Japanese women and Westernized representations of feminine beauty. Critical Studies in Media Communication 21 (4): 325–345. Das, R., Wexler, P., Pirooznia, M., and Elhaik, E. (2016). Localizing Ashkenazic Jews to primeval v­ illages in the ancient Iranian lands of Ashkenaz. Genome Biology and Evolution 8 (4): 1132–1149. Dávila, B. (2015). Critical race theory, disability microaggressions and Latina/o student experiences in special education. Race Ethnicity and Education 18 (4): 443–468. Delgado, R. and Stefancic, J. (1998). Critical race theory: past, present, and future. Current Legal Problems 51 (1): 467–491. DellaPergola, S. (2011). Jewish Demographic Policies. Population Trends and Options in Israel and in the Diaspora. Jerusalem: The Jewish People Policy Institute. Ferber, A.L. (1997). Of mongrels and Jews: The deconstruction of racialised identities in white supremacist discourse. Social Identities 3 (2): 193–208. de la Garza, A.T. and Ono, K.A. (2015). Retheorizing adaptation: differential adaptation and critical intercultural communication. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 8 (4): 269–289. Halualani, R.T. (2018). Demarcating the “critical” in critical intercultural communication studies. Critical Intercultural Communication Pedagogy 3–9. Hamilton, R.F. and Form, W.H. (2003). Categorical usages and complex realities: race, ethnicity, and religion in the United States. Social Forces 81 (3): 693–714. Hochberg, G. and Alon, S. (2017). Decolonizing Judaism: Barbarism and the Return to Nativism, 179–194. Duke University Press. Hunter, M. (2007). The persistent problem of colorism: skin tone, status, and inequality. Sociology Compass 1 (1): 237–254. Khaeva, D.T. and Tadtaeva, A.V. (2019). Intercultural communication as a special type of communication. Modern Science 3: 278–282. Lindlof, T.R. and Taylor, B.C. (2011). Qualitative Communication Research Methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Martin, N.J. and Nakayama, K.T. (2014). Thinking dialectically about culture and communication. In:  The Global Intercultural Communication Reader (eds. M.K. Asante, Y. Miike, and J. Yin), 190–207. New York: Routledge.



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Martinez, E. (1993). Beyond black/white: the racisms of our time. Social Justice 20 (1/2): 22–34. Nakayama, T.K. and Krizek, R.L. (1995). Whiteness: a strategic rhetoric. Quarterly Journal of Speech 81 (3): 291–309. Orbe, M.P. and Harris, T.M. (2013). Interracial Communication: Theory into Practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Picart, C.J.K. (2007). Beyond good and evil: the black–white divide in critical race theory. Human Rights Review 8 (3): 221–228. Reece, R.L. (2019). Color crit: critical race theory and the history and future of colorism in the United States. Journal of Black Studies 50 (1): 3–25. Robbins, L. (2020). The “Black-­Jewish coalition” unraveled: where does Israel fit? Doctoral dissertation. Brandeis University. Roediger, D. (1991). The wages of whiteness: race and the making of the American. Working Class 1790–1860. Schraub, D., Kampeas, R., Kanter, B., et al. (2019). When the right and left fight over anti-­Semitism, Jews are caught in the middle. Jewish Telegraphic Agency. www.jta.org (accessed 17 July 2021). Smedley, A. and Smedley, B.D. (2005). Race as biology is fiction, racism as a social problem is real: anthropological and historical perspectives on the social construction of race. American Psychologist 60 (1): 16–26. Topolski, A. (2018). The race-­religion constellation: a European contribution to the critical philosophy of race. Critical Philosophy of Race 6 (1): 58–81. Watkins, K. (2019). The Mixed Multitude: Jews of color in the American Jewish community. Weinreich, M. (2008). History of the Yiddish Language, 1e. Yale University Press. Wexler, P. (1993). The Ashkenazic Jews: A Slavo-­Turkic People in Search of a Jewish Identity. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publications. Wright, G., Volodarsky, S., Hecht, S., and Saxe, L. (2021). Trends in Jewish young adult experiences and perceptions of antisemitism in America from 2017 to 2019. Contemporary Jewry 1–21. Xu, Z. (2017). Developing metacultural writing competence for online intercultural communication: implications for English language teaching. TESL-­EJ 20 (4): 1–9. Yuval-­ Davis, N. (2012). Dialogical epistemology  – an intersectional resistance to the “oppression Olympics”. Gender & Society 26 (1): 46–54.

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Decolonizing Theory and Research: Asiacentric Womanism as an Emancipatory Paradigm for Intercultural Communication Studies Jing Yin University of Hawai‘i at Hilo

“Ain’t I a Woman?” With this pungent question, bell hooks (1981) attests that feminists have excluded and marginalized women of color and denied racial and class oppression as valid women’s issues. Indeed, as early as in 1851, Sojourner Truth, an African American abolitionist and women’s rights activist, confronted feminists’ racial prejudice in a similar manner (Truth  1998). Lana Rakow (1986) urges feminist researchers to reflect on “why feminist scholarship in the field of communication is so white” (p. 212). Feminism, in this regard, is essentially Eurocentric feminism as it is rooted in the experiences of European and European-­American women and is relevant to the understanding of only such experiences. Feminism developed in Europe and the United States is by no means monolithic or homogenous. There are different types of Western1 feminism, including liberal feminism, radical feminism, socialist feminism, Marxist feminism, postmodernist feminism, and postcolonialist feminism.2 Regardless of the internal diversity of Eurocentric feminism, its definitions of womanhood are grounded exclusively in European philosophy and thought. Just as Eurocentric humanism masquerades as universal humanism, the Eurocentric feminist vision of womanhood is projected as the universal or natural definition for women of all cultures and classes (Yin  2006,  2009,  2022). Eurocentric feminism becomes the invisible and incontestable center against which experiences of non-­Western women are gauged, analyzed, and interrogated (Watkin 2016). Even with its recent acceptance of the notion of intersectionality,3 Eurocentric feminism today still reinforces and reproduces white supremacy and racial hierarchy by erasing and silencing women of color (Moon and Holling 2020). Eurocentric feminist discourse also functions to displace non-­Western cultural traditions and values. Similar to the Eurocentric idea of modernization, Eurocentric feminism is a form of colonization that codifies non-­Western cultures as Others (Mohanty  2002). Eurocentric feminists consider that African, Asian, and Latin American women are at a lower stage of development compared to European and European-­ American women (Steady  1981; Yin 2009). Eurocentric feminism is indeed accepted as an integral part of modernization and development (e.g. Fung 2000; Wang 1999).

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Eurocentric feminists often regard non-­Western cultures as the primary source of women’s oppression. Attention is often paid to particular cultural practices that are deemed unusually cruel and atrocious, such as sati [widow cremation] in India, foot-­binding in feudal China, and veiling in the Arab world. Although there is no denying that those practices are repressive, the equation of gender oppression in non-­Western cultures with those cultures per se is problematic. Babbili (2008) argues that, in modern India, sati was sporadic and confined mainly to one region in one northern state. But the British appropriation of Indian history emphasizes sati as a widespread practice to justify its own oppression of the heathens (Babbili  2008). Majid (1998) contends that writings of Eurocentric feminists reflect “an unmistakable bias against Islam” (p. 323). Wadud (1999) asserts that veiling is actually a manifestation of the Qur’anic moral principle of modesty. Until the nineteenth century, veiled Arab women were known as socially, economically, and legally freer than their Western counterparts (Majid 1998). But Eurocentric feminists claim that Arab women can be liberated only through detaching themselves from or even destroying their own cultures. In 2001, feminists and non-­feminist women in the United States accepted the military invasion and occupation of Afghanistan as a necessary means to secure Afghan women’s liberation (Ali 2020). Eurocentric feminists thus compel non-­Western women to choose between forging alliances with White women to challenge their own cultural traditions and standing with their men to resist racist and colonialist domination (hooks 1981). For Eurocentric feminists, non-­Western women’s participation, alongside non-­Western men, in anti-­colonialist struggles sustains patriarchy because it compromises the independence of women’s movements (e.g. Wang 1999). Many non-­Western women, however, maintain that gender inequality cannot be tackled separately from other social disparities as they are inextricably linked. Ntiri (2020) argues that African women were more concerned with fundamental environmental and living predicaments than with the struggle between men and women. Steady (1981) contends “what we have then is not a simple issue of sex or class differences but a situation which, because of the racial factor, is caste-­like in character on both a national and global scale” (pp. 18–19). In this chapter, I will thus expound on Asiacentric womanism as a theoretical framework for decolonizing theory and research in intercultural communication studies and for affirming women’s dignity and rights and enhancing the human prospect for gender equality within and without Asia. Specifically, I will delineate the development of womanism as an alternative paradigm for non-­Western women to define their own emancipation and to resist the hegemony of Eurocentric feminism. I contend that the philosophical foundation of Eurocentric feminism is the primary source of alienating and disenfranchising non-­Western women. Finally, I will elucidate Asiacentric womanism grounded on Asiacentricity metatheory as a conceptual framework for Asian women to theorize collective human efforts required for expanding and enhancing gender parity.

Womanism: An Alternative Paradigm for Women’s Empowerment Asante (2005) notes that challenging gender oppression in non-­Western cultures does not mean accepting Eurocentric feminism as the only right way. Hudson-­Weems (2020) contends that Eurocentric feminism is premised on the proclamation of exclusive rights and monopolistic control over issues and values that pertain to women’s rights and equality. Feminist approaches subject experiences of non-­ Western women to analysis based on Eurocentric definitions of womanhood. Watkin (2016) maintains that non-­Western women should reject the Eurocentric construction of gender as the foundation for their own studies and “clear the intellectual space necessary for a range of other equally progressive female voices, non-­Feminist in orientation, to emerge and co-­exist side by side rather than subordinated to feminist voices” (p. 399).



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Although the term womanist is often associated with Alice Walker’s (1983) claim of “a Black feminist or feminist of color” as a darker shade of feminism, it is theorists of Africana womanism (Hudson-­Weems 2020), African womanism (Dove 2003), and Kawaida womanism (Karenga 2012; Karenga and Tembo 2012) who unfalteringly reject the subordination of non-­Western women’s struggles to Eurocentric feminism. Black feminists, such as Patricia Hill Collins (1996), emphasize placing Black women at the center of analysis. However, even as the center of research, even with sensitivity to their everyday conditions, without alternative conceptual and theoretical frameworks, Black women’s experiences are only included as a mere “additive” to the Eurocentric norm. This approach in fact affirms and adheres to Eurocentric feminists’ claim of proprietary rights and exclusive control over gender issues (Watkin 2016). Collins (1996) indeed argues that only by aligning with Eurocentric feminism, can Black women participate in the struggle of “global women’s issues” (p. 15). Womanism, in contrast, is propounded as an independent and alternative paradigm, rather than a derivative of feminism. Inspired by Molefi Kete Asante’s notion of Afrocentricity (Asante 1980, 1998, 2003, 2005), which demands that the displaced people, knowledge, and history of Africa be centered, Hudson-­Weems (2020) defines Africana womanism as grounded in African cultures, focusing on the experiences, needs, struggles, and desires of Africana women. She stresses in particular the importance of self-­naming, that is womanism as opposed to feminism. Hudson-­ Weems characterizes the Africana woman as male-­ compatible and family-­centered. Rather than gender, Africana womanism gives precedence to racial struggle, which differentiates itself from feminism, including Black feminism. Hudson-­Weems (2020) maintains that emancipation of the Africana woman is impossible without “the liberation of her entire race” (p. 33). Based on Cheikh Anta Diop’s (1990) cradle theory, Nah Dove (2003) affirms the relatively egalitarian social and gender composition in Kemet (ancient Egypt) and asserts that the current racist and sexist structure was a consequence of the domination of the Southern cradle (African culture) by the Northern cradle (Indo-­Aryan culture) and the resultant subjugation of matriarchy by patriarchy. Dove (2003) argues that experiences of African American mothers need to be understood as a continuation of African culture and Black people’s resistance to racism. Karenga and Tembo (2012) proposed Kawaida womanism rooted in Kawaida philosophy. Kawaida philosophy is defined by Maulana Karenga (2014) as “an ongoing synthesis of the best of African thought and practice in constant exchange with the world and is directed toward the enduring historical project of maximum human freedom and human flourishing” (p. 212). Similar to Africana womanism, Kawaida womanism accentuates the importance of self-­definition, cultural groundedness, complementary gender relations, and family and community orientation. Kawaida womanism also insists that the liberation of Black people as a whole is indispensable for the emancipation of Black women (Karenga and Tembo 2012). Unlike Black feminism, multicultural feminism4, and other forms of womanism, Kawaida womanism does not assume that Black women’s common experience per se would guarantee the critical consciousness or agency necessary for collective struggle and social change. Rather, it requires conscious search in African cultural traditions (ancient and contemporary) for answers to current problems and proposals for future prospects. Following the sankofa principle in Kawaida philosophy, Kawaida womanism underscores a self-­conscious return to African cultural source to (re)discover knowledge through “rigorous research, critical comprehension, and culturally centered interpretation” (Karenga 1999, p. 37). Tapping into past and present African cultural traditions, Kawaida womanism offers concrete intellectual and ethical grounding for affirming the spiritual and social significance of women, mutually respectful and reciprocal female-­ male relations, and collective endeavors required for improving the human condition and enhancing gender equality (Karenga 2012; Karenga and Tembo 2012).

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Eurocentric Feminism and Its Philosophical Foundation Black feminists (e.g. hooks 1981) and Africana womanist theorist (e.g. Hudson-­Weems 2020) rightfully argue that agenda and practice of Eurocentric feminism function as a mechanism of excluding and marginalizing non-­Western women. It is my contention that the philosophy undergirding and informing Eurocentric feminism, which has little resonance in the non-­ Western world, fundamentally alienates and disenfranchises non-­Western women. The individualist ontology, dualist epistemology, and rights-­conscious axiology of Eurocentric feminism render it incapable of conceiving a notion of rights that is emancipating and empowering beyond individual liberty, theorizing a vision of gender relations that respects the dignity of difference, and cultivating a code of ethics that entails and encourages egalitarianism.

Individualist Ontology Eurocentric feminist theories and practices are predicated on ontological individualism. Eisenstein (1981) maintains that feminism in North America is rooted in “the competitive, atomistic ideology of liberal individualism.” Indeed, not only liberal feminism but also other forms of Eurocentric feminism – such as radical feminism, Marxist feminism, socialist feminism, and postmodernist and postcolonialist feminism  – conceptualize women’s rights and freedom within the realm of individualism. Social relations are typically viewed as opposite to individual autonomy. They are seen as external forces that would constrict the independence of the experiencing self and the active mind. Individuation, the realization of the unique and independent self, can be achieved through separating oneself from all “constraining” social relations (Bradshaw  1990; Hsu 1981, 1983; Yin 2017, 2018, 2022). Although challenging patriarchy in Western thought and practice, Eurocentric feminism is in fact derived from the same individualist ontology. Akin to their male counterparts, Eurocentric feminists view women as individuals endowed with inalienable rights against competing claims of different social relations (Woo 1994). The Eurocentric feminist demand for women’s independence is essentially the insistence on the very same individual autonomy – freeing the female individual from oppressive social claims (e.g. men, family). The notion of women’s rights in Eurocentric feminism is no different from John Locke’s (1967) conception that privileges White men. Rights are defined as natural, absolute, and inalienable to the autonomous individual (Rosemont 1998). From this perspective, rights are conceived as “negative” liberties, namely free from external oppressive forces (Twiss 1998). Eurocentric feminists further stipulate women’s rights primarily as civil and political rights, in terms of individual choice of employment, political participation, recognition, and representation. Those Eurocentric feminists who advocate social equality call for the establishment of either a gender-­blind society with equal opportunities for both men and women as individuals, or a mode of production that does not exploit or discriminate against individuals based on class or gender (Campbell 2002). Those Eurocentric feminists who champion representational egalitarianism demand a new cultural formation that provides female individuals with opportunities to be heard with the same respect as their male counterparts. Even with their challenge to modern Western epistemology, postmodernist and postcolonialist feminist theories are a continuation, rather than a rupture, of ontological individualism. Their Marxist and psychoanalytical roots, anti-­essentialist tenet, and perpetual search for difference further reinforce the individual-­social binary. In the postmodernist and postcolonialist conceptions, the only innocent political project is deconstruction. However, deconstruction does not necessarily lead to the emancipation or empowerment of women. Deconstruction strips women of certain sociocultural relations. Indeed, at the end of deconstructing every



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collective identity, when all forms of social relations are cast away, we will find the woman an atomistic individual – a biological object, prior to entering any social relations. Mouffe (2000) contends that the modern West is faced with an eternal paradox: the doctrine of individual autonomy negates principles of equity and justice because it does not have much concern for communal participation. The individualist understanding of rights as negative liberties, or freedom from oppressive social relations, does not allow a conceptualization of positive enablement and empowerment that is necessary for engendering human flourishing. Although radical feminists have broadened the narrowly defined civil-­political rights by incorporating social and economic components, the fundamental Eurocentric conceptual framework of rights makes it impossible to conceive rights as collective good that requires different kinds of rights and restrictions of individual freedom for greater social good such as harmony, peace, and ecological sustainability (Parekh 2002). The individualist ontology further impedes a non-­anthropocentric theorization of rights in which the individual is not the center of the world, and in which human beings embrace interdependent relationships with other beings and nature (Miike 2003, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2019b).

Dualist Epistemology The Eurocentric feminist assumption of female-­male relations as adversarial and antagonistic is rooted in epistemological dualism. In Western philosophy, since Plato, there has been a tendency of separating the form (the formal patterns of things) from the matter (the material elements of things), the mind from the body. This dualist ontology leads to the epistemological bifurcation through creating a series of dichotomies, such as good/evil, universal/particular, men/women, and culture/nature (Cheng 2022). In the dualist view, the two sides are seen as respectively autonomous and mutually exclusive. Dichotomous conceptions further hold one set of values to be antithetical to the other, and one set superior while the other inferior. Values that are deemed feminine, such as compassion and nurturance, are considered as incompatible with rational instrumentality, efficiency, and other organizing principles of the modern West. Eurocentric feminists argue that the classification of people into two universal categories based on biology is a dichotomy produced by the Western Enlightenment project (Rakow 1986). However, their insistence on irreconcilable and oppositional female-­male relations ironically legitimizes and perpetuates gender dualism (Lebra 2007). Maruyama (1984) contends that in European and North American cultures, difference or heterogeneity is often considered to be a source of conflict. Said (1978) maintains that negatively projecting difference is the basic mechanism of perpetuating Otherness. This Western approach in effect assumes that difference needs to be overcome, through conversion, assimilation, subordination, or suppression, in order to sustain the conventionally constructed “normalcy” (Sacks  2002). The Western dualist view thus paradoxically demands conformity (Hsu 1983). Eurocentric feminists, in fact, share the patriarchal belief that assumed or socially constructed gender difference relegates women to an inferior position. The Eurocentric feminist enterprise has been wrestling with the idea of gender difference since its inception. It denies, rejects, challenges, problematizes, deconstructs gender difference to claim equal status as males, or celebrates difference in the postmodernist and postcolonalist fashion. In the discipline of communication, Eurocentric feminist scholars in various traditions challenge the assumption of men’s speeches as the norm while women’s as deficiency; critique communication (media) contents that contribute to negative perceptions of women; interrogate the vocabulary and structure of language that enable men to assert authority and power over women; examine the process of producing gender in the symbolic domain; or commemorate vocabularies, talks, interactional styles, and literary heritage of (White) women (e.g. Foss 1989; Rakow 1986; Tannen 1990; Wood 2002).

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In the modern West, difference is allowed only at the individual level, in the name of i­ndividual uniqueness. The dualist view firmly associates difference with Otherness when it is based on collective identity. Consideration for according equal rights in the Western individualist tradition, however, demands some sense of equivalence or sameness (Hall  2007; Harootunian  1999). One example is the assimilationist “melting-­pot” cultural policy that requires immigrants to shed their cultural heritage (difference) in order to participate in the benefit of the United States (Martin and Nakayama 2017). Pursuing women’s rights within the dualist framework, Eurocentric feminists attempt to get rid of the image of otherness (difference) and create a sense of sameness simultaneously. They try to eliminate or evade gender difference so as to establish commonness with White males. In so doing, Eurocentric feminism, in effect, expects women to discard gender difference and behave, function, and achieve like men. Hudson-­ Weems (2020) argues that Eurocentric ­feminists aspire to androgenize women to certain extent. Eurocentric feminism paradoxically reaffirms, reproduces, and reinforces the very patriarchal idea of male normalcy that it intends to dismantle. Eurocentric feminists’ inability to come to terms with difference beyond the individual level also results in the exclusion and marginalization of non-­Western women as the cultural/racial Other in their theory and practice. The difference highly valued in postmodernist and postcolonialist feminism is, in fact, exclusively individual difference for their anti-­essentialist tenet rejects the legitimacy of any forms of collective. Moreover, the postmodernist and postcolonialist celebration of difference takes place only in the realm of discourse and leaves actual power structure intact (Sardar 1998; Yin 2018). The dualist view underlying Eurocentric feminism dichotomizes human affairs into ­mutually opposed public and private spheres. The Eurocentric feminist aspiration for equal participation in the public sphere (e.g. career choice, political participation, and cultural representation) assumes that human activities in the private sphere are inherently not as productive, valuable, and meaningful as those in the public sphere. Spivak (1998) maintains that the notions of production and productive relationships, defined by Western feminists and non-­feminists alike, exclude one of the most fundamental aspects of human relations: childbirth. The activities and productivity of the private sphere are unexamined and devalued. The Eurocentric feminist claim of liberating women through separating, literally and figuratively, them from the domestic reveals not only an individualist cultural bias but also a class bias. After all, hiring domestic helpers is simply not a possible option for the majority of women in the world. The dualist tradition thus precludes Eurocentric feminists from envisaging a notion of gender relations that accepts and respects the dignity of difference as the very foundation for social equality. It is the complementary female-­male relations predicated on the recognition and appreciation of gender difference that allow women and men to work alongside each other and together toward gender parity (e.g. Karenga 2012; Karenga and Tembo 2012; Smith 2012; Wadud 1999; Yin 2006, 2009, 2022).

Rights-­conscious Axiology The principal practice of Eurocentric feminism, demanding rights for women, is rooted in rights-­consciousness. Rights-­consciousness is a form of ethics that emphasizes the idea of a freely choosing and rights bearing individual without any concern for obligation (Tu 2014). In Western traditions, rights are absolutely central for many theorists, especially for Kantian scholars (Rosemont 1998; Tu 2001). “Rights talk” is particularly ubiquitous in moral or political discourse of the United States. Eurocentric feminists’ inversion of androcentrism focuses exclusively on individual rights of women, though in a limited sense. In this regard, Eurocentric feminism is no different from the Eurocentric humanist project dominated by White males.



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Rights-­consciousness obscures inequality, discrimination, and other injustice in the society. While accusing men of oppressing women, Eurocentric feminists often refuse to confront their own privilege and prejudice. They often assume that nurturing and peace-­loving women are morally superior to competitive and militaristic men and they would exercise power differently (Fraser 1997). In reality, however, women in power do not necessarily work toward the end of gender inequality or other forms of oppression (Ntiri 2020). hooks (2000), hence, maintains that by identifying themselves as “victims” of gender oppression, White feminists “could abdicate responsibility for their role in the maintenance and perpetuation of sexism, racism, and classism, which they did by insisting that only men were the enemy” (p. 46). Rights-­consciousness breeds rivalry mentality, that is individuals view others as rival rights claimants. In competition for resources and opportunities, one person’s gain is viewed as another person’s loss (Hsu 1983). In the case of affirmative action, White men often feel that their rights are “trumped” by the rights of women and minorities (Rosemont  1998). The rivalry mentality also results in indifference to other people’s suffering. Rights-­consciousness coupled with the idea of people as freely choosing and autonomous individuals further enables the established order to attack the oppressed and social welfare programs. From this viewpoint, one has to give up one’s own rights and privileges for the sake of one’s rivals. This makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to seek social remedies through redistribution, reformation, or transformation. Hsu (1983) avers that the isolation tendency of individualism denies the importance of other human beings in one’s life and creates many contradictions which engender personal insecurity. The control of material wealth, however, is viewed as the individual’s principal investment in emotional security, which prevents privileged individuals (class, racial, gender, etc.) from surrendering their advantages for the betterment of the disadvantaged. Many Eurocentric feminists are, indeed, often not willing to give up their class and racial privileges for the needs and rights of other oppressed groups (Hudson-­ Weems  2020; Moon and Holling 2020; Ntiri 2020). The rivalry mentality is also reflected in humans’ relations with nature and other beings. In the individualist tradition, the sense of entitlement and disrespect for the rights of others justify and naturalize the overexploitation of nature. Rights-­conscious ethics hinders genuine concern for environmental issues, which means giving up one’s rights for nature. What is missing in Eurocentric feminist theory and discourse is the notion of responsibility. Responsibility is a key component of ethics and the backbone for community building. However, responsibility has been ostracized and marginalized in the Western axiology informed by individualism (Rosemont 1998). Without the notion of responsibility and communal consciousness, it is impossible to envision women’s rights not only as individual liberty but also as empowerment or enablement for women to function as truly equal participating members in a society. As we are faced with challenges of ecological destruction, economic disruption, and political and social instability, negative impacts of excessive individualism have become more obvious than ever (Tu 2014). Consequently, there is an urgent need for remedies stemming from other cultural traditions (Ching 1998). Non-­Western women, therefore, should turn to their own cultural traditions and wisdom for sources and insights for their own freedom and flourishing.

Asiacentric Womanism as a Conceptual Framework The growing need for self-­definition and self-­assertion, the desire to reclaim their historical past, the search for a stronger sense of belongingness, a greater call for cultural rootedness, and the aspiration to affirm an entirely different social and gender relations compelled non-­Western

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scholars and activists to pursue womanism as an important and valuable alternative to Eurocentric feminism in their struggle for women’s emancipation and empowerment. Indeed, notions of womanhood and female-­male relations in non-­Western societies are predicated on ontological, epistemological, and axiological assumptions that are fundamentally different from individualism, dualism, and rights-­consciousness undergirding Eurocentric feminism. It is necessary for non-­Western women to go beyond Eurocentric feminism and to search in their cultural traditions for responses to gender oppression that are at once ecumenical in spirit and indigenous in roots. Asian women have been routinely stereotyped and objectified in the West (Halualani 2008), and have experienced similar alienation and exclusion by Eurocentric feminist discourse and practice. They can easily find common themes of visions and versions of selfhood and womanhood among diverse and culturally specific non-­Western cultures. Indeed, the Asian holistic understanding of interconnected human and gender relations resonates with African cultures and indigenous peoples of the Americas and Oceania (Asante  2011,  2018; de la Garza  2018,  2022; Gyekye  1995; Kamwangamalu  2014; Karenga  2012; Little Bear  2000; Ntiri 2020; Smith 2012; Solofa 1992; Yin 2017, 2018, 2022). Therefore, it would be more productive and fruitful to theorize Asian women’s struggle for gender equality in the womanist paradigm. Asiacentric womanism is defined as a self-­conscious and self-­determined intellectual, social, and ethical project for women’s empowerment through critical engagement in Asian living cultural traditions, from which to extract ideas and ideals for productive reflection and to transform and enrich those traditions for a broader vision of gender egalitarianism. Asiacentric womanism is grounded in the Asiacentric paradigm proposed and developed by Yoshitaka Miike (2003,  2006,  2008,  2010a, b,  2019b,  2022a). Inspired and informed by Molefi Kete Asante’s (1980, 1998, 2003) Afrocentricity metatheory and Maulana Karenga’s (1997, 2006, 2014) Kawaida philosophy, Miike (2019b) defines Asiacentricity as “the self-­ conscious act of placing Asian ideas and ideals at the center of any inquiry into Asian peoples and phenomena” (p. 51). The notion of “centering” in the Asiacentric tradition is the idea of self-­consciously placing or positioning Asians as the center of their cultural realities in speaking, acting, and interacting with others within and without their cultures (Miike 2003, 2004, 2007,  2010a, b,  2022a, b). Asiacentric womanism strives to assert a location where Asian women’s experiences are examined and analyzed from their own perspectives and Asian women are viewed subjects, as opposed to objects of Eurocentric feminists’ analysis. “Centering” in the Asiacentric paradigm further insists on using our own culture as theoretical resources and grounding for asserting our identities, affirming our human dignity, improving the human condition, and enhancing the human prospect (Miike 2004, 2014, 2019b, 2022a). Asiacentric womanism posits that it is vitally important and necessary for non-­ Western women to return to their own cultural traditions for paradigmatic and pragmatic resources in order to articulate and (re)construct emancipatory projects in accordance with their fundamental and enduring concerns in their own cultural realities, without subordinating to the Eurocentric framework. Returning to one’s own cultural tradition does not mean (re)building a cultural fortress through isolationist strategies or going back to the “authentic” or secluded past, a point prior to contact with other cultures and/or Western encroachment. Rather, it entails the recovery of a cultural grounding through critical engagement and dialogue with one’s cultural tradition in constant interaction with other cultures for an ongoing project of human flourishing. This approach is essentially a contemporary and enduring intervention into historical cultural discourses in continuous exchange with other peoples, other cultures, and the world for the purpose of articulating new forms of philosophy or ethics that enable and encourage us to form solidarity, address current problematics, and enhance future prospects in a concrete sense. Seeking for answers to gender issues in Asian cultural traditions consequently does not



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prescribe the wholesale acceptance of one’s own culture uncritically; rather, it enables and empowers non-­Western people to “embrace the positive elements of their cultural heritage and transform negative practices according to their ethical ideals” (Miike and Yin  2015, p. 452). The notion of “centering” in Asiacentricity should not be confused with the concept of “center” in the “center-­periphery” formulation of the dependency theory (e.g. Amin 1997; Frank  1984) or world systems theory (Wallerstein  1974). The “center-­periphery” model assumes that there is a single unitary system in which one group (the center) dominates the rest (the peripheral). Eurocentric feminists’ attempt to invert patriarchy reflects the same dualist assumption of antagonistically dichotomous social relations, gender relations in this case, within a single unitary system. Asiacentricity, however, asserts that, rather than the subordinated peripheral in the unitary system produced and perpetuated by the West, non-­Western cultures should be viewed as equally valid systems in their own right, which exist alongside and strive for equivalent exchange with the West (Miike  2015,  2019b). Non-­Western women should not be subjugated by the Eurocentric framework as margins. Instead, they should assert their identity, dignity, and rights through using their own cultures as resources for answers and solutions to fundamental questions and ongoing problems of gender inequity (Asante 1998; Karenga 1997; Miike 2017b). Asiacentric womanism has no illusion about moving “from margin to center” within the Eurocentric feminist enterprise, a proposition postulated by the Black feminist bell hooks (2000). Hudson-­Weems (2020) regards this kind of idea as “ludicrous.” It is impossible for Black feminists to move to the center in any substantial and sustainable way, other than temporary tokenism recognition of certain individuals, when Eurocentric feminism historically does not include the needs and desires of Black women on its agenda (Hudson-­Weems 2020). Concurring with non-­Western scholars and activists of women’s rights (e.g. Dove  2003, Hudson-­Weems  2020; Karenga and Tembo  2012; Ntiri  2020; Smith  2012; Wadud  1999; Watkin 2016), Asiacentric womanism contends that Eurocentric feminism is neither the only legitimate nor indispensable approach to gender equity. Asiacentric womanism, conversely, strives to establish itself as an equally valid and valuable alternative to Eurocentric feminism in affirming women’s dignity and rights and in creating conditions necessary for women’s wellbeing and flourishing. Rather than an isolationist practice as misconstrued by Eurocentric feminists and internalized by some non-­Western feminists (e.g. Collins  1996), Asiacentric womanism is in solidarity with various womanist theorists and non-­Western scholars and activists of women’s rights, and in constant exchange and dialogue with non-­Western and Western women and men, including Eurocentric feminists, and is directed toward the ongoing project of improving the human condition and enhancing the human prospect for women in a more inclusive and expansive manner inconceivable to Eurocentric feminism. Asiacentric womanism submits that gender equality in Asia must be sought in the context of the Asian preference for the rights of humanity (including humanity of the individual) and the Asian conviction in rights with responsibility. More specifically, Asiacentric womanism is rooted in the ontology of interrelatedness and collectivity, the epistemology of complementarity and harmony, and the axiology of duty-­consciousness and shared responsibility, in stark contrast to Eurocentric feminism which is based on individualism, dualism, and rights-­consciousness.

Interrelatedness and Collectivity Asiacentric womanism is premised on the Asian ontology of interrelatedness and the unity of beings as well as the understanding of the self as the person-­in-­relations or person-­in-­ community (Hsu 1981, 1983; Miike 2003, 2019a). Whereas Eurocentric feminism views

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the woman as the autonomous and atomistic female individual, Asiacentric womanism defines womanhood as the female person embedded in collectivity. Whereas Eurocentric feminism regards social relations as oppressive constraints on women’s rights and freedom, Asiacentric womanism embraces community as desirable, beneficial, and indispensable to women’s wellbeing and flourishing. Whereas Eurocentric feminism conceives women’s rights as negative liberties, Asiacentric womanism conceptualizes rights as positive enablement and empowerment. From the Asian perspective, relationship between self and community is considered as reciprocal and harmonious. The distinctiveness or uniqueness of the self is constituted by the balanced blending of personal and social claims (Yin 2018). In the Confucian tradition, the self is regarded as a center of relationships (Tu 1985, 2001). Rather than inherently constraining, social relations are crucial for the development of a person. For the person, self-­realization is essentially the recognition of the interconnectedness of all beings in the universe. It is a way for a person to make herself/himself available to the society – to contribute to the human relations that make the development of others possible (Cheng 2022). The principle of tawhid in Islam stipulates unity, coherence, and harmony among human beings and all other parts of the universe (Mowlana 2014; Wadud 1999). Ummah [Community] emphasizes communality and collectivity based on the will of Allah. The primary function of the ummah is to provide exemplars and set the highest standards of performance for all its members (Mowlana 2014). In this view, the woman and the man are bestowed with equal rights, capacity, and potentiality for spiritual growth and development within and supported by the ummah (Wadud 1999). The Hindu sacred text Upanishads instructs that the highest spiritual aspiration for the person is to blend the atman [individual soul] with the Brahman [universal-­ultimate reality] to create Brahman-­Atman (Babbili 2008). The Buddhist doctrine pratītya samutpāda [interdependent co-­arising] teaches that “every being co-­originates and co-­arises within the multilayered contexts of its predestined relationships with all other beings” (Miike 2019a, p. 173). The amae [mutual dependence] psychology reflects the interdependence of Japanese social structure and the Zen Buddhist spirituality where there is indivisibility of subject from object, self from other (Bradshaw 1990). In both Hinduism and Buddhism, the self is identified not only with other human beings but also with natural beings and spiritual beings, with an immense emphasis on ecological sensitivity (Babbili 2008; Miike 2004). In all these Asian traditions, the self is open to change and development for it can be viewed as both the recipient and the agent for change and development (Cheng 2022). This interpenetrated and reciprocal self-­other relationship in Asian cultures is accurately captured by Tu (2001): The self cultivates roots in the family, village, nation, and the world. The feeling of belonging is predicated on a ceaseless spiritual exercise to transcend egotism, nepotism, parochialism, ethnocentricism, and anthropocentrism. The reciprocal interplay between self as center and self for others enables the self to become a center of relationships. As a center, personal dignity can never be marginalized and, as relationships, the spirit of consideration is never suppressed. (p. 26)

To define our selfhood in terms of our relations with others does not emasculate our individuality or sense of agency. It is precisely through social relations that persons become cultural subjects and gain a sense of agency. Moreover, human beings, in the Confucian tradition, are seen as potential participants or co-­creators of the creation process which is never completed or finished and can always be refined and transformed by communal human efforts (Tu 1985; Yin 2018). Only through the keen awareness of the interconnectedness of self and community, can Asiacentric womanism theorize women’s rights as positive empowerment that enables women’s flourishing through communication and interaction with other members in



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the community (Miike  2017a; Tu  1985). This resonates with Kawaida womanism that is rooted in the Ifa ethical teaching: the fundamental mission and meaning in human life is to bring good into the world (Karenga 2012; Karenga and Tembo 2012). Apathy toward women’s rights can be addressed by the Asian philosophies as well. Miike (2007, 2008) argues that from the Asiacentric perspective, communication “is the process from which we feel the joy and suffering of all sentient beings.” The cardinal principle of ren (仁) [humanness] in Confucianism insists that to be humane or to be human is to ai ren (爱人) [love all human beings] (Chang 1998; Ching 1998). Ren can be achieved only through self-­cultivation that transforms the private ego into the all-­encompassing self which has the ability to feel the suffering of others – or to put in the often seen negative form, the inability to endure others’ suffering (Tu 1985). Buddhism and Hinduism place paramount value on the virtue of compassion (universal kindness to all beings) (Babbili  2008). Compassion is the sense of urgency of wanting to reduce the suffering of other beings. The Islamic notion of ummah [community] maintains that the social system should be based on equity, justice, and ownership of the people (Mowlana 2014). Through the principles of ren, compassion, and ummah, Asiacentric womanism advocates a consciousness that is predicated on genuine concern and care for women (indeed for all human beings) at personal, communal, and societal levels. The interhuman regard associated with these concepts not only invokes empathy and compassion for the suffering of women (or the inability to endure their suffering), but also entails a social order to eliminate such agony. The Asian ontology of interrelatedness and collectivity thus makes it possible to envisage social transformations necessary for women’s betterment and other aspects of social justice.

Complementarity and Harmony Eurocentric feminist theory and practice perpetuate gender dualism that demands the gender other to covert or assimilate into the norm. Asiacentric womanism, in contrast, is embedded in the holistic Asian epistemology of complementarity of opposites and the certitude of harmony without uniformity (Cheng 1998; Miike 2015). In Asian cultures, despite apparently distinctive gender roles, the two sexes are perceived as complementary and harmonious in a holistic way. In Confucian and Daoist (Taoist) philosophies, everything in reality is viewed as a unity of various stages of interaction of two opposite and yet complementary creative forces, yin (阴) and yang (阳) (Cheng 2022). And everything, including gendered human beings, is composed of both yin and yang principles, although yin is generally associated with female principles, while yang male principles. The notion of complementarity of opposites in Daoism (Taoism) postulates that the two opposite genders accept and recognize each other’s integrity without attempting to alter one another’s character and that they reciprocate and respond to each other through mutual learning and self-­reflection (Cua 1981). In this view, each gender is incomplete in itself and they can mutually complete each other. Gender difference does not need to be eliminated as it is necessary and indispensable for the completion of each gender and for the development of each person. The original Islamic canons advocate a harmonious unity of all beings in the universe (Mowlana 2014). Unlike the Biblical account that the woman was created from and for the man, the Qur’anic interpretation maintains that the male and female were created as a pair that was “made of two co-­existing forms of a single reality, with some distinctions in nature, characteristics and functions, but two congruent parts formed to fit together as a whole” (Wadud 1999, p. 21). Rather than effacing difference between men and women, the Qur’an aspires the compatible and mutually supportive gender relationship as part of the goals of the society (Wadud 1999). Majid (1998) contends that pre-­contact Islam had an ethical vision of

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egalitarianism, including gender equity, and that it was through the contact with non-­Arab cultures that prejudice against women was added to Islamic law. Indeed, the vision of female-­male relations as complementary and mutually completing is prevalent in the non-­Western world. In the Kemet [Egyptian] theology, the Creator Ra, who symbolizes completeness and perfection, contains both male and female aspects without being either (Karenga 2012). In the Ifa moral anthropology of Yoruba, women are venerated as co-­ creator, mothers, and sustainers of the world with complementary and consummative power (Karenga 2012; Karenga and Tembo 2012). Linda Tuhiwai Smith (2012) problematized the Western misconception of the Māori creation myth as a Judeo-­Christian story of “Adam and Eve.” In the Māori cosmology, human beings, animals, natural beings, and other animate and inanimate objects (according to Western classifications) are believed to have a mauri [life force] which contains both male and female “essence” (Smith 2012, p. 173). In fact, women across many indigenous cultures argue that their traditional roles do not prevent them from participating in many aspects of political decision making and that gender separations are “complementary in order to maintain harmony and stability” (Smith 2012, p. 153). In Asian cultural traditions, harmony is a shared orientation and a pivotal and persistent way of understanding and engaging the world. The notion of “harmony without uniformity” epitomizes the ideal, goal, and organizing principle of Confucian humanism. The exemplar person strives for he (和) [harmony] as opposed to tong (同) [sameness]. Harmony is predicated on diversity and difference. Without difference, harmony is impossible (e.g. Without different sounds, there is no music). Thus, harmony does not demand conformity or homogeneity. The traditional Japanese garden design avoids repetition of similar elements and creates harmony of dissimilar elements. When constructing a wall, traditional Japanese craftsmen piece together natural stones of varied forms and sizes immaculately as opposed to cutting them into uniformed shapes. In a Japanese worker’s group, members appreciate each individual’s characteristics and spontaneously combine the diversity in a mutually beneficial way (Maruyama  1984). In Mandenka of West Africa, heterogeneity is considered as a mutually beneficial, positive-­sum, “win-­win” cooperation, while homogeneity is regarded as a source of  competition and conflict, diametrically opposed to the understanding in the West (Maruyama 1984). The ideas of complementarity and harmony allow Asiacentric womanism to affirm women’s spiritual and social significance without eradicating gender distinctiveness. In the Confucian tradition, although the distinction between the public and domestic domains is sharp, domestic virtues are given precedence as the foundation for acquiring public virtues (Cho  1998; Tanaka 1981). Women are revered as “moral custodians” of the household, who are responsible for leading all members of the family to improve their characters and acquire virtues (Nyitray 2004). In Confucian cultures, patriarchy hence can be offset by family-­oriented values, such as filial piety (Cho 1998). Furthermore, traditional gender roles can be transformed through the cooperation of all members for harmony of the collective. Lebra (2007) argues that functional complementarity permits Japanese women to participate in male-­dominated spheres. Women are freed from the domestic domain with the support of extended family and other kin. Rather than the helpless private sphere in the Eurocentric feminist conception, the domestic realm can function as sources of power for Asian women. Contrary to the exoticized Western imagination, the premodern harem was a female society that allowed Muslim women to express their uncensored stories and experiences without the repressive values associated with modernity. Prior to Western colonization, the harem also enabled Egyptian women to engage in international business within the Islamic society (Majid 1998). Buddhism, Confucianism, and Islam embody the notion of equality in terms of equal potentiality for enlightenment and fulfillment (Cheng 2022; Wadud 1999). Persons in a society may



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differ in terms of gender, social, and economic status, but they have the same potential to enrich themselves in order to reach enlightenment, to fulfill their obligations to society, and to live their lives fullest. The worth of the person is essentially tied to whether one can live up to one’s potential in relation to others in the society and the universe (Tu 1985; Wadud 1999). Similarly, in the Kemet [Egyptian] tradition, women and men are endowed with equal dignity, divinity, and capacity to preserve, restore, and enrich Maat [rightness] in community, society, nature, and divinity (Karenga 2006). The holistic and communalist worldviews in Asian cultures enable Asiacentric womanism to recognize and respect women and their enduring relevance and indispensable role in all things of collective importance and common good. This appreciation makes it possible for Asian societies to realize the urgency of improving conditions for their valuable and important female members through collective human efforts and social transformations. Asiacentric womanism further contends that the conception of women’s rights should not be limited to what Eurocentric feminists have prescribed, namely employment choice and political participation. Privileging only civil and political rights undermines the significance of many other activities that women also engage in, such as childbirth, child-­rearing, care-­giving, and domestic work. Asiacentric womanism posits that men’s participation in women’s empowerment is desirable and necessary because securing women’s rights depends on the involvement and coordination of the majority of members of a society. Asiacentric womanism also insists that women’s liberation cannot be achieved through replacing one kind of oppression with another. Affluent women’s freedom should not be brought by dumping housework on economically and oftentimes racially/culturally less-­privileged maids. From an Islamic perspective, Amina Wadud (1999) aptly captures the Asiacentric womanist vision of gender equality: With regard to social justice, it becomes necessary to challenge patriarchy – not for matriarchy, but for an efficient co-­operative and egalitarian system which allows and encourages the maximum participation of each member of the society. This society would truly respect each gender in its contributions, and all tasks that are contributed. This would allow for the growth and expansion of the individual and consequently for society at large. As such, women would have full access to economic, intellectual, and political participation, and men would value and therefore participate fully in home and child care for a more balanced and fair society. (p. 103)

Duty-­consciousness and Shared Responsibility Asiacentric womanism embraces duty-­conscious ethics and emphasizes shared responsibility. One of the crucial impediments of Eurocentric feminist movements is rights-­consciousness (Yin 2006, 2009, 2022). Tu (2001) contends that “rights without responsibility may lead to a form of self-­indulgence, indicative of egocentricism at the expense of harmonious social relationships” (p. 90). Aggressive assertion of rights without a sense of responsibility divides individuals and groups, and thus makes it impossible to conceive women’s rights as social parity beyond individual liberty. Asian thought and philosophy, however, espouse a deep sense of duty-­consciousness. In Confucian teaching, people are viewed as persons located within social networks and as having specific duties or moral obligations (Yum 2022). As sons and daughters of Heaven and Earth, humans are receivers and therefore embodiments of the creative forces of the cosmos in its highest excellence (Tu 1985). Inherent in the very existence of the human person is the infinite potential for moral and spiritual growth and self-­ development. Therefore, the main concern of Confucian learning is the process through which we realize ourselves by transforming and perfecting what we were born with. Self-­realization is thus

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not only one’s right to enrich one’s humanity but also one’s moral responsibility to partake in the communal project of enhancing, transforming, or restoring the harmonious social order (Yin 2014a, b, 2018). In African cultures, similarly, all humans are considered as divinely created with a ­lifetime mission: to bring good into the world (Karenga 2006). The Kemetic concept of serudi ta means the obligation for humans to “constantly repair and restore the world, to make it more beautiful and beneficial than it was when they inherited it” (Karenga 2006, p. 257). Although relationships in Confucianism are often hierarchical, obligations are mutual, reciprocal, and required for all parties concerned (Ching 1998; Yum 2022). Indeed, rights associated with a position are often defined as duties. For Confucians, Heaven endowment is inevitably linked to and expressed in terms of duty or responsibility (Cheng 1998). For example, a ruler is mandated by Heaven precisely because she or he is given more responsibilities than the governed. Social remedy for injustice often takes more than the struggle of the oppressed and marginalized. Those of power and privilege need to share the responsibility to alleviate the agony and suffering of their fellow members of the community and society. One’s right is essentially others’ duty to respect that right. Former US President Jimmy Carter also invoked the notion of responsibility in a statement after the brutal killing of George Floyd and Rayshard Brooks by police in June 2020: “People of power, privilege, and moral conscience must stand up and say ‘no more’ to a racially discriminatory police and justice system, immoral economic disparities between whites and blacks, and government actions that undermine our unified democracy. We are responsible for creating a world of peace and equality for ourselves and future generations” (LeBlanc 2020). Buddhism underscores the obligation to repay the on [the debt of gratitude] that people have received from other beings throughout the course of their lives (Miike 2007, 2019a). Hindu philosophy assigns duty to all human beings and insists that one should sacrifice for the community and serve the common good as we are indebted to all beings in the universe (Babbili 2008). In Islam, people are given equal responsibility and capacity to follow the principle of taqwa (piety), “a pious manner of behavior which observes constraints appropriate to a social-­moral system; and ‘consciousness of Allah’” (Wadud 1999, p. 37). The Islamic doctrine of amr bi al-­ma’ruf wa nahy’an al munkar (commanding to the right and prohibiting from the wrong) designates individuals and groups the responsibility to guide each other to learn and do what is good and ethical (Mowlana 2014). Duty-­consciousness in these Asian teachings accentuates reciprocity between self and community. A person’s self-­realization is encouraged and nurtured by the community. Self-­ actualization is to contribute to human relations necessary for the development of others. Thus, a person’s moral development is both a duty of the self to the community and a duty of the community to the self. Duty-­consciousness is the reciprocal responsiveness that “comes from a vision of the perfect union or unity of self and community in which both their needs are realized” (Cheng 1998, p. 148). The relationship between individual members and the community defined by duty-­ consciousness can engender the ethos championing women’s rights and wellbeing. From this perspective, women’s rights can be articulated as both members’ duty to the community and the community’s duty to women. consciousness that emphasizes individuals’ claim to rights, duty-­ Unlike rights-­ consciousness stresses the responsibility of individual members and the community to make the claimed rights possible (Chang 1998). Duty-­consciousness delegates the responsibility for gender equality to all members of the society. It thus obligates not only women but also



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men to work toward the interests of female members of the community. Only through duty-­ consciousness, can women’s rights be conceptualized as the shared common good afforded to women upon social agreement. As a result, it will not leave men or other social groups feeling that their rights are taken away by women. Indeed, if the competitive mentality rooted in ­rights-­consciousness segregates different social groups as rival claimants to rights, duty-­consciousness unites women and men through defining gender equality as a moral imperative and common goal that requires joint efforts of both parties. The Asian certitude of the human responsibility to transform the social order through communal self-­efforts can contribute fruitfully to the formulation and articulation of “a new and expanded public philosophy and discourse on a just and good society and a good and sustainable world” (Karenga 2003, p. 161).

Conclusions The quest for gender equality is a social and moral imperative in every society. Rooted in the experiences of European and European-American women, Eurocentric feminism challenges patriarchy within the Eurocentric philosophical framework. It is thus detrimental for non-­ Western women to uncritically accept Eurocentric feminism as the norm or panacea for gender issues everywhere in the world. Alienated by Eurocentric feminist discourses and practices, non-­ Western women have explored their own liberation through the womanist paradigm. In solidarity with non-­Western scholars and activists of women’s rights, this chapter propounded Asiacentric womanism as an intellectual, social, and ethical project for human flourishing with deep sensitivity to women’s conditions in Asian cultures. Grounded on Asiacentricity (Miike  2002,  2007,  2019b), Asiacentric womanism insists that Asian women should return to their own cultural traditions for paradigmatic and pragmatic resources for articulating and (re)constructing emancipatory projects in accordance with their own cultural realities and fundamental and enduring concerns over gender issues. Asiacentric womanism embodies the interrelated and collective nature of beings, complementary and harmonious female-­male relations, and duty-­conscious ethics. The holistic perspective of Asiacentric womanism makes it possible to conceptualize women’s rights as positive empowerment and enablement for women’s freedom and flourishing, to equally value and respect each gender’s contributions in both the private and public spheres, and to articulate public discourse on gender egalitarianism through shared responsibility and communal human efforts.

Notes 1 The term “Western” in this essay refers to cultural traditions, values, and practices that are rooted in European and European-­ American experiences and philosophies. This term does not refer to ­indigenous cultures such as Inuit, Native Hawaiian, and Native American cultures, nor to African American, Asian American, and Latino/a cultures that are geographically located in the western hemisphere. Those cultures are subordinated, marginalized, or excluded by European and European-­ American cultures. Indeed they are non-­Western peoples in the West. Just like cultures and peoples

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in the non-­ West, they are also struggling to (re)claim their identities and (re)assert their self-­ determination (Laenui 2000; Little Bear 2000). 2 Even though postcolonialist feminist scholars are often originally from non-­Western cultures, many of them reside in the United States and Western Europe. Some of the leading postcolonialist theorists are from Britain’s former South Asian colonies, and have been trained principally, or at least initially, in English studies (Harootunian  1999). Postcolonialist theories are in fact premised on uniquely Western values and derived from the methodology of the very tradition that they are trying to deconstruct (Radhakrishnan 2003). Linda Tuhiwai Smith (2012) contends that postcolonialism has become “a strategy for reinscribing and reauthorizing the privileges of non-­indigenous academics” which sustains the Eurocentric structure of knowledge production by excluding indigenous people and their endeavors for self-­understanding, self-­expression, and self-­determination (p. 25). 3 The concept of intersectionality in critical race theory (Crenshaw 1989) and the notion of interlocking structure of oppressions in Black feminism (e.g. Collins 1986, 1996; hooks 2000) treat gender, race, and class equally and concurrently. They have been accepted, to different extents, by Eurocentric feminist communication scholars. Although these notions were instrumental in expanding the ­exclusive focus on gender in feminism, the current academic tendency of covering everything with an ever-­ expanding list of oppressions reduces and diminishes their critical and analytical usefulness and potency, in other words, rendering them into a mere list without deeper meaning. When combined with the postmodernist and postcolonialist celebration of difference and deconstruction, i­ntersectionality becomes a divisive thrust that prioritizes the uniqueness of individual experience and expression over the possibility for alliance or unification which requires the formation of collectives. Intersectionality, in its debased form, encourages what Elizabeth Martinez (1998) calls “oppression Olympics.” 4 Multicultural feminist scholars (e.g. Martinez  1998; Shohat  1998) advocate forging alliances and solidarity among women of color based on their common experience with the intersecting oppressions of race, gender, and class and their common objective of improving their socioeconomic conditions. Pearson’s (2007) ethnographic study, nevertheless, suggests that the assumed common experience and common objective in multicultural feminism are not naturally shared by women of color activists in the United States. Pearson (2007) attributes the lack of solidarity among women of color to their emphasis on identity and difference and to their internalization of the dominant ideology and racial hierarchy. Multicultural feminism thus assumes a direct link between experience and consciousness in the case women of color, very much similar to the classical Marxist theory of class-­ based consciousness. As Stuart Hall (1996) reminds us, the critical consciousness necessary for social change is not guaranteed by shared experience and oppression. Rather, it needs to be articulated and communicated through conscious and constant efforts. Furthermore, as progressive as the goal of multicultural feminism is, its proposal to build bridges and solidarity by minimizing difference follows the same Eurocentric (feminist) dualist approach to difference. As a result, the stress on commonality at the expense of difference will only lead to conformity or subordination.

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Further Reading Hudson-­Weems, C. (2020). Africana Womanism: Reclaiming Ourselves, 5e. New York: Routledge. Karenga, M. (2012). Grounding Kawaida womanism: a sankofa reading of ancient sources. Western Journal of Black Studies 36 (1): 11–22. Miike, Y. (2014). The Asiacentric turn in Asian communication studies: shifting paradigms and changing perspectives. In: The Global Intercultural Communication Reader, 2e (eds. M.K. Asante, Y. Miike, and J. Yin), 111–133. New York: Routledge. Miike, Y. (2022). An anatomy of Eurocentrism in communication scholarship: the role of Asiacentricity in de-­Westernizing theory and research. In: Communication Theory: The Asian Perspective, 2e (ed. W. Dissanayake), 255–278. Manila: Asian Media Information and Communication Center. Yin, J. (2022). Rethinking Eurocentric visions in feminist communication research: Asiacentric womanism as a theoretical framework. In: The Handbook of Global Interventions in Communication Theory (eds. Y. Miike and J. Yin), 188–214. New York: Routledge.

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Why Do Citizens with Guns Fear Immigrants with Flags? Flag-­waving and Differential Adaptation Theory1 Antonio Tomas De La Garza1 and Kent A. Ono2 1

California State University, San Marcos 2 University of Utah

In 2006, students at a Montebello high school staged a walkout in protest of widespread ­anti-­immigrant discourse and proposed legislation targeting immigrants. During the demonstration, these students (many of whom were US citizens) took the American flag down from the school’s flagpole and replaced it with a Mexican flag. The American flag was then turned upside down and flown underneath the Mexican flag. An upside-­down American flag has historically been used to signal that an American fort, base, or ship was in distress or under attack. The appropriation of a US military code for the purposes of protesting racist treatment while also arguing for inclusion, representation, and status in that country highlights the fundamental complexity of migrant adaptation. The students’ use of the flag and the mainstream cultures’ response to immigrants with flags do not suggest a melded, fused, or hybrid cultural performance; rather, it suggests a rhizomatic (Pascasio 2021) and institutional expression of the complexity of cultural performance of belonging and identity. Differential adaptation theory was developed as a corrective to tendencies in the field of intercultural communication to gloss over complexities in favor of a generalized theory. Differential adaptation theory is ­rapidly becoming an anchor for scholarly inquiry into the messy and highly contextual choices made by people adapting to a new culture and the new culture adapting to recent migrants to the region. This study inverts traditional paradigms in intercultural communication by investigating the reactions of “fully assimilated” and “functionally fit” Americans to the display of flags by immigration advocates. Fifteen years after the Montebello high school protest, right-­wing protestors stormed the US Capitol building to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election. The Capitol rioters caused $1.5 million in damages to the US Capitol building, assaulted 140 police ­officers, and were directly responsible for the death of one protestor. The Capitol rioters carried a wide array of paraphernalia, including but not limited to assault rifles, shields emblazoned with the Iron Cross, and other Nazi insignia. As is the case with many other protests in the United States, flags were waved. The rioters arrived ready to make their visual argument (Pineda and Sowards 2007) with the Oath Keeper flag, the Three Percenter flag, the Gadsden flag, and the Confederate flag, all emblems and articulations of a racist and nativist civic imaginary (Cisneros  2011), in which “The ideology of White nationalism completes the colonial The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication, Second Edition. Edited by Thomas K. Nakayama and Rona Tamiko Halualani. © 2024 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2024 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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narrative by naturalizing White people as ‘natives’ to the American continent” (Pindi and De La Garza 2018, p. 226). The US flag was also displayed upside down, as a symbol of the country in distress. Despite ideologically irreconcilable differences between the two events, the trope of “the country in distress” is invoked as a call to action. Rather than attempt to reconcile the contradictory agendas of the symbolic acts of belonging as a “hybrid” or a “fusion” of cultural elements, we raise these examples to highlight the complexity and distinctiveness of cultural and symbolic dynamics of cultural belonging. Waving an American flag does not simply convey belonging in America; the act also communicates the vision of America one ascribes to belonging. While theories like cultural hybridity, cultural fusion, and assimilative theories of adaptation may be useful for explaining artifacts of culture that are hybridized, fused, or assimilated, in order to explore complex aspects of migration and adaptation requires theoretical tools that helps us understand the power dynamics and deep cultural identities and dynamics at play. It is incumbent upon communication researchers to offer theories about culture that steer us away from flattened depictions of culture and that, instead, foreground the fluid, agentic, and tactical choices of migrants working to live, strive, and thrive in new spaces and situations. Since 2005, several different instances of the Mexican flag being used in protest have emerged. On Cinco de Mayo, 5 May, 2010, at Klein Hollins High School in Spring, Texas, the Houston Chronicle reported that a student tore down a Mexican flag that was flying and threw it in the trash (Mendoza). The newspaper goes on to suggest the student gave an interview about being suspended from school, and people protested saying the school was aligning itself with Mexico. Also on 5 May 2010, the Hill Observer reported that the principal, Miguel Rodríguez, sent four students at Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, California, home after they refused to wear their shirts, which had American flags on them, inside-­out (Fromm 2010). The article says the principal felt the clothing had the potential to lead to violence. Cinco de Mayo, which many mistake for Mexico’s Independence Day, is a national holiday in Mexico that commemorates their victory over the French Empire at the Battle of Puebla. Of particular interest to our essay, Cinco de Mayo celebrations are more popular among Mexican Americans living in the United States than they are in Mexico. Hence, such celebrations of national and cultural heritage among a unique diaspora that never migrated give us pause to consider the complexity of identity in what Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2014) calls a post-­identity age. The rhetorical act of waving a Mexican flag or replacing an American flag with a Mexican one, or inverting American flags, is now a fixture of both pro-­and anti-­immigration discourse in the United States. What was, not that many years ago, forbidden or culturally taboo, because of the resistance that waving flags other than US ones signaled, have now become part of what one expects; that resistance has changed cultural expectations, modes of acceptance and recognition, and opened up pathways for a different cultural contract. Nevertheless, in response, the school administration and the local media framed the students as irresponsible agitators. The conflicting interpretations of the flag-­raising make evident the contested and deeply affective responses that flag-­waving arouses in citizens and immigrants alike. The display and manipulation of national flags is a common fixture at protests in the United States. Consider the global popularity of the French flag filters for Facebook profile pictures following the Charlie Hebdo shooting, the widespread use of the LGBTQ flag (often a hybrid, stylized US flag) across marriage equality rallies, or, more recently, the ubiquity of the Ukrainian flag since Russia’s 2022 catastrophic invasion of Ukraine. Though typical displays of flags signal national pride and identification, flag-­waving within the context of protest and demonstration is often interpreted as a deliberately antagonistic form of argument (Pineda and Sowards 2007; Pindi and De La Garza 2018). Reactions of outrage to the Montebello student protest highlight the contested and deeply affective responses that flag-­waving arouses in many citizens and immigrants alike.



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This chapter argues that while waving Mexican flags is a complex performance of desire, identity, connection, and citizenship, those who protest Mexican flag-­wavers are themselves, in contrast, failing to adapt, failing to adjust, and becoming more entrenched in essentialist, nativist identities and identity performances. Nativist protestors, then, are creating an artificial association with the Mexican flag that attempts to resist cultural change and adaptation and retreating into previous ways of being and knowing. Nativist flag-­wavers are not changing and adapting to the cultural changes afoot in their communities; instead, they are acting in anti-­ social, anti-­community, anti-­change, psychologically unhealthy, and politically undemocratic ways. It is against this very resistant identity position that those waving and carrying Mexican flags are protesting and, despite protests against them and their activities, nevertheless have the potential to create “good trouble”: productive disruptions and change. In this way, those carrying and waving Mexican flags are doing their part to improve the nation by creating more diverse and more nimble notions of citizenship and identity, encouraging nativists in rhetorical ways to adapt and become more culturally literate, and support social engagement, community, connection, and complex meaning-­making.

Colonialism, Flag-­waving, and Epistemicide Before discussing our case study, we want to develop a theoretical line of thinking about immigration and epistemicide within a colonial and neocolonial context that can help us think through the case study. Epistemicide, the death or murder of subordinated, often Indigenous, cultural knowledges in the context of colonialism and imperialism, is a useful heuristic that allows us to describe the epistemological role flag-­ waving plays in public life (de Sousa Santos 2014, p. 92). As we have noted before (De La Garza and Ono 2016), the roots and branches of assimilationists’ theory of immigrant adaptation (Kim  2001) produce flattened depictions of immigrant adaptation. In doing so, they reify the xenophobic and imperialist assumptions that are the foundation of intercultural communication (De La Garza and Ono  2016) and in so doing, reproduce the erasure of non-­dominant forms of knowledge. Thinking through cultural adaptation using the lens of epistemicide helps draw attention to the stakes involved in rhetorical actions such as flag-­waving and their importance in challenging racism, colonialism, and empire. Neocolonial arguments of entitlement to power and “epistemological privilege” are the product of epistemicide  – a dynamic, ongoing process (pp.  152–153). In other words, for neocolonialism to establish power, knowledge, imaginaries, and philosophies of cultural others must be avoided, downplayed, refuted, and/or forgotten. In some cases, eliminating them altogether is the central aim. If the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo gave birth to the colonial differentiation between one ontology and another – what it is to be American and what it is to be Mexican – performances such as flag-­waving point to the continuing, historical battle of Mexicans simply trying to exist. Epistemicide, an ongoing practice eroding colonized peoples’ and new racialized migrant knowledge, sometimes with the end goal of altogether eliminating it, and in some cases with larger genocidal goals and consequences, is resisted daily by those who are perpetually constructed as migrants and whose entry into citizenship is regularly and continually deferred. Following critical Latin American scholars who have described epistemicide an act of determining as who may live and who may die, who belongs and who is deported, and ultimately, whose knowledge survives to outlive generations of people and whose knowledge is cast into oblivion, we suggest that the stakes of epistemicide affect all (Rodrigues and de Santana 2020). As so many activists and scholars have said (e.g. Anzaldúa, Cisneros), “we didn’t cross the border. The border crossed us.” Indigenous and mestiza families existed on both sides of what is now a border long before the drawing of the United States-­Mexico border. That line,

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however, has meant that those on the US side are and were subject to mass re-­education ­campaigns, requiring them to speak English, cut their hair, give up their lived heritage, and for all intents and purposes, become Anglo. Those who resisted were disciplined and punished. Those who followed the rules were also disciplined and punished. Indigenous people were denied the songs, dance, language, and culture of their families. Such state-­sanctioned forms of epistemicide parallel the way African identities have been drilled out of enslaved, formerly enslaved, and descendants of slaves, in addition to Black people generally in the United States. Here, all people of color and racialized subjects, including Indigenous and mestizx people were violently forced to become “normal.” Thus, colonization practices are not always overtly military. Colonization not only includes more aggressive extermination campaigns of peoples standing in the way of colonization, but it is also the conquering of identities, cultural upbringing, heritage, language, and existence. Thus, cultural colonialism is epistemicidal, since it involves the torturous forced resocialization of humans to meet the expectations of colonizer norms and values, and much of the epistemicidal components of this aspect of colonialism is rhetorical. The conversion from one culture to another, from Indigenous to US American, requires a parallel conversion away from one rhetorical system of identification to another. Standing up in school, putting hand to heart, saying the Pledge of Allegiance, and expressing patronage to the United States flag is a performative example of having successfully converted to Americanness. Thus, seeing people in the United States carry, wave, admire, and salute a Mexican flag flies in the face of an epistemicidal, colonial logic. It challenges the epistemology of coloniality, and its attempt to purify colonial identity. Not displaying and performing national pride by revering the correct flag is anathema to recognized and approved ways of performing colonizing identities. For immigrants, this kind of opposition to performing complex immigrant and Indigenous identities is a denial of migrant realities communities, culture, identity, and heritage. As so many scholars have written, those who move from one place to another imagine themselves to be sojourners, expecting to return home after a brief stay. This sojourner experience is the dominant experience of immigrants worldwide. Furthermore, many immigrants who end up staying in the place to which they have migrated end up staying for life, becoming permanent migrants. In their minds, they are still of their soil, substance, and homeland, and may overtly identify as such, even though they have permanently migrated. This is the reality of migration. It is complex, deeply emotional, diverse, and varied. Furthermore, it is to be valued, embraced, celebrated, and appreciated, not derogated as “too much culture,” intransigent, uncooperative, abnormal, backward, anti-­modern, primitive, resistant, and unassimilable. Assaults on immigrants and the culture they bring represent resistance to change – a type of epistemicidal violence. Rather than embracing difference, accepting, celebrating, and appreciating the new that immigrants bring, a misguided attempt to block, resist, deny, protect, and defy culture takes place. It is an illogical and futile effort, one effectively representing a nativist perspective, one filled with nativist psychological trauma and self-­hatred. The elimination of bilingual education programs (e.g. California’s Proposition 227, which required English be taught in all California public schools, and passed),2 attacks on peoples’ accents (e.g. “speak American”), and legislation against women wearing facial coverings (e.g. burka in France), Virginia’s anti Critical Race Theory legislation, textbook restrictions in Texas and Florida, all are exemplars of this aggressive, violent, nativist reactivism. After 9/11, Black women’s hair was sometimes searched through at airports, as was Sikh men’s hair. In universities across the country, Muslims are denied a place and time to pray during the school year. This study adds to cultural adaptation theory by providing an example of both prideful cultural expression in flag-­waving and anti-­social, nativists, resistant to change, responses by nativists to flag-­waving. The first upholds a complex notion of culture, identity, inclusion, and embodiment; the latter represents a retrograde, backward, and problematic one. We study



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discourse about Mexican flag-­waving since 2005. Our argument embraces an anti-­colonial stance. We challenge and offer a theoretical way to mark and critique continuing vestiges of colonialism in culture (Ono). Mexican flag carrying and waving represent not only the longstanding and continuing presence of Mexicanness in and as a part of Americanness but also globalizing labor practices, persisting cultural memories in Las Américas, continuing problematics of settler colonialism, in that certain memories never seem to go away. For this study, we reviewed over 200 websites using the search terms “DREAM Act, flag”; “DREAMers, flag”; “DREAM Act Mexican, flag”; “DREAMers, Mexican flag,” and found that performances of hybrid identity challenge the notion that assimilation leads to feelings of security and wellbeing (Kim 2001, 2005). Instead, our research shows nativists may experience insecurity and anxiety in the face of performative acts of political activism by immigrants, such as when immigrants and their allies wave foreign flags as an illocutionary act of cultural citizenship. The bulk of the reviewed text comes from message boards and/or comments in response to articles about the DREAM Act. Though not reflective of the mainstream media, the rhetoric found on these boards answers a call (Ono and Sloop 2002) to investigate and critique vernacular discourse. The analyses found several themes that demonstrate that assimilation is neither inevitable nor uncontested. Rather DREAMers wave flags of other countries (most often Mexican flags) in order to demonstrate a hybrid and multifaceted identity that desires inclusion and recognition into the “imagined community” (Anderson 2006) that comprises the United States citizenry. The themes that emerge include anti-­Americanism, assimilation avoidance, the desire to show respect for one’s culture, and challenges to the viability of flag-­waving as a political tactic. Among people who identified as “native” (US-­ born, white) Americans the waving of Mexican flags was viewed as anti-­American and proof of immigrants’ unwillingness to assimilate. Furthermore, “native” Americans also viewed the waving of American flags by immigrants as a cynical and insincere political maneuver designed to gain sympathy for the DREAM. In either case, immigrants’ assumption of the right to demonstrate and wave flags is interpreted as a challenge and threat to white cultural hegemony. Communication scholarship on flag-­waving suggests that waving foreign flags is an intentionally provocative act intended to communicate a hybridized identity (Cisneros 2011; Pineda and Sowards 2007). This analysis by itself poses a challenge to previous theories of adaptation/ assimilation, which conflate the two concepts as an inevitable process resulting from environmental pressure and the need for the immigrant to reduce stress and loneness as a result of feeling alienated from their host culture (Kim 2001, 2005). The research on flag-­waving also shows that flag-­waving, as a form of argument, is a longstanding tradition in the United States (Cisneros 2011; Pineda and Sowards 2007). Whereas Mexican flags are interpreted as threatening and unpatriotic, the display of Anglicized flags during holidays or parades, like waving the Irish flag on St. Patrick’s Day, is deemed acceptable or at least goes unnoticed by the nativist movement. The visibility of the Mexican flag suggests another potential weakness of assimilation theories (Gudykunst and Kim 1992; Zhanga and Goodson 2011; Zimányi 2011). For example, Y.Y. Kim (2001, 2005 argues that assimilation is not a choice; much like organisms adapting to their environment, human subjects are shaped and changed by the theory of cultural habitus. Our research suggests theories based on melding or fusion may be overly deterministic and contribute to epistemicide, in that they pathologize migrant knowledge. Recent work in the field using differential adaptation theory (Chen and Lawless 2018; Das and Ansary 2018; Eguchi and Baig 2018; Martinez 2017) centers the perspectives of migrants as holders and creators of knowledge. Rather than position the migrant as a “hapless other” these works deepen rather than flatten the migrant experience. Furthermore, this work is building an assemblage of truly critical intercultural communication studies, studies that interrupt the scholarly colonization of cultural outsiders’ knowledge and tactics. In the United States, some

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people from ethnic groups are more accepted than others. While Irish and Italian immigrants, for example, may have crossed the threshold into whiteness, whereas performances of non-­ American Anglo identity are overlooked and even sanctioned, nativists view performances of mestiza or hybrid citizenship by Latinas/Chicanos as a threat to the American way of life (Cisneros 2011). In our survey of online discourse about flag-­waving, the majority of commentary about the practice came from American citizens reacting against immigrants waving flags. Not only does this support a differential in assimilability but also that those who are most affected by the “apprehension, stress, growth dynamic” may not be the immigrant but the instead are “natives.”

Differential Adaptation Theory The rapid advance of communication technology paired with the economic and legalistic dominance of neoliberalism creates an exigent set of circumstances for cultural scholars. At no time in history has the transmission of cultural and ideological texts been so easy and widespread. Modern diasporas, such as the resettlement of Sudanese families, the migration of the rural Chinese to the urban centers, and even philanthropic initiatives to limit the technological divide are opening new avenues for research on both the theoretical and policy fronts. As Appadurai suggests, the forces of neoliberalism have created a context in which the production, dissemination, resistance to, parody, and repurposing of cultural texts happens globally and in real-­time. The post-­modern pastiche of globalized cultural flows poses a challenge for cultural scholars. How can we claim expertise on a subject that is in a constant state of transition and transformation? The conflicting ephemeral liminality of culture requires that critics of culture develop theoretical constructs robust enough to transgress disciplinary boundaries. However, the infinitely creative capacity of human beings means that any theory of human culture or communication must be elastic enough to parse out the particularities, to see the differences, to feel the gaps. Previous theories of immigration have principally been discussed in terms of “adaptation,” “assimilation,” and “acculturation.” The limitations of these metaphors stem from a lack of theorization of the ways that resistance, power, and agency structure and alter an immigrant’s experience. Until only recently (De La Garza and Ono 2016) adaptation theory limits the possible and thus intelligible experiences to an ambivalent and quite limited binary between “fit” and “unfit” Others. These theories suggest that functional immigrants trade their identifiable Otherness to be assimilated as model immigrants.3 These model adaptors are contrasted to dysfunctional, recalcitrant, and maladaptive “strangers.” Immigrants who, choosing to maintain their culture, stay identifiably different and are constructed by both the scholarly and lay publics as threatening Others – threatening to invade, destabilize, and possibly, in the case of adaptation theory, contradict researchers. Differential adaptation theory is a theory of movement. Because culture is in a constant state of flow, movement and transformation, scholars must start to attune their gaze to the differences – the counterintuitive, the exceptional, and the unintelligible. We find this orientation useful for navigating the shifting seas of mimesis and poiesis that constitute social meaning and culture. By starting from a perspective that assumes a fluid and unstable subject awash in tides of symbolic (re)presentation, intercultural scholarship can investigate the relationship between the multilayered cultural terrain and the agentic subject, as they struggle to construct, maintain, repair, transform, and struggle over social reality – reminiscent of what Carey defines as communication.4 The limitations of cross-­cultural adaptation theory manifest most strikingly when applied to cases that fit outside what is thought of as the normal range of immigration experiences. As we



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have previously illustrated, the broad range of motivations, historical contexts, privileges, ­ideologies, and personal proclivities make theorizing adaptation from within a post-­positivist framework untenable (De La Garza and Ono 2016). However, by assuming a radically diverse array of immigration experiences we open our eyes to tactics of adaptation from which there are no archetypes, only diversity; no master narratives, only individuals navigating cultural limens influenced by relational, ideological, and material forces. The time has come to see immigrants as contradictory, paradoxical subjects. People are in constant states of becoming, making choices, confronting, and acceding to power, and performing and creating identities through discourse. We argue that differential adaptation highlights processes of adaptation, the choices, timing, direction, and manner that immigrants adapt as they are confronted with new structures of power, discourse, and belonging. Furthermore, the term highlights the differing ways that immigrants choose to respond to the body that they inhabit by tactically deploying personal, cultural, and material capital to survive and challenge the assimilative forces of cultural hegemony “moving in different directions and speeds even when interpellated by power in similar ways” (De La Garza and Ono 2016). Instead of assuming the sublimation or hybridization of migrants into a fused cultural identity, differential adaptation challenges the epistemicidal trend of fusion, hybridity, and assimilationist theories in the field of communication. Differential adaptation intervenes in the epistemicidal trend in intercultural communication studies by theorizing migrants as producers and holders of cultural knowledge whose subjectivity is contingent, reflexive, and intersectional. Differential adaptation draws attention to the role of the migrant in ways that problematize the notion of a culturally fused subject. These choices must be carefully attended to and theorized if intercultural communication scholarship is ever going to move past its racist and nativist history. Distinguishing between assimilation, fusion, hybridization, and adaptation has important implications for theory. The distinction recognizes the role that power and discourse play in structuring an immigrant’s identity. Trying to fit in does not have to be necessarily bad or destructive, but it is purposeful. The way a society talks about immigrants – the legal, effective, and material forces directed toward changing an immigrant into a citizen – all have implications for understanding how a society (re)produces itself. The values, ideologies, and narratives that comprise the national imaginary (Anderson 2006; DeChaine 2009) are maintained by disciplining the outsider to internalize the “common sense” of the cultural mainstream. Rather than assume an overly determinative perspective on the assimilative power of the State, differential adaptation theory recognizes the agency of the migrant. Even though power and discourse are deployed to normativize the migrant, immigrants perform a host of discursive, cultural, and personal identities that influence how and to what extent they adapt to their new culture. These are not passive acts, nor are they uncontested by nativists, social workers, academics, or even other immigrants. The space between assimilation, which is something the state does to migrants, not something migrants do themselves, and adaptation continually produces new conditions of possibility for subjectivity that can aid communication researchers in understanding the relationship between discourse, the social world, and the human experience. Power in immigration operates as a relational system of material and social privilege that is distributed based on a given subject’s orientation to such things as political institutions, employment, and centers of status. Additionally, in the United States, power is defined in terms of economic privilege, whiteness, and heteronormative patriarchy. Those who are identified as Other (existing outside the center) find their ability to access the benefits of full participation in a society constrained, denied, and threatened. At times full participation is encouraged but ultimately limited in some important ways. The distribution of symbolic and material privileges becomes even more complex when contextualized within the history of colonization and resistance on and surrounding the North American continent. For example, many

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Chicanos see the US Southwest as a homeland illegally taken from them, while others make seasonal migrations across borders a consequence of neoliberal economic policies. The intricate web of economic, ideological, and historical factors produces conditions that render migrant bodies in a zone of alterity, simultaneously desired as a source of exploitable labor and despised as a threat to the security of those claiming the normative center (Flores 2020). Differential adaptation theory serves as a corrective to the flatness of biological metaphors for cultural adaptation such as hybridity, fusion, melting pot, and salad by suggesting adaptation is more than immigrants subsuming parts of themselves to acculturate to a new context. Rather, their agentic and tactical choices about which parts of themselves they change produce changes in their new cultural context. Furthermore, De La Garza and Ono dispute the “assimilationist” basis of adaptation theory, challenging the idea that immigrants are maladaptive if they do not conform in every way possible to their new culture’s standards and expectations. Differential adaptation theory expands the opportunities for the field of intercultural communication to theorize the agency of immigrants. Thus, immigrants have complex relationships with both their new cultural home, as well as any cultural homes they may have left before that. And, like everyone, they are constantly in the process of immanent performances of identities and cultural subjectivities that produce zones of alterity in their new context. This may mean in some instances resisting, challenging, and in other moments accepting and embracing different cultural currents.

The Problem with Flags Josue David Cisneros argues in “(Re) Bordering the Civic Imaginary: Rhetoric, Hybridity, and Citizenship in La Gran Marcha” that flag-­waving appeared during resistances, such as during mobilizations against California’s Proposition 187 and English-­only legislation (2001, p. 29).5 Furthermore, flag-­waving is only one dimension of resistance, arguing, “These previous movements included large-­scale social protest, the flying of flags, the appropriation of American national symbols, the use of religious language and imagery, and the use of Latina/o culture and language to build solidarity” (p. 29). Indeed, Cisneros views flag-­waving as “civic performance as a marker of citizenship” (p. 30). “Above all else, viewing citizenship as performance entails shifting attention from the category of citizen (and the attributes or qualities that define it) to the individual” (p. 30). Cisneros goes on to suggest that “though civic performances may problematize conventions of citizenship and national identity, they still affirm commitment to the public, broadly defined” (p. 31). As such, he sees flag-­waving as its function in the Grand March (his case study) as a means of constructing a “hybrid enactment of national belonging” (p. 37). These performances are hybrid, in part, because they expressed a multitude of ways of belonging; for instance, “Turning to the use of visual rhetoric in LGM, protestors used flag-­waving to construct a similar hybrid enactment of national belonging.” The example illustrates the complex ways that immigrants negotiate and even resist assimilation. Without addressing historical, cultural, social, political, economic, national, and migration contexts, the ability to understand migrants and communication with and about them is severely limited. Immigrants are, after all, complex beings, with families, lives, occupations, ideals, and contributors to the cultural and social development of society. To elucidate some of the complex dimensions of immigration, we discuss the specific practice of carrying, displaying, and waving the Mexican flag at events relating to immigration laws in the United States. Pro-­immigrant rallies like La Gran Marcha and movements like the DREAMers wave both US and Mexican flags to perform the complexity of overlapping identities in tension with the cultural context in which they find themselves. Nativist demonstrations of flag-­waving, however, signal a fully assimilated, homogenized, and violent understanding of belonging based on



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a fusion of previously distinct ethnic and cultural groups into whiteness. We contend the ­strategic and rhetorical use of flags makes sense when discussing the complex power relations as they pertain to issues of Latina/o immigration, citizenship, rights, labor, experiences, and identities, but these performances also tell us something about the state of racist nativism among people who view themselves as fully “fused” or “assimilated” into a culture. As we have suggested above, conflating agentic, tactical choices made by migrants with physical or biological metaphors leads to theorizing cultures and the people who inhabit and reproduce that culture as fixed and inert. Given the contradictory history of the United States and Mexico, immigration policies displaying, holding, carrying, and waving the Mexican flag must be contextualized. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, officially known as the “Treaty of Peace, Friendship, Limits and Settlement between the United States of America and the Mexican Republic” ended the Mexican-­American War in 1848 and ceded a massive swath of land to the United States, including California, much of New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado. Mexican nationals residing in the ceded territories were given the opportunity to move out of Mexico or become US citizens with all the rights of citizenship. Many Mexicans living in Mexico prior to 1848 suddenly found themselves living in the United States and separated from other Mexicans, now in Mexico. Recognizing this fundamentally changes what we might understand to be immigration. As many activists about border issues have argued, “We didn’t cross the border; the border crossed us.” Similarly, while indigenously occupied regions constituted nations (e.g. the Blackfoot Confederacy), Guadalupe Hidalgo constituted a redrawing of already existing divisions, separating members of Mexico from one another.6 Such a situation profoundly complicates the meaning of immigration, and renders the explanatory power of such concepts as acculturation and assimilation suspect, as their adequateness and relevance suddenly become uncertain.7

Discourse of Mexican Flag-­waving For this study, we searched “All News”8 using Lexis/Nexis, which included newspapers, blogs, and online news sites. Using the Boolean search function, we searched “DREAM Act and Mexican Flag” and “DREAMers and Mexican Flag” items from 1 August 2000 to 11 March 2013. Thirty-­two articles resulted from the first set of terms and 15 articles resulted from the second. The primary themes repeated in the articles, which were mostly negative about undocumented immigrants included: resources (including welfare); patriotism; anger, resentment, and anxiety; self/other relationality (e.g. alienness and foreignness); legality; violence and desecration; criminality and illegality; invasion and takeover; and feeling disrespected. Essentially, those flying Mexican flags were depicted as threatening Others – criminals who were illegal and had broken US laws were aliens and thus not Americans – who were using up US resources, such as welfare, and exhibiting a lack of patriotism and disrespect toward the US by waving foreign flags. The flying of the flag produced anxiety, anger, resentment, and even violence. There was fear that flying the Mexican flag was a sign of invasion or takeover of America by Mexico. We chose to concentrate our attention on discourse about Mexican flag-­waving during DREAM Act protests to uncover how the media represent the act of waving the Mexican flag. The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM Act) is a law that, if passed, would provide a pathway to citizenship for a select group of undocumented youth who came to the United States as minors. This act seemed ideal for thinking through issues of acculturation, assimilation, and adaptation. We assumed those opposing the DREAM Act and/or those opposing undocumented migration would argue that those

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waving Mexican flags were not adapting, acculturating, and assimilating properly. Indeed, we did find that. But we also found that those cited in the discourse, themselves, had trouble adapting to new migrants and felt anxiety, discomfort, anger, and resentment toward those waving Mexican flags. In a sense, then it was native US citizens who expressed the most difficulty adjusting to their changing society, not the migrants who moved from Mexico to the United States. The discourse ended up being less about the difficulties of people waving Mexican flags and more about those criticizing the flag-­wavers for having failed to adapt to the presence of immigrants. In a sense, it was not those who might have migrated to the United States who expressed discomfort about adapting, assimilating, or acculturating, but those already in the United States who proclaimed citizenship and who showed difficulty accepting others and adapting to them. Central to the discourse was the notion of Mexican flag-­wavers as alien others. Constructing an us/them relationship was accomplished by denying flag-­waver’s empathy, downplaying their commonality and similarity to “native” Americans. It is not just a matter of the people commenting about the flag-­waving, seeing Mexican flag-­wavers as different, but rather going so far as to describe the act of flag-­waving as explicitly anti-­American. In one article, the author suggests they should “Wave the American flag” (Alaphia 2012). In another piece, Senator Mel Martinez addressed the National Press Club and expressed that the waving of the Mexican flag is a mistake, leading him to wonder if such performances are orchestrated “by some who had other political agendas” (Martinez 2006). Otherness was produced, in part through adjectives positioning Mexican flag-­wavers as separate from the self. For example, one interviewee quoted used us/them language to suggest separation, division, and the difference between those who flew the flag and us/herself when she said, “‘These criminals need to not be here anymore in my country,’ she said. ‘They need to go back to their homeland. They’re obviously nationalistic and proud of it. They should go’” (Carman 2006, Italics ours). In that same article, one interviewee expressed anxiety about the loss of US culture (Carman 2006). In another article, the author (referring to an interviewee) writes, “Healy said she is angered by those who characterize people like her [for opposing the waving of Mexican flags] as racist” (Pak and Mello 2010). Michelle Malkin labeled a school principal of Los Angeles charter school, La Academia Semillas del Pueblo, an “ethnic separatist” (Malkin 2006). The discourse suggests that it is not the cultural outsiders who feel insecure, unhappy, and isolated. Instead, nativist Americans experience dissonance and anxiety when confronted with complex and dissident displays of national belonging. In an interview with Tammy Fox-­Isicoff and Kellyanne Conway, Laura Ingraham said on The O’Reilly Factor that the flying of Mexican flags “ticked off the American people” (Ingraham 2007). Another article said Rep. Virgil H. Goode, Jr., from Virginia, was “riled by the sight of Mexican flags being waved at rallies and displayed in restaurants” (Lizama 2007). Another article quotes President Barack Obama’s book, The Audacity of Hope, as saying “When I see Mexican flags waved at pro-­immigration demonstrations, I sometimes feel a flush of patriotic resentment” (Starobin  2007). Some of that anger led to articles mentioning a Minuteman, a member of an Arizona-­based, anti-­immigrant militia, standing on a Mexican flag while protesting (Echegaray  2007). Another went further to suggest Roy Warden of Tucson was even arrested for “burning Mexican flags to incite demonstrations by Hispanics” (“Arizona’s New Immigration Law” 2010). In addition to using Lexis/Nexis to study news, we also studied discourse searchable more broadly on the Internet. We reviewed over 200  websites, searching for them by using the terms “DREAM Act, flag”; “DREAMers, flag”; “DREAM Act Mexican flag”; “DREAMers, Mexican flag.” Accounting for duplicate hits and websites where flag-­waving was not discussed left 63 sites relevant to the study. In analyzing the discourse, we found that the discourse surrounding flag-­waving, contextualized within one part of the immigration debate, challenges the notion that assimilation leads to feelings of security and wellbeing.



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Most of the commentary on flag-­waving appeared on message boards and in comment streams beneath articles about the DREAM Act. While these posts do not tell us much about mainstream media, studying message boards and comment streams does answer a call to investigate and critique this form of vernacular discourse (Ono and Sloop 1995). In these articles, assimilation is neither inevitable nor uncontested. For instance, themes of anti-­Americanism, assimilation avoidance, the desire to show respect for one’s culture, and disagreement about the viability of flag-­waving as a tactic appeared frequently. Paralleling the LexisNexis findings, we were able to draw out four types of commentary on the DREAM Act. Of the 63 sites, by far the smallest set of discourse were postings acknowledging that immigrants wave American flags.9 There were only three sites where this discourse was evident. On 10 of the sites, people described the waving of Mexican flags as a bad political tactic. Most of this commentary was on DREAMers’ discussion boards where people who identified as immigrants criticized DREAMers for waving Mexican flags at immigration rallies. Thus, not all immigrants adapt in the same way. As this case indicates, some are critical of the use of Mexican national symbols in protests; others proudly use them. Thirteen of the sites included people defending the waving of Mexican flags as a symbolic expression of cultural pride and not anti-­American. The largest grouping consisted of 48 sites where people reacted with negativity and hostility to the waving of Mexican flags. Many of these comments referred to the actions of DREAMers as un-­American or overtly hostile. Taken together it becomes apparent that though there is disagreement about what flag-­waving might mean, most of the online discussion generated from that action reflects disapproval at the display of Mexican flags. Perhaps one of the most intriguing findings of the study has to do with what is missing from the discourse. Even though immigrants also display and wave American flags at political demonstrations there was almost no discussion of this online. Those that did mention American flag-­waving did not credit immigrants for performing patriotism. An article written by Michelle Malkin (2010) expresses skepticism and disdain for what she views as a cynical attempt by DREAMers to co-­opt patriotism by waving American flags. “Anyone who has been to a college campus and interacted with these narcissistic multi-­culti activists knows that the American flag-­waving act is a cynical crock of you-­know-­what” (Malkin 2010). Next, an online magazine proclaims astonishment at “anxious Hispanics” in caps and gowns, proclaiming an American (US) identity. The final article discussed popular support for the DREAM Act (Aguilar 2010) among Texans and included a photograph of a young immigrant rally but did not comment on the boy waving an American flag at a pro-­ performance. The majority of online comments about flag-­waving came from American citizens reacting to the sight of Mexican flags. Many of the posts characterized the flying of Mexican flags as unpatriotic. On one website, a commenter writes, “Jerome, how do you explain their marching in the US while holding the Mexican flag high? This shows their true patriotism” (Not Blind 2012). The repeated mention of patriotism suggests that protestors view the process of immigration and assimilation from a perspective consistent with epistemicidal assimilation. The prevailing thread of these posts is that immigrants are unwilling to assimilate and that, in being unwilling to abandon symbolic ties to their home culture (such as the Mexican flag), DREAMers fail to show “functional fitness” as defined by nativist Americans. The way nativists define cultural belonging obviates the possibility that immigrants can take pride or find value in expressing multiple or hybrid identities. The discourse also constructed immigrants and citizens on opposing sides, as if adversaries in a culture war. Rather than seeing culture as fluid and complex, these posts reduce the complexity of culture to a zero-­sum game: either immigrants conform to US cultural standards, or they threaten the values and culture of US citizens. Such polarization is evident in this ­comment by one poster to a website: “Every time they walk out the door, they fly a Mexican flag. That’s

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not something you do in a country you love – that’s what you do on conquered land, period” (Digitoxin 2013). Despite being on occupied land, this discourse demonstrates anxiety about the fear of occupation. Even when immigrants engage in the nominally “patriotic” practice of displaying American flags, nativist discourse describes the act as a cynical and insincere performance, designed to advance a political agenda that runs counter to American values. The act of waving an American flag by immigrants and racialized Others is not intelligible to the nativist movement because of an ideological link between citizenship and whiteness (DeChaine 2009). The national imaginary is produced through discursive schemas that preclude non-­whites from participating as citizens and, as such, even those Others who wish to assimilate find that they are judged not American enough. Nativists have placed immigrants in a double bind. Displays of foreign flags are seen as offensive, anti-­American, and proof of immigrant’s unwillingness to assimilate. At the same time displays of American flags are either ignored or treated as insincere. Intercultural theories that rely on the notion of cultural melding, whether that be through fusion, hybridity, or the melting pot fail to recognize that identities are fragmented, contingent, and irrational. The messiness of adapting to a new culture, especially when that culture is nativistic suggest that it may never be possible for a racialized other to truly assimilate. Even after institutionalized desegregation, the United States remains a mostly segregated society. Black people have been part of American culture since the country’s inception yet according to epistemicidal theories of cultural blending they have failed to fully assimilate, as demonstrated by the high rates of segregation that still exist in the United States. Mexicans and American Indians have also failed to “become intercultural” despite decades of policies and programs forcing assimilation. These historical examples combined with the discourse about flag-­waving reveal a flaw in adaptation theory. What are immigrants to do when the host culture will not accept them? The anxiety and hostility targeted at immigrants by fully assimilated Americans seemingly contradict melded theories of adaptation and assimilation. Based on how American citizens talk about flag-­waving by pro-­immigrant activists we argue that the theory cannot explain those American citizens who are angry to the point of violence in the face of markers that imply a non-­ideal (white) performance of citizenship (Pindi and De La Garza  2018). The continued reliance of the field of intercultural communication on cultural blending severely limits intercultural scholars’ ability to account for the material and symbolic violence directed at immigrants. The power of race functions to transform even “patriotic” displays by racializing others as both unintelligible and a fearful threat to the dominant white mainstream thus casting “intercultural” immigrants as enemies of the nation (Demo 2005).

Conclusion To us flying the Mexican flag is a sign of pride, self-­confidence, patriotism (both to Mexico in some cases and to the United States in others), healthy self-­identity, and an awareness of history, context, identity, politics, and ethics. Thus, if we need to talk about maladjustment or discomfort with identity and maladaptive behavior, it seems in this case we would then be forced to examine discourse by people in the United States who do not regard themselves as migrants, who fear others, fear change, see culture as homogenously white, who stereotype the “other,” and imply there is little in common between themselves and others, and who regard anyone doing something other than what they want (i.e. flying a US flag) to be a criminal or have “other,” problematic views. Indeed, the case of discourse about flag-­waving indicates a new approach to intercultural communication, one that does not assume the superiority of one cultural and national way of thinking and behaving, but instead recognizes the global, transnational, and what Shohat and Stam call in their book Unthinking Eurocentrism a “polycentric multicultural” approach to the world, one where acceptance, mutual self-­recognition, respect,



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and celebration of difference are central precepts to living in a world in which migration is a human right, and a human value. The human subject is capable of infinite improvisational and novel responses to the historically and socially situated structures (Bourdieu 1990) that produce and are produced by discourse. Immigrants and culture are in a constant state of “becoming otherwise.” Despite differentials in power and resources, adaptation is not a unidirectional process. Even as the State works to colonize immigrants into citizenry, immigrants challenge the nativist agenda of the state to sublimate and destroy the ideas, values, and lifeways that challenge and transform the norms of their host culture. The diverse, chaotic, and messy aspects of adaptation are an incredible benefit to researchers interested in communication because the differences and flux are continually generating new conditions of possibility for migrants and societies alike. By learning to see the ever-­shifting, historically situated, agentive action of diverse immigrant experiences, communication scholars open themselves up to new ways of thinking and seeing that enrich our understanding of the human experience.

Notes 1 We would like to thank Angel Maldonado for comments on this essay. 2 https://lao.ca.gov/ballot/1998/227_06_1998.htm 3 Kramer (2000) discusses Gudykunst and Kim’s (1992 theory of adaptation as one of “model minority functionalism.” 4 While we support James Carey’s definition of communication, which serves as an important starting point, we would add that communication does not always need to be strategic. Communication, at times, results from affect. Communication, also, need not be directed or experienced by human subjects. While “human communication” is critical, it is anthropocentric to assume the centrality of humans as both subjects and objects of all communication, and communication processes. And, while process is a central component of communication we also suggest that it is important not to ignore the productive outcomes of a speech act. 5 Cisneros (2011, pp. 26–49). 6 See, for example, Luna-­Firebaugh (2002). 7 Pineda and Sowards (2007, pp. 164–174). 8 Within the Lexus Nexus database one of the search options is labeled “All News.” This gave us access to all of the news stories in the data base that met our search parameters. 9 For this part of the analysis we only looked at discourse that discussed waving American flags “correctly.” We included discourse critiquing flag “desecration” (i.e. waving the American flag upside down or underneath the Mexican flag) in another theme.

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Cisneros, J.D. (2011). (Re) bordering the civic imaginary: rhetoric, hybridity, and citizenship in La Gran Marcha. Quarterly Journal of Speech 97: 26–49. Das, B. and Ansary, R. (2018). Bangladeshi and inter-­state migrants: differential adaptation and acceptance by the locals in West Bengal, India. Spatial Demography 6 (2): 159–178. De La Garza, A. and Ono, K.A. (2016). Critical race theory. In: The International Encyclopedia of Communication Theory and Philosophy (eds. K.B. Jensen, R.T. Craig, et al.), 1–9. Wiley. DeChaine, D.R. (2009). Bordering the civic imaginary: alienization, fence logic, and the minuteman civil defense corps. Quarterly Journal of Speech 95 (2009): 43. Demo, A.T. (2005). Sovereignty discourse and contemporary immigration politics. Quarterly Journal of Speech 91: 291–311. Digitoxin. (2013, March). 13-­year-­old Mexican drug cartel hitman found dead, tortured | American renaissance. American Renaissance. www.amren.com/news/2013/03/13-­year-­old-­mexican-­drug-­ cartel-­hitman-­found-­dead-­tortured (accessed 15 May 2013). Echegaray, C. (2007). Immigrants rally for reform. Tampa Tribune (2 May). Eguchi, S. and Baig, N. (2018). Examining embodied struggles in cultural reentry through intersectional reflexivity. Howard Journal of Communications 29 (1): 33. Flores, L.A. (2020). Deportable and disposable. In: Deportable and Disposable. Penn State University Press. Fromm, J. (2010). Morgan Hill becomes center of flag Controversy. Morgan Hill Observer, 9. www. morganhillobserver.com/index.php?title=Article:News/2010/05/09/Morgan_Hill_Becomes_ Center_of_Flag_Controversy&lqt_method=reply&lqt_operand=1211 (accessed 6 July 2023). Gudykunst, W. and Kim, Y.Y. (1992). Communicating with Strangers: An Approach to Intercultural Communication, 2e. New York: McGraw Hill Originally published in 1984. Ingraham, L. (2007). Talking points memo and top story. The O’Reilly Factor. (19 November). Kim, Y.Y. (2001). Becoming Intercultural: An Integrative Theory of Communication and Cross-­Cultural Adaptation. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Kim, Y.Y. (2005). Inquiry in intercultural and development communication. Journal of Communication 55 (3): 554–577. Kramer, E.M. (2000). Cultural fusion and the defense of difference. In: Socio-­Cultural Conflict Between African and Korean Americans (eds. M.K. Asante and J.E. Min), 182–223. New York: University Press of America. Lizama, J.A. (2007). Some immigrants seek freedom from abusers. Richmond Times (20 June). Luna-­Firebaugh, E.M. (2002). The border crossed us: border crossing issues of indigenous peoples of the Americas. Wicazo Sa Review 17 (1): 159–181. Malkin, M. (2006, July) Race schools. Pittsburgh Tribune Review. Malkin, M. (2010, December). Michelle Malkin | Video: UCLA open-­borders prof/SEIU lawyer urges “DREAM”-­ers to replace those “old white guys”. http://michellemalkin.com/2010/12/14/video-­ ucla-­open-­borders-­prof-­urges-­dream-­ers-­to-­replace-­those-­old-­white-­guys (accessed 15 May 2013). Martinez, M. (2006, 12 May) National Press Club luncheon with Senator Mel Martinez. Federal News Service. Martinez, A.R. (2017). Intersectionality, voz, and agency: a culture-­centered approach to understanding US-­born Mexican Americans’ depression experiences. Southern Communication Journal 82 (5): 278–297. Not Blind. (2012, 6 March). A brief GOP flirtation with a Georgia version of the DREAM Act. Atlanta Journal Constitution: Political Insider Blog. http://blogs.ajc.com/political-­insider-­jim-­galloway/ 2012/03/06/a-­brief-­gop-­flirtation-­with-­a-­georgia-­version-­of-­the-­dream-­act/?cp=2 (accessed 15  May 2023). Ono, K.A. and Sloop, J.M. (1995). The critique of vernacular discourse. Communication Monographs 62 (1): 19–46. Ono, K.A. and Sloop, J.M. (2002). Shifting Borders: Rhetoric, Immigration, and California’s Proposition 187. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Pak, E. and Mello, M. (2010, 2 May). Hundreds of protesters march in Santa Ana rallies. Orange County Register. Pascasio, L.S. (2021). Diaspora Media: A Rhizomatic Study of Identity, Resistance and Citizenship. Ohio University.



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Pindi, G.N. and De La Garza, A.T. (2018). “The colonial Jesus”: deconstructing white Christianity. In: D. M. D. McIntosh, D. G. Moon, & T. K. Nakayama (Eds.),  Interrogating the Communicative Power of Whiteness, 218–238). Routledge. Pineda, R.D. and Sowards, S.K. (2007). Flag-­waving as visual argument: 2006 immigration demonstrations and cultural citizenship. Argumentation and Advocacy 43: 164–174. Rodrigues, C.E. and de Santana, C.M. (2020). Reprodução colonial capitalista e resistências indígenas: estudo comparativo entre Brasil e México. Configurações. Revista Ciências Sociais 25: 112–127. de Sousa Santos, B. (2014). Epistemologies of the South: Justice Against Epistemicide. New York: Routledge. Starobin, P. (2007). Absent the frontier. The National Journal (21 April). Zhanga, J. and Goodson, P. (2011). Acculturation and psychosocial adjustment of Chinese international students: examining mediation and moderation effects. International Journal of Intercultural Relations 35 (5): 614–627. Zimányi, K. (2011). Conflict recognition, prevention and resolution in mental health interpreting: exploring Kim’s cross-­ cultural adaptation model. Journal of Language and Politics 11 (2): 207–228.

Part III

Critical Inquiry Practices in Critical Intercultural Communication Studies

Introduction to Part III For critical intercultural communication work, it is an exciting and expansive time in this moment for critical methodologies and modes of inquiry. We have rhetorical and critical cultural methods as well as critical race ethnic studies, intersectional, performance, queer, transgender, disability, and identity approaches and tools. Critical performative autoethnography, ethnography, interviewing, oral histories, case study analysis, and critical quantitative methods along with economic, policy, and legal analytical tools, abound. Our methods are gateways to interrogate and unpack legacies, systems, structures, practices, discourses, and materialities of power and suppression along with modes of agency that live in the crevices and cracks. Critical intercultural communication studies should not be pigeonholed into utilizing only certain (or expected) methods (discourse analysis types) but rather seek to wield methods or modes of inquiry that proffer a closer view of the dynamics of power around culture. So long as the critical spirit (power-­focused) of critical intercultural communication studies is invoked, scholars should be encouraged to enact and make use of various methodological tools. The chapters in this section – by scholars Ahmet Atay, Mark P. Orbe, Lore/tta LeMaster and Michael Tristano, Jr., Gloria Nziba Pindi, Devika Chawla, Sarah Amira de la Garza, Srividya Ramasubramanian, Julius Riles, and Omotayo O. Banjo, Robert Gutierrez-­Perez, and Mohan Dutta – do exactly this and highlight methodological considerations and possibilities for critical intercultural communication projects. We invite you to engage the following questions that emerge from this section’s chapters: • What are the key commitments that critical intercultural communication methodologies and modes of inquiry should invoke and uphold? What about for methods that have contributed to the colonization and oppression of cultural groups in the past? Is there a need for methodological reconciliation in these cases? • What is the relationship between the theories and theorizings and methodologies in our critical intercultural work? • How do we leverage the aspects of situatedness and contextualization that are woven into critical intercultural communication methods? • What critical methodologies bring about the most intercultural justice and transformative change for marginalized and neglected communities? • How can we remake and transform our critical intercultural methods with the cultural communities that we engage so as to better “see” lived experiences of intersectionality and coping amid contexts and conditions of power?

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Methodological Reexaminations: Decolonizing Autoethnography and New Pathways in Critical Intercultural Communication Ahmet Atay College of Wooster

Did stories find me to be told? Or did I find storytelling to make sense of my in-­between, accented, queer, and transnational experiences within and outside US academia? I have always been fascinated with stories and intrigued by the worlds within them. I loved reading books as a child and a teenager. I fell in love with films as a young kid, and I found companionship, and in some ways I found myself, in television shows, particularly the serial narratives I watched growing up and throughout my formative years as an international student in the United States. I used to write short stories and poetry to express how I felt and, in some ways, to construct a reality. Collectively, these stories presented new experiences, taught me about other cultures, empowered me to discover layers of my own identity, and provided agency to challenge oppressive structures that I was operating within and push back against the grain. It is not accidental that I arrived at storytelling, performative writing, and autoethnography as a methodology. I arrived there because I was trying to navigate my in-­between and queer experiences within a white and US-­centric culture and to make sense of my transnational cultural identity. The stories I told became vehicles for me to make sense, but they also became ways to critique ethnocentric and oppressive practices, assumptions, structures, research methodologies, and writing that erase the voices of others – in this case, the voices of transnational queer bodies. I found myself writing about the mixture of hurt and hope. I continue to write about possibilities within transnational exchanges, crossing borders, and translating between languages and cultures, and, more importantly, I write about the fluidity and intersectionality of our identities. Mine is a fragmented and accented story. Therefore, decolonizing autoethnography emerged as the most effective way I know of capturing the realities of colliding worlds, experiences that are caught between translations, and lives that are lived and represented in accented and queer ways. I came to intercultural communication via my training in media and cultural studies during the early 2000s. Although I was intrigued by the idea of studying culture and its different facets, I quickly realized that most of the intercultural communication scholarship at the time was focusing on interpersonal relationships and communication through cultural contact, such as cultural adaptation theories and face negotiation. Most of the research was quantitative or interpretive, mostly employing survey, ethnographic, and sometimes rhetorical methods. Even though I was fascinated by the idea of studying cultural issues and differences, the conventional The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication, Second Edition. Edited by Thomas K. Nakayama and Rona Tamiko Halualani. © 2024 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2024 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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methodologies were limiting me to examining cultural identity formations, performances, and between experiences. Around that time, intercultural communication scholars such as in-­ Thomas Nakayama (1994,  1997,  2000), Gust Yep (1998), Rona Halualani (1998,  2002), Dreama Moon (1996), and Alberto Gonzalez et al. (1994) began stretching the boundaries of intercultural communication to study power and the ways in which social structures and political discourses influence and shape people’s experiences and identity formations. While most of the existing scholarship in critical intercultural communication at the time was about US-­American experiences and contexts, they were highlighting the importance of racial and ethnic identities by spotlighting and studying these experiences. Most scholars who were studying international experiences were mainly using quantitative and interpretive research methods to understand the lived experiences of international students or immigrants. As an international scholar, I was trying to find my academic home within communication studies, but I was also questioning the place of transnational queer studies within critical intercultural communication. I felt a bit out of place, and I felt somewhat academically homeless. Like back then, I am still negotiating my place within intercultural communication, as I am continuously blurring its lines and crossing over to media and cultural studies terrain. As an international graduate student, I was starved of any glimpse of international queer experiences or representation within communication studies. During the early to mid-­2000s, queer studies was in its infancy in our discipline, and queer scholars were working and writing in the margins, physically and figuratively, facing resistance from our scholarly community. I was repeatedly told that taking a queer studies path would be risky, particularly in terms of the academic job market. I was told that not many departments would hire critical scholars to begin with and that the chances were even slimmer when it came to queer studies scholarship. I was one of the few minorities – perhaps the only one – within intercultural communication circles who was studying queer experiences from an intercultural communication (IC) perspective. Hence, at our national and regional conferences, I began to feel marginalized who was studying cultural identity formations of diasporic and transnational bodies. I vividly remember how during one of the conferences, one of the well-­known scholars in our field argued that queer scholarship was not intercultural scholarship. Perhaps this was the same mindset that did not find my first book on diasporic queer experience worthy of an National Communication Association’s (NCA) International and Intercultural Communication Division award in the 2010s. Although time has passed, and we have made some progress, these incidents still resonate with me. Moments like these continuously remind me that the type of scholarship that I do would be on the margins regardless of the progress that we make. There is always a periphery within the periphery. Accented, immigrant, transnational, and queer bodies often dwell in these peripheries. This autoethnography is about the precarity of my disciplinary belonging and finding my voice within critical intercultural communication via autoethnographic methods.

Autoethnographic Arrival I have a complicated relationship with words. Sometimes they come to me seamlessly, and sometimes we play hide and seek. It was one of those nights when I was staring at the blank screen, hoping to find words. I would argue that this is both the curse and the advantage of international scholars. As we translate between languages and experiences, we try to find the right words to reflect our states of being, our fluid identities, and our in-­between experiences. Sometimes we cannot find the right words to mirror what we want to say – and how we want to say it – regardless of how excellent our academic English might be. As we translate, we shift, and as we shift, we enter cultural and linguistic spaces where the right words can hide, and our meanings might be blurry. It was one of those nights. The words were escaping me. I stumbled.



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I took a shortcut when I left the library on that very cold November evening. The night was pitch black, and there was the smell of snow in the air. My Mediterranean soul ached a bit as I walked the cement pathway. I heard my footsteps echoing in the night as I walked to my dorm room. It was one of those nights when I spent hours working and hanging out with my fellow graduate students. Like me, they were all international students, and we were all curious about intercultural encounters, regardless of the academic paths we were taking. We bonded not only because we were all studying culture but also because we were all isolated, studying in the middle of Iowa. I continued walking as I tried to make sense of my individual and our collective experiences, struggles, and isolation. The words were escaping me because I was struggling to find words to capture our transformations, our lack of belonging, and our desire to find academic homes. I stumbled. It was not until the following week that a glimpse of academic hope appeared. One of our readings for the Qualitative Research Methods class was about autoethnography. I was lucky enough to be in a program where, in addition to rhetorical and ethnographic methods, we were learning about performance methodologies. Autoethnography as ethnographic and performative writing (Ellis and Bochner 2000; Pelias 2000) was helping us to bridge from a critical ethnographic lens to cultural and performative writing. My first encounter with this method produced new curiosities, but also some anxieties. Although I was loving the method, the thought of constructing performative and poetic sentences with my accented voice terrified me. It was scary enough finding words to match my experiences; it was even scarier crafting poetically personal and performatively bold sentences to make myself vulnerable in another language. The semester ended, and I did not think much of autoethnography. I looked elsewhere to find the right words within the right methodologies to carry on my academic curiosities. Once again, I stumbled. My second encounter with autoethnography was more personal and intimate. As I was trying to make sense of my queerness and my in-­between experiences, I accidentally re-­ arrived at autoethnography. Lisa M. Tillmann-­Healy’s (2001) book Between Gay and Straight: Understanding Friendship across Sexual Orientation became a guiding light when I was working on a research paper for my Interpersonal Communication course. I was not sure if I was fascinated by her subject or by the way she narrated her personal experiences with a gay softball team. I was intrigued. I was captivated by her words, her rich descriptions, and her writing style. I guess it was one of those academic moments when we experience a departure from the path we have taken. My training in media studies was colliding with autoethnography and performative writing. Years later, I realized that those moments were the beginnings of my experimentation combining autoethnographic writing with mediated realities. However, until that point, autoethnography became a lens, a safe heaven, and a promised land to help me make sense of my transnational and intersectional accented complexities. Even though the words continued to play hide and seek, I was learning to balance every time I stumbled.

The Fear of Finding the Right Words Autoethnographically When you do not see yourself in the body of academic literature that you are working with, you can do two things: leave the sub-­field or change it. I chose the latter. This was not an easy journey, but I decided to go against the grain, not only on one front but on two. At the time, while autoethnographic research was heavily white and US-­centric, intercultural communication was not queer-­friendly. Hence, I struggled with finding ways to emphasize my transnationality, my in-­between experiences, and the fluidity and intersectionality of my own cultural identities with the methodological tools available to me. On the one hand, I was learning

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about postcolonial, feminist, and queer theories and wanting to empower myself; in other ways, I was methodologically limited. Although I was interested in performance methodologies, the fear of linguistic limitations, translational obstacles, and the US-­centric nature of performance studies pushed me away from exploring those trajectories. Instead, I turned to critical cyber ethnography (Gajjala 2004, 2006) to study others in order to make sense of my own struggles and understand transnational queer complexities. The cold early March air brushed off my cheeks. I always felt energized after my course on postcolonial theory. It was one of those nights. Our conversations on Bhabha’s notion of third space and our ongoing discussions about belonging and home sparked so many interesting research project ideas for me. This was a complicated semester. In the mornings, I was sitting in an autoethnography course, and once a week, at night, I was exploring the possibilities of postcolonial studies. Although I was fascinated by every reading we were assigned to complete in the autoethnography course, I was not able to see myself reflected in our curriculum. I often felt as if I was learning the method through the experiences of white US-­American bodies. As an international student, I was yearning for more – for a glimpse of hope and for the words of other accented scholars to encourage me. Although narratives were being incorporated by some critical intercultural scholars in their essays, these were not common, and they were written as autoethnographies. Similarly, my accented, transnational, postcolonial, and queer realities were not part of autoethnographic methodologies. While I felt liberated by the possibilities of the method, I was constrained by its lack of diversity. On the one hand, I felt as if I had found my voice; on the other, there was not much room for my accented voice at the time within autoethnographic writing. I stumbled. Next day. 10:25 p.m. As I sipped my tea, I searched for words. I stared at my blank computer screen, looking for inspiration to write. The pain was real, and fear was causing the pain. Finding the right words to construct poetically written, culturally infused, and critically reflected sentences was not easy. We all stumble on words. Some of us more than others. When the words were forming in my head, my gut stopped me from typing them. The fear of vulnerability was as real as the fear of finding the right words. I managed to write one word: “I.” We were often discouraged from using this word in most social scientific and – to an extent – some interpretive writing. Hence, I felt like a sinner. How could I sin further by using the “I” next to the words “queer” and “diasporic”? I stopped. I stumbled on words. Sinful, queer, critical words were inducing anxieties and fear. 11:37 p.m. “I” remained the only word on that page. Was I stuck because of the fear of writing? Or was I stuck because of writing with an accent to tell accented stories about in-­ between transnational realities? Perhaps I was stuck because I feared the fear of self-­reflexively writing. Perhaps the source of the fear was not finding the right words to reflect my thoughts, feelings, and experiences. Perhaps the fear was about being rejected by the mainstream scholars who wrote autoethnographically. Maybe my accented English words were not good enough to poetically dance on the paper. And maybe when my words were read aloud, my in-­between experiences would have been lost between me and the audience. I often resided in liminal spaces, but did I have the courage to let my words rest on those borders where I negotiate who I am culturally, linguistically, and sexually? The fear of being read but not fully understood gutted me. I failed to pair the word “I” on the page. I stood alone, fearing to find the right words to stand next to. 12:54 a.m. I stumbled. I came to autoethnography to find myself. But at the time, autoethnography was not ready for me. Although I took various methodological detours, I continued to work on autoethnographic papers, which I presented at various conferences. The fear of finding the right words impacted my ability and desire to use autoethnographic methods. Partially, I was fearing rejection, and partially I was trying to make sense of my own journey as a transnational queer body before I could match this with the right words. Hence, I stumbled.



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Re-­arrival: Decolonizing Autoethnography Displacement, misplacement, and replacement are all parts of diasporic or transnational experiences. We are used to being displaced emotionally and physically. We are used to being in in-­ between places and continuously yearning for a sense of belonging (physical, emotional, and academic) and feeling at home. We make nowheres (or in the middle of nowheres) homes to belong and stay in US academia. Some of us might feel more marginalized because of our thick intersectionalities (Yep 2010, 2013, 2016), and some of us feel more isolated or lonely because of our particular experiences within and outside of academia. I often argue that tears and suffering are part of transnational scholars’ everyday experiences, which are normalized or not visible or acknowledged, residing in the periphery of the periphery. I recognize that oppressive structures that dehumanize us within and outside of academia or our scholarly fields sometimes benefit or attribute privileges to some of us. But in those moments, people see our privileges and wash out or ignore our oppressions. They look the other way, ignore us, or do not recognize us. As a queer transnational scholar, my academic journey has its ups and down, and I have had my share of tears, isolation, and rejection. But this chapter is not directly about them. Instead, it is about autoethnography being and becoming my lifeline to exist. It is about an autoethnographic transnational queer voice making itself heard. I took a long detour from autoethnography. This was partially because I was looking for jobs, and since I was told not to dwell on too many risky topics or methods, I chose queer worldmaking as an inquiry. Our departure was not like the ones that happen in airports, where people who are leaving and left behind often cry during their last goodbyes. Our departure was more like a softly spoken “see you later.” As academics, once we take a detour from a topic, theoretical framework, or research method, it is not always easy to come back. We departed, but part of us stayed with each other, lurking in the shadows at conferences or in the forms of assigned readings for classes. We co-­existed; our distance was understood. I remained as a critical ethnographer and a critical media studies and critical intercultural communication scholar trying to find his “I/auto.” As transnational and queer scholars, we often quickly realize that mainstream academic cultures and university structures can be very oppressive toward historically marginalized bodies, including ourselves. Higher education is where most of my intercultural contact happens. As my classrooms are filled with students from different backgrounds, I experience a sense of connectivity and exposure to difference. While we talk about cultural issues, power structures, agency, and voice, and oppression, we often embody a learning community. Sadly, most of the intercultural encounters we have in academia may not be as rewarding and positive as this one. As othered bodies, we often experience discrimination, heavy negative criticism, marginalization, and rejection. Therefore, these experiences provide very complex intercultural encounters to reflect on as we teach critical intercultural communication in the classroom. It was one of those days that I felt suffocated. There was not a particular reason for my negative mode; it was exhaustion from the oppressive structures that consistently marked my transnational, accented, and queer body as the other. Maybe it was the rejection letter that I had received from a journal editor or a comment that I had read in my evaluations, or maybe it was something that someone commented on about international students and scholars, or maybe it was the queerphobic structures of our academic culture that I was living in that caused this particular feeling of disconnection. It was at that moment that I re-­arrived at autoethnography. I was hurting, and I felt suffocated. I remembered reading for my intercultural communication class not that long ago Bernadette Marie Calafell’s (2007) article on survival in academic cultures that are not necessarily made for academic others. I decided to return to the piece to look for inspiration.

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I reread the article, pencil in one hand and a ruler in the other. I was taking notes as I read along, writing in the margins. I realized that I needed to return to autoethnography to survive. Then, I looked for Devika Chawla’s (2003, 2014) writing to look for hope. As a transnational scholar, Chawla often writes about immigrant and diasporic experiences, identity performances, and the notion of living in-­between. Then, I picked up Adams and Holman Jones’s (2008) work on queer autoethnography to assure myself that my queer experiences can find an academic home and continue to live on in print and in digital pixels. Every sentence that I read reminded me that I needed to write from the heart (Pelias 2004), articulate my queer and transnational experiences, and find my voice regardless of its accent. I needed to make to my voice heard for myself and my stories, so scholars like me can find ways to carve out academic spaces to breathe, exist, and tell their stories. Furthermore, I needed to write about transnational, diasporic, and queer identity formations, immigration, misplacement, accented voices, and oppressive structures to make sense of my own experiences and liberate myself. Hence, decolonizing autoethnography (Chawla and Atay 2018) became my path for survival in brutal, biased, and oppressive academic cultures (Atay 2018). So what is decolonizing autoethnography? Chawla and Atay (2018) fuse the goals of autoethnographic methods with postcolonial theorizing to create an approach to decenter US-­centric storytelling and generate performative and creative writing styles that challenge colonial and oppressive logics and writing styles. They write: We believe that addressing autoethnography from a postcolonial lens pushes ahead the genre and method’s agenda of carving out spaces to articulate a plethora of cultural experiences specifically rooted in colonial histories. Postcolonial autoethnography has the capacity to challenge the core of autoethnography by engaging more diverse voices and employing more variant storytelling techniques. Moreover, a postcolonial frame will contribute to the core agenda of autoethnographic writing, which seeks to shift marginal voices to the center. We also believe that there is no better time – geopolitically – to forge ahead with such a project. Doing so in this moment in history is also an empowering move that has the potential to reframe autoethnography by encouraging it to break away from the dominance of Western and U.S.-­centric ways of narrating life worlds. Finally, postcolonial autoethnography has the capacity to reframe conventional forms of autoethnographic writing by offering different templates of expressing culturally and historically infused lived experiences. (p. 4)

We see autoethnography as a transformative methodology where stories in the form of cultural critique can offer ways of thinking and connections with the topics at hand. Hence, Chawla and Atay postulate: We believe that autoethnography is one of these powerful methods and genres. We also believe that in its original intention and purpose, as outlined by Holman Jones et al. (2013), the autoethnographic approach aims to “disrupt norms of research practice and representation” by working with local/insider/native knowledges to break silences, and reclaim subjectivity and voice (p. 32). This purpose is well aligned with a decolonizing approach to research and writing, a subject of much discussion in postcolonial work. (p. 6)

Therefore, for me, decolonizing autoethnography became a way to articulate and perform my transnational, in-­between, accented, and queer experiences. It offered a way to challenge structures and assumptions and interrogate the power dynamics that govern our bodies. Moreover, decolonizing autoethnography aims to empower marginalized and accented transnational, diasporic, and immigrant experiences. As a result, I often write accented decolonizing queer autoethnographies to capture moments of transformation, oppression, cultural struggles, free-­ floating identities, and words and experiences that are caught in-­ between places, spaces, and cultures.



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Life in the Periphery: Stories from the Margins Transnational queer lives are not easy. They are always shaped by local, national, and transnational laws and politics. They are always implicated in overlapping and intersecting political and cultural discourses. While transnational queer lives enjoy certain privileges (such as transnational mobilities), their lives are also subject to intersecting marginalization and discrimination in different cultural and national contexts. Transnational queer lives are heavily policed, regulated, and discriminated against. Their bodies are judged, marked, violated, and sometimes punished. In US academia, transnational queer scholars, in order to work within the system, often accept academic positions at institutions situated in suburban locations or in small towns. Hence, they also live their lives in isolation. I am one of those transnational queer bodies. In the following paragraphs, I enact a brief piece of decolonizing autoethnographic writing. As autoethnographers, we write about cultures that we belong to and the things that we experience around us. When we belong to more than one culture and occupy different ethnic and national intersections (Yep 2016), we might write about these intersecting identities and experiences. I sat down at my desk to write about transnational fluidities. It was a Saturday morning. It was not an ordinary one. It was a cold Saturday morning in March during our spring break. Why this detail matters – because like so many spring breaks, while my colleagues and students were traveling around the nation (or around the world), I chose to stay in town. When you live and work in a small town, that small town becomes your home, even though you might be a transnational body. Why does this matter? Because regardless of what break it is, since I don’t have any other family members in town or in the US, I cannot go anywhere to visit. Going home (Cyprus) for only a week or two is not really wise considering the price of international flights. Moreover, as the COVID-­19 pandemic made abundantly clear, it might not be an option during moments of national or international crisis. Dear reader, pardon me. I took a detour from my original story. I often tell stories within stories. Hence, my writing challenges the conventional linear storytelling that we are often used to or comfortable with. After all, decolonizing autoethnographies depart from the conventions to challenge the structures and, in this case, writing styles that limit transnational or marginalized experiences. Saturday. March. I was on a mission. I have been craving to write for the longest time, but because of my busy teaching and service schedule, I was not able to. I inhaled. As air filled my lungs, I hoped that I could find the right words to construct sentences that would make sense instead of reflecting my tired and slightly pissed-­off mode. Why was I pissed off? The answer is simple. I was wondering why I had to stay in my apartment and small town during the break, and, secondly, I was mad that regardless of how much effort I spent carving out writing time during the week, my time was taken up by other duties. Other people treat our time disrespectfully. They think that it has pedestrian access and that they can take up the time we might not have whenever they please. I did not want to write a cranky piece. So, I stared at the screen to find the words to articulate my thoughts. I wanted to write about being cut out, living in a small town, the lack of transnational cultural diversity, and continuous marginalization. I wanted to write about the labor of me and of others like me, even though our visible and invisible labor are hardly ever recognized or valued. I wanted to write about wanting to go and see my family but not having enough time to take a transatlantic flight during every break. I wanted to write about people who keep telling me that I should only do my research over the breaks, not whenever I wanted. I wanted to write about the sacrifices that we all make. I wanted to write about our choices and regrets. Instead of finding the right words to construct perfectly formed sentences, I was thinking queer sentences that needed editing and translating to capture my pain. I can only write about transnational queer pain through decolonizing autoethnographies.

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Conclusion I started this essay by saying that I come to stories to make meanings and that I never truly understand if stories come to me or if I go to stories to make sense of the world around me. Perhaps it is the symbiotic dimension of this dilemma or relationship that I enjoy. If I don’t write stories about my in-­between experiences, I read the stories of others. So, my stories can tag along to create larger frameworks to articulate mobility, transnationality, queerness, and marginalization. As a critical intercultural communication and cultural studies scholar, I occupy a unique position in academia. I am in the periphery, and I write about peripheries as a transnational accented queer body. My words are translated linguistically, culturally, and emotionally to narrate my stories and navigate the relationship between reader and scholar. I question this relationship, as I don’t want to write stories to be approved by the mainstream. I want to write accented and marginalized stories, so I can be understood. I want to write decolonizing and transnational stories, so my voice can be valued and respected. Hence, I offer decolonizing autoethnography as an approach and a critical/cultural and performative method to illuminate peripheral, accented, queer, silenced, and ignored voices. Decolonizing autoethnography aims to empower marginalized scholars and their voices. While it critiques and decenters US-­centric, mainstream, and oppressive structures, it also carves out spaces to exist and celebrate differences. Hence, this unusual autoethnographic writing has aimed to highlight issues that are overlooked. March. Another year. I am on a break, and I am writing the last sentences of this essay. Choices are made, and I sacrifice my time to write crooked words to spotlight layers of transnational experiences. Words are still playing hide and seek. And I am still using stories to belong, to feel at home, to resist, and to hope.

References Adams, T.E. and Holman Jones, S. (2008). Autoethnography is queer. In: Handbook of Critical and Indigenous Methodologies (eds. N.K. Denzin, Y.S. Lincoln, and L.T. Smith), 373–390. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Atay, A. (2018). Journey of errors: finding home in academia. Cultural Studies ↔ critical methodologies 18 (1): 16–22. https://doi.org/10.1177/1532708617734009. Calafell, B.M. (2007). Mentoring and love: an open letter. Cultural Studies critical methodologies 7 (4): 425–441. https://doi.org/10.1177/1532708607305123. Chawla, D. (2003). Two journeys. Qualitative Inquiry 9 (5): 785–804. Chawla, D. (2014). Home, Uprooted: Oral Histories of India’s Partition. New York: Fordham University Press. Chawla, D. and Atay, A. (2018). Introduction: decolonizing autoethnography. Cultural Studies Critical Methodologies 18 (1): 3–8. Ellis, C. and Bochner, A.P. (2000). Autoethnography, personal narrative, reflexivity. In: Handbook of Qualitative Research, 2e (eds. N.K. Denzin and Y.S. Lincoln), 733–768. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Gajjala, R. (2004). Negotiating cyberspace/negotiating RI. In: Our Voices: Essays in Culture, Ethnicity, and Communication (eds. A. Gonzales, M. Houston, and V. Chen), 82–91. Roxbury: Los Angeles. Gajjala, R. (2006). Cyberethnography: reading south Asian digital diaspora. In: Native on the Net: Indigenous and Diasporic Peoples in the Virtual Age (ed. K. Landzelius), 272–291. London: Routledge. Gonzalez, A., Houston, M., and Chen, V. (eds.) (1994). Introduction in Our Voices: Essays in Culture, Ethnicity, and Communication, xiii–2. Roxbury: Los Angeles. Halualani, R.T. (1998). Seeing through the screen: the struggle of culture. In: Readings in Cultural Contexts (eds. J.N. Martin, T.K. Nakayama, and L.A. Flores), 264–275. Mayfield: Mountain View. Halualani, R.T. (2002). In the Name of Hawaiians: Native Identities and Cultural Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.



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Moon, D.G. (1996). Concepts of “culture”: implications of intercultural communication research. Communication Quarterly 44: 70–84. Nakayama, T.K. (1994). Dis/orienting identities: Asian Americans, history, and intercultural communication. In: Our Voices: Essays in Communication, Culture and Ethnicity (eds. A. Gonzalez, M. Houston, and V. Chen), 12–17. Roxbury: Los Angeles. Nakayama, T.K. (1997). Les voix de l’autre. Western Journal of Communication 61 (2): 235–242. https://doi.org/10.1080/10570319709374573. Nakayama, T.K. (2000). The significance of “race” and masculinities. Critical Studies in Media Communication 17 (1): 111–113. https://doi.org/10.1080/15295030009388381. Pelias, R.J. (2000). The critical life. Communication Education 49 (3): 220–228. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/03634520009379210. Pelias, R.J. (2004). A Methodology of the Heart: Evoking Academic and Daily Life. New York: Alta Mira. Tillmann-­ Healy, L.M. (2001). Between Gay and Straight: Understanding Friendship across Sexual Orientation. Lanham: Alta Mira. Yep, G.A. (1998). My three cultures: navigating the multicultural identity landscape. In: Readings in Cultural Contexts (eds. J.N. Martin, T.K. Nakayama, and L.A. Flores), 79–84. Mayfield: Mountain View. Yep, G.A. (2010). Toward the de-­subjugation of racially marked knowledges in communication. Southern Communication Journal 75 (2): 171–175. Yep, G.A. (2013). Queering/Quaring/Kauering/Crippin’/Transing “other bodies” in intercultural communication. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 6 (2): 118–126. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17513057.2013.777087. Yep, G.A. (2016). Toward thick(er) intersectionalities: theorizing, researching, and activating the complexities of communication and identities. In: Globalizing Intercultural Communication: A Reader (eds. K. Sorrells and S. Sekimoto), 86–94. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

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Embracing the Rigor of Critical Intercultural Communication Methods of Inquiry: Reflections on Seeing, Knowing, and Doing Mark P. Orbe Western Michigan University

I grew up largely in survival mode. My family and I didn’t have the time or energy to attempt to understand the complex systems that informed our current situation; instead our focus was more immediate, on the pressing needs on localized levels. My working poor parents, with 10th grade educations and multiple jobs, raised our multiracial family in an East Coast low-­ income housing projects where making ends meet was a day-­ to-­ day, week-­ to-­ week, and month-­to-­month challenge. Too often, we lived knowing the consequences of what happens when there was “more month than money.” That was our reality and we negotiated it the best that we could. Looking back, I am enamored with how individuals throughout my community managed within this set of circumstances: how we/they learned to make a way out of no way through a resilience, determination, and sense of communal responsibility that, truth be told, was normative and rarely acknowledged or discussed. It was just what we did. When I was provided the opportunity to engage in scholarly research, I was drawn to exploring how ­people in traditionally marginalized societal positions negotiate their communicative realities. In no uncertain ways, my seeing and knowing of the world directly informed how I chose to do scholarly inquiry. Over the course of my academic career, I have vivid memories of my rigorously engaged and data-­rich research being described as “nonscholarly,” “journalistic,” “anecdotal,” “­subjective,” “biased” and/or “self-­serving.” Not surprisingly, these “objective” descriptions were exclusively used by colleagues embracing post-­positivism as the normative evaluative benchmark. As I matured as a scholar, I began to dismiss these implicit denunciations as reflective of mis-­ guided interparadigmatic criticism and a lack of understanding of the principles, rigor, merit, and value of critical qualitative research. I’m reminded of a faculty meeting in the late 1990s where we were considering potential changes to our graduate curriculum, including our one required methods course that focused almost exclusively on quantitative methods. The first proposed change was introduced by a tenured faculty member who argued that we needed to add an additional advanced quantitative methods course so that students could develop a minimum level of competency. Their rationale was that the complexities and sophistication of post-­positivistic research required more coursework. When I, as an untenured faculty member, objected, their response was “I knew that you would have something to say.” I responded with “Well, I am glad that I did not disappoint you,” and went on to provide a variety of examples The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication, Second Edition. Edited by Thomas K. Nakayama and Rona Tamiko Halualani. © 2024 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2024 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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of the rigor, complexity, and sophistication of qualitative research methodologies – including concepts from phenomenology, semiotics, and thematic analyses that most had little familiarity. For many of my colleagues, qualitative research was inherently inferior than quantitative research and could be taught with little depth. I ended my comments by using an analogy: “If I taught statistical design the way that you all teach qualitative methods, I also could teach it with little depth; however, all students would learn are frequencies.” In the end, we created a separate seminar focusing on qualitative methodologies and provided students a choice for completing their methods requirement; students could also complete both courses, using one as an elective. Within this chapter, I offer a reflection on my experiences as an interpretive-­critical intercultural communication studies scholar. In particular, I connect three of my preferred methods of choice – rhetorical studies, phenomenology, and autoethnography – to the complex ways in which I experience knowing, seeing, and doing the inextricable relationship between culture, power, and communication (Orbe 1998a). Highlighted throughout the essay are descriptions of how critical intercultural communication research is rigorous, evidence-­based, powerfully descriptive, and of great merit.

My Own Journey as an Interpretive-­Critical Scholar According to Halualani and Nakayama (2011), a critical perspective in intercultural ­communication “foregrounds issues of power, context, socioeconomic relations and historical/ structural forces as constituting and shaping culture and intercultural communication encounters, relationships, and contexts” (p.  1). Moreover, a critical perspective seeks to “understand the role of power and contextual constraints on communication in order ultimately to achieve a more equitable society” (Martin and Nakayama 2000, p. 8). Critical intercultural communication work is crucially important given how traditional intercultural communication research has focused on interpersonal interactions between people from different cultural backgrounds with no attention to how larger structures of power informed said interactions. As such, critical research situates culture, not as a variable to be studied but, as an ideological struggle (Halualani et al. 2009). I align myself with Ono (2011) who advocates for a broad definition of critical work: scholarship that addresses issues of power and power relations. In this context, critical intercultural communication work brings together varying traditions and methods under a large, inclusive umbrella. The central unifying element of critical research, in the words of Ono, is that “power has to be integrally constitutive of the scholarly questions and political goals of scholarship” (p. 96). He asserts, I argue against a definition of critical indistinct from continental theory and maintain that critical should include different approaches, conceptions, and practices; even ones that challenge continental thought or that provide different grounds for judgment. To put a finer point on it, I am arguing for a definition of critical that addresses power as a constitutive dimension of social life, hence is inclusive of the different ways power functions, therefore a definition that recognizes various and diverse critical positions as potential starting points for theorization. (Ono 2011, p. 95)

The key idea here is, as articulated by Halualani and Nakayama (2011), “is to not ‘police’ or discipline the boundaries of critical intercultural communication studies” (p. 10). Instead, the focus is on identifying some unifying characteristics of scholarship that works to “build a diverse community with webs of connection, convergence, and vested stakes” (p. 10). By and large, my scholarship approaches research with questions regarding how individuals manage oppressive societal structures through their own everyday interactions. While the



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focus has been, at times, on interpersonal interactions, my research is grounded explicitly in an engagement of larger power structures that inform said interactions. From my perspective, the two are inseparable: as the personal is political, the micro is the macro. According to Martin and Nakayama (1999), my scholarship on co-­cultural theory (Orbe  1998a), for instance, might be described as “interpretive” and/or “critical humanist”  – in that it is subjective, focuses on promoting understanding, and acknowledges issues of power and macro-­level influences – that later of which is reflective of the scholarship of radical change. In this regard, some might characterize this line of research as “interparadigmatic borrowing” (Martin and Nakayama 1999, p. 11), in that co-­cultural scholarship can be largely situated within the interpretive paradigm and also simultaneously integrates elements from the critical humanist paradigm. As I articulate elsewhere (Boylorn and Orbe  2021a), I was socialized into an academic research world where post-­positivism was the unquestioned norm. My difficulties attempting to embrace and navigate this world were immediate and understood as a personal/intellectual shortcoming (the imposter complex is real). Once I shook off the pressure to study communication processes in ways that did not align with my sense of being, of seeing, of doing, I was drawn to a number of different theoretical and methodological frames. Next, I reflect on how three – rhetorical studies, [cultural] phenomenology, and [critical] autoethnography – have served me as an interpretive-­critical intercultural communication scholar in significant, albeit different, ways.

Rhetorical Studies I was enrolled in my very first rhetoric course during the first quarter of my doctoral program. Upon seeing my schedule, I immediately looked up the meaning of rhetoric in the dictionary. Once in the class, I quickly realized that the focus of the seminar was on the history of rhetoric, content that seemed distant, abstract, and irrelevant to my contemporary interests in intercultural communication. Over time we moved to more contemporary rhetorical work and I began to see valuable connections between rhetorical approaches and my desire to engage culture, power, and communication as a scholarly focus. An introduction to cultural studies during my third year of doctoral study provided additional motivation to utilize a rhetorical approach to explore different socially constructed texts. Like most, my first venture into critical intercultural communication research took the form of rhetorical criticism. Most of these works focused on critical analyses of different media texts, including several early projects that used semiotics (e.g. Cooks et al. 1993; Orbe 1998b) to interrogate problematic representations of race, gender, and/or class. I presented one of these research projects at my very first conference presentation; the esteemed respondent described our research as self-­serving, our methods as pseudo-­scientific, and findings predictable. Not knowing any better, I followed the advice of departmental mentors and took copious notes as the respondent spoke and remained silent. As I tried to regain my composure after what I perceived as a public criticism of my lack of scholarly abilities (again, the imposter complex is real), my formally assigned mentor (also department chair) was enthusiastic, sharing with us how lucky we were to get such valuable feedback from an esteemed member of the field. Initially proud of the research project, I left the national conference deflated. Based on that initial experience, I quickly learned to be direct, forthright, and proactively diligent in articulating my methodological and theoretical foundations. As such, I made sure to include specific descriptions of the methodological framework and specific methods and processes that were followed in the production of the critical analysis. This also included a precise account of the textual data that was analyzed and utilized as evidence for my findings. Interestingly, or maybe not so much so, one of the most cited research articles (Watts and

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Orbe 2002) synergistically combined rhetorical criticism with qualitative data analysis of focus group participants. This innovative approach was lauded by many, including one colleague who sent an unsolicited email describing the piece as “provocative,” and “just the sort of ­ ritten, scholarship that critical scholars should produce in addressing commercial culture: well w methodological diverse, and informed by an innovative theoretical perspective” (M. McAllister, personal communication, 1 April 2002). Over time, I have continued to engage rhetorical analyses of texts that provide description, interpretation, and critique. Several of these pieces (Orbe  2011,  2016,  2021c) adopted an approach more consistent with invitational rhetoric (Foss and Griffin 1995), which commits to “understanding as a means to create a relationship rooted in equality, immanent value, and self-­ determination” (p.  2). Within this vein of scholarship, my focus was more on describing and interpreting rhetorical texts without direct critique. This work was designed to engage readers in ways that they could come to their own conclusions. Some might argue that this type of research is not critical intercultural communication research. This was the case when I presented the findings of my national study on public perceptions of President Barack Obama’s communication (Orbe 2011) and a doctoral student was disappointed in the descriptive nature of my presentation sharing with their professor, “I thought that he was a critical scholar.” I didn’t address how this student’s comment placed me in a problematically unidimensional scholarly box, or how it rigidly defined what was (or was not) critical. All I could do was think to myself: Sometimes the most effective means to speak truth to power is not naming the truth for others in direct ways; sometimes it is describing the various understandings of truth from various perspectives and facilitating understanding whereby individuals come to new forms of communicative meaning-­ making through their own process. It was this very sentiment that drew me to phenomenological inquiry.

[Cultural] Phenomenology I was unconsciously socialized to normalize empirical, post-­positivist research as the benchmark for scholarly inquiry throughout my undergraduate and graduate coursework. Through my higher educational coursework, I successfully completed no fewer than five quantitative methods classes. During my doctoral program, I ventured outside of my home department to take two qualitative courses: one on ethnology (anthropology) and one on phenomenology (media studies). While both represented transformative experiences in terms of my journey as a researcher of culture, power, and communication, it was the phenomenology seminar that allowed me see myself as someone who could engage in scholarly inquiry and actually contribute something of value to the field. I completed the phenomenology seminar during the last semester of my doctoral coursework, and without question, it was the course that had the most substantial influence on my dissertation project. Phenomenology, which is the study of the lifeworld as we immediately experience it rather than as we conceptualize or theorize it (van Manen 1990), constitutes a rigorous methodology grounded in epistemological and ontological assumptions that made sense to the ways in which I experienced the world. As such, I immediately was drawn to phenomenology because it afforded me the opportunity to focus on the “experiential” as much as the “experimental” in communication scholarship (Houston Stanback 1989). Drawing largely on the work of Merleau-­Ponty (1962), Lanigan (1998), and van Manen (1990), I appreciated the open-­ended, discovery-­oriented approach to studying communicative lived experience. Methodologically, I also appreciated the clarity and rigor of the three stages of phenomenological inquiry: (i) collection of descriptions of lived experiences, (ii) reduction of capta (as opposed to data) into essential themes, and (iii) hermeneutic interpretation of themes (Lanigan 1979). While variations on the process exist, phenomenology reflects an approach complete with a set of procedures and tools that provide a productive method for scholars.



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cultural theory Phenomenology was a central building block for the emergence of co-­ (Orbe 1998a), allowing for traditionally marginalized people’s experiences and voices to take center stage within communication research and theorizing. This line of research featured co-­ researchers (as opposed to subjects or participants) who were involved in all aspects of the research projects including the formulation of the study, co-­creation of research questions, methodological processes, analysis/interpretation, and articulation of findings. Specific phenomenological tools and apparatuses – bracketing, horizontalization, imaginative free variation, capta, paradigmatic, and synagmatic thematization – have great utility in terms of promoting an effective, efficient, productive, and self-­reflexive process. In fact, reflexivity or “making one’s presumptions explicit and then subsequently interrogating them to uncover tacit assumptions in which they are situated” (Orbe 2000, p. 611) is at the core of phenomenological inquiry. At the height of work as a phenomenologist, I published a piece highlighting the utility of using this humanistic, qualitative methodological framework for cultural-­ critical work (Orbe  2000). While not inherently critical in nature, I outline how phenomenology  – as ­descriptive/interpretive methodology  – can be useful for scholars focused on exploring how persons situated on the margins of society negotiate their interactions with others. In short, this essay provides a detailed description of the key assumptions, processes, and inherent rigor of phenomenological inquiry and also engages some potential limitations. Most specifically, I articulate how phenomenological inquiry could be a valuable tool to centralize the communicative lived experiences of people of diverse backgrounds without essentializing them (Bell et al. 2000). A phenomenological approach is one such passageway to greater insight into the complexity of intercultural relations. In short, it represents a useful tool to counter the tendency in traditional social science to make objects out of persons and their experience. Additionally, pheno­ menological inquiry never positions itself as arriving at a definitive set of conclusions. In this regard, a “final” answer is never accomplished; instead the researcher is always left asking, “What have I missed?” Given the intricate complexities of intercultural research, such a ­constantly ambiguous standpoint can be especially productive as we seek understanding in a millennium. (Orbe 2000, p. 618)

While my initial exposure to rhetorical studies and phenomenological inquiry occurred within my doctoral program, I learned about the power of autoethnography later in my journey as a critical-­cultural scholar.

[Critical] Autoethnography While autoethnography has multiple meanings (Reed-­Danahay 1997) and various means of sensemaking (Adams et al. 2015), it is best understood as both the method and product of researching and writing one’s lived experiences and their relationship to culture (Ellis 2004). Autoethnography follows a similar process of traditional ethnography: systematically collecting data via different methods, analyzing, and interpreting the data, re-­ engaging earlier ­interpretations via additional data collection and analysis, and producing scholarly reports (Boylorn and Orbe 2021a). Yet, unlike ethnography, autoethnography involves the “turning of the ethnocentric gaze inward on the self (auto), while maintaining the outward gaze of ethnography, looking at the larger context wherein self experiences occur” (Denzin  1997, p.  227). While critics of autoethnography have described it as soft, atheoretical, and ­self-­absorbed, these criticisms are situated within traditional social scientific paradigms that problematically devalue other means of scholarly inquiry (Atkinson 2006). I didn’t receive any formal training in autoethnography, instead I learned by reading, ­re-­reading, writing, and re-­writing. My first attempt using this method was a collective autoethnography which focused on the complexity of experiencing higher education on the margins

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due to race, gender, and class. This piece (Allen et al. 1999) was published in a special issue of Communication Theory in the fall; it features autoethnography within a largely t­raditional presentational/organizational format. I have distinct memories of traveling to the National Communication Association convention shortly thereafter and listening to colleagues debate the appropriateness of the piece appearing in a [mainstream] journal focused on ­theorizing. When I would point out that piece used feminist standpoint theories as a f­ramework, my assertion was met with silence and a look that I interpreted as, “I mean a real theory.” Published almost 25 years ago, this journal article remains one of a couple of which I am most proud. In addition to the very real personal/cultural/social investment that went into the piece, the transparency through which we dialogue around our experiences in the academy is something that emerging scholars continue to tell me has been transformative for their own sensemaking of the field. Enamored with the agency and empowerment that accompanied my experiences with autoethnography, I increasingly embraced opportunities to use the principled method (Ellis and Adams 2014) as a form of cultural analysis through personal narrative. Typically, I ­feature a variety of communication theoretical frameworks with this work, promoting theory as “a way to understand  – think with and through, ask questions about, and act on  – the ­experiences and happenings in our stories” (Adams et al. 2015, p. 90). I also explore innovative and non-­traditional means to generate data from every day, seemingly meaningless, events that under additional scrutiny were packed with (meta-­) meaning. In each of these projects, I was explicitly direct and clear in the methods that were used to generate the autoethnographic research. Given that the majority of my autoethnographic writing engaged issues of privilege, power, and culture, I found it a natural outlet to feature powerful microlevel descriptions of cultural communication, situated within implicit critiques of larger macro-­level systems that inform such interactions. As such, it is an effective methodological tool to use’s one own experiences to describe and critique cultural experiences, beliefs, and practices (Adams et al. 2015). These experiences prompted articulations of critical autoethnography (Boylorn and Orbe 2021a, b). Within this current work, we promote the utility of autoethnography as a critical lens through which to understand communicative experiences within a context steeped in unequal power relations and systems of oppression. In this regard, critical autoethnography is autoethnographic research that features the ways people experience life on societal margins, and through personal narratives, embraces a commitment to improving cultural conditions through critique and social justice (Adams 2017). According to Holman Jones (2018), critical autoethnography has three goals. First, it works to interrogate discourses, institutions, and systems that privilege some while penalizing others. Second, it seeks to mobilize theory into action through narrative storytelling. Third, and finally, it functions as a means to generate new knowledge and understanding about the social world in which we live. In short, critical autoethnography explores communication, culture, and power – and as such, is concerned with: social constructions of cultural identities and intersectionality in the context of social inequalities.  .  .Accordingly, it moves beyond simply documenting an experience to deconstructing it through critical analysis. Directly and indirectly, autoethnography with a critical edge demonstrates how personal narrative can simultaneously represent and challenge culture by increasing awareness. (Boylorn and Orbe 2021b, p. 8)

As a scholar of color who centralizes race, gender, and socioeconomic class in my scholarly endeavors, critical autoethnography both describes and critiques the status quo that informs various forms of societal marginalization and privilege. In very real ways, the act of telling my story, in the context where similar voices were silenced or marginalized, is an act of critical resistance (Boylorn and Orbe 2021b). In short, “stories are powerful knowledge instruments, serving to evaluate and empower” (Rodriguez 2010, p. 493) and critical autoethnography as method combines “a critique of self and society, self in society, and self as resistant and transformative force of society” (Alexander 2005, p. 423).



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Conclusion Within this chapter, I offer some ruminations of my experiences as an interpretive-­ critical intercultural communication studies scholar, highlighting three specific methods: rhetorical ­ studies, phenomenology, and autoethnography. In doing so, I work to demonstrate how “one’s ontological, epistemological, and axiological commitments impact methodological choices” (Willink et al. 2014, p. 292). Over the course of my academic career, I have negotiated traditional conceptualizations of scholarly activity that continue to value the experimental over the experiential, objectivity over subjectivity, and statistics over narratives. In my own ways, I have worked to produce interpretive-­critical scholarship that reflects four commitments of critical intercultural communication scholarship: criticality, intersectionality, context, and social justice (Willink et al.). In addition, I have remained committed to scholarship that is explicitly clear as to how intellectually rigorous methods are used to generate findings that are descriptively powerful, evidence-­driven, and focused on engaging issues of power, communication, and context. Recently, I completed a research project that focused on US attorneys of color’s experiences with pervasive racial microaggressions throughout their careers. The qualitative data-­driven paper was recognized with a top paper award at a national conference. When it was submitted for publication in a national communication journal dedicated to critical communication research, the response was positive, yet tepid. Reviewers responded positively to the research yet, in essence, didn’t believe that it was explicitly critical enough to appear in the journal. The reviewers recommended eliminating much of the descriptive data in the piece and focusing on the more critical argument. While the editor enthusiastically supported a major revise and resubmit, I decided to withdraw the piece because the reviewers wanted it to become something that it wasn’t: more overtly critical, and less descriptive. In my thinking, a qualitative data-­driven piece that focuses on how attorneys of color experience racial microaggressions in their professional lives is clearly a critique of the status quo. Instead of focusing explicitly on that critique, my piece highlighted the agency of attorneys who strategically employed ­communication responses to racial microaggressions which reflected their personal/cultural/­ professional sensibilities. In doing so, the piece  – ultimately published in another journal (Orbe 2021a) – provides a validation and guidance for other professionals of color negotiating similar experiences and insight for majority members who may have been previously ­unconscious in terms of their participation in systems that normalize problematic interracial interactions. As such, I believe that the research remains committed to criticality, intersectionality, context, and social justice (Willink et al. 2014) – just not explicitly so. I offer this recent example as one that speaks to the processes of engaging in critical intercultural communication research. I have lived, and continue to live, a life in the spaces between existing socially constructed boxes; this includes those reflective of race, class, spirituality, and research paradigms. As such, some of my scholarship is often times simultaneously too critical for some while not critical enough for others. The researcher subjectivities that inform critical intercultural communication scholarship inform a personal-­cultural-­professional-­social sense of responsibility and accountability that is not for the faint at heart. At different junctures of our academic lives we may make different decisions, yet each decision should be an informed one, understanding one’s own agency, values and convictions, and potential consequences. With this recent essay, I made the choice not to re-­frame my arguments toward a more critical piece; instead, I would save that for another manuscript, another time. The reality, through my eyes, is that we need all types of critical work to transform people’s minds, the field of communication, and society as a whole. As someone committed to critical intercultural communication research, I close with a few mantras that have sustained me: Know who you are and what you are about. Recognize that those two things may change over time. Embrace the rigor of critical work without the inflexibility, harshness, and sternness that oftentimes accompany traditional conceptualizations of “rigorous.” Know your audience(s).

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Allow yourself to be stretched and challenged. Continue to grow, individually and communally. Stay committed to engaging in research that makes a difference. Seek wise counsel. Make good, informed choices. Be true to who you are and who you are becoming (Boylorn and Orbe 2021b).

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Martin, J.N. and Nakayama, T.K. (1999). Thinking about culture dialectically. Communication Theory 9: 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-­2885.1999.tb00160.x. Martin, J.N. and Nakayama, T.K. (2000). Intercultural Communication in Contexts, 2e. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield. Merleau-­Ponty, M. (1962). Phenomenology of Perception (trans. C. Smith.). Routledge and Kegan Paul. Ono, K.A. (2011). Critical: a finer edge. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 8 (1): 93–96. https://doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2011.543332. Orbe, M.P. (1998a). Constructing Co-­Cultural Theory: Explication of Culture, Power, and Communication. Sage. Orbe, M.P. (1998b). Constructions of reality on MTV’s the real world: an analysis of the restrictive coding of black masculinity. Southern Communication Journal 64 (1): 32–47. https://doi. ­ org/10.1080/10417949809373116. Orbe, M.P. (2000). Centralizing diverse racial/ethnic voices in scholarly research: the value of phenomenological inquiry. International Journal of Intercultural Relations 24: 603–621. https://doi. org/10.1016/S0147-­1767(00)00019-­5. Orbe, M.P. (2011). Communication Realities in a ‘Post-­Racial’ Society: What the U.S. Public Really Thinks about Barack Obama. Lexington Books. Orbe, M.P. (2016). The rhetoric of race, culture, and identity: Rachel Dolezal as co-­cultural group ­member. Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric 23–35. http://contemporaryrhetoric.com/ wp-­content/uploads/2017/01/Orbe12_3.pdf. Orbe, M.P. (2021a). The normative nature of racial microaggressions in the legal field: exploring the communicative experiences of attorneys of color. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research https://doi.org/10.1080/17475759.2020.1866644. Orbe, M.P. (2021b). Micro-­protests as co-­cultural communicative practice: a creative non-­fiction narrative illustration of choosing the margins as a space of radical openness. Departures in Critical Qualitative Research 10 (1): 28–49. https://doi.org/10.1525/dcqr.2021.10.1.28. Orbe, M.P. (2021c). Diverse offerings for understanding U.S. politics: analyzing the invitational rhetoric of Hamilton and President Barack Obama. In: Rhetoric, Politics, and Hamilton: An American Musical (eds. J. Drury and S. Drury), 163–178. Peter Lang. Reed-­Danahay, D.E. (1997). Auto/Ethnography: Rewriting the Self and the Social. Berg. Rodriguez, D. (2010). Storytelling in the field: race, method, and empowerment of Latina college students. Cultural StudiesCritical Methodologies 10 (6): 491–507. https://doi. org/10.1177/1532708610365481. Watts, E.K. and Orbe, M.P. (2002). The spectacular consumption of “true” African American culture: “Whassup” with the Budweiser guys? Critical Studies in Media Communication 19 (1): 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/07393180216554. Willink, K.G., Gutierrez-­Perez, R., Shukri, S., and Stein, L. (2014). Navigating with the stars: critical qualitative methodological constellations for critical intercultural communication research. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 7 (4): 289–316. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/ 17513057.2014.964150.

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A Sense of Healing: A Relational Meditation in Queer (and Trans) of Color Communism Lore/tta LeMaster1 and Michael Tristano, Jr.2 1

Arizona State University 2 Towson University

Racialized cisheteronormative presumptions of/for corporeality and relationality structure academe, including the communication discipline, with critical intercultural communication studies proving relatively amenable to emergent queer formations; with degrees of amenability tethered to – stunted by – respectable presumptions about (white cishetero-­reproductive) relational comportment. Still, it is within the commune of critical intercultural communication studies that we position our worldmaking labors, and, more precisely, within the subarea of queer intercultural communication (QIC) studies. Writing a decade after Yep’s (2003) critical assessment of the communication discipline’s heteronormative order, Chávez (2013) pushed disciplinary boundaries offering “queer intercultural communication” as an interdisciplinary intervention, animated by queer and trans theories, poised to interrogate normativity. Writing in the introduction to their agenda-­setting anthology, Queer Intercultural Communication: The Intersectional Politics of Belonging in and across Differences, Eguchi and Calafell (2020) nuance QIC as a field of inquiry seeking “alternative ways of knowing, being, and acting that counter the majoritarian belongings in and across local, national, and global contexts” (p. 3). The specificity of a “queer” “intercultural” connection, within communication studies, is indebted to the mundane embodied and lived experiences of queers of color navigating and theorizing oppressive normative sexuality in racialized intersectional terms, for example, Nakayama (1994), Johnson (2001), Lee (2003), Martinez (2003), Carrillo Rowe (2008), Calafell (2009), and Eguchi (2011a, b). QIC scholars and pedagogues have since ushered in a multitude of trajectories including studies in non-­Western and transnational queer identity formations across time and space (Bie and Tang 2016; Cheah and Singaravelu 2017; Goltz et al. 2016; Huang and Brouwer 2018; LeMaster 2014), queer relationality and worldmaking (Eguchi 2015; Eguchi and Long 2019; Gutierrez-­Perez and Andrade 2018; LeMaster and Toyosaki 2023), and mentoring and pedagogy (Calafell and Gutierrez-­Perez 2018; LeMaster 2018; Pattisapu and Calafell 2012), for example (see also Eguchi and Calafell 2020). Particular to our meditation, QIC scholars have developed queer of color criticism (QOCC) grounded in communication studies (Eguchi et al. 2018; Howard 2014; Eguchi and Kimura 2020). QOCC interrogates the communicative power of whiteness and heterosexism as they intersectionally organize, constrain, and (im) possibilize queer of color life, being, and becoming. Alexander (2017) adds, QOCC performs an “incisive examination” implicating the communicative constitution of racialized heterosexism The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication, Second Edition. Edited by Thomas K. Nakayama and Rona Tamiko Halualani. © 2024 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2024 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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grounded in the materiality of lived experience as/of queer folks of color (p. 296). At the same time, what is underdeveloped in our current queer intercultural communicative understanding is that of gender expansiveness generally and transness in particular. Eguchi and Asante (2016) argue, “mainstream” intercultural communication scholarship “has not adequately articulated the fluidity and complexity of sexuality, sex/gender, and body” (p. 172). We agree, particularly with regard to intersectional transness, transsexuality, and gender non-­normativity. Though, we additionally argue that the same can be said of cis-­normative QIC studies just the same. While QIC scholars interrogate queerness as racialization (Eguchi  2019; Eguchi and Washington  2016), which we ought to continue doing, many of us have yet to embrace the onto-­epistemic shift required to conceptualize of racialized transness, transsexuality, and gender non-­normativity on their own intersectional terms of being and becoming outside of a cis-­centric queer theoretical model. Eguchi and Calafell (2020) note that despite developments in trans-­ centered QIC scholarship (e.g. Johnson 2013; Yep et al. 2015; LeMaster and Mapes 2020; LeMaster et al. 2020; Yep 2013), QIC “continues to require more trans interventions” (p. 7). As such, our meditation offers one such trans intervention. Specifically, we performatively render, through theoretical dances and relational mythmaking, the doing of QIC scholarship. To accomplish this, we turn to two historical moments – across space and time, three decades apart – to explore a relational means by which to foster a sense of healing. The wound to which we attend is onto-­epistemic, a wound that calls into question the nature of racialized transness, transsexuality, and gender non-­normativity including the embodied means by which trans subjects, queer and otherwise, turn to in order to realize survival even if but for a moment – in our research, teaching, and everyday lives. From here, our meditation unfolds in three moves. First, we trace the historical contours constituting the unresolved wound in question: a question of racialized trans erasure in favor of US (white) nationalist belonging. In this section, we turn to a 1973 speech delivered by Sylvia Rivera to a growing “homonormative” contingency (see LoveTapesCollective  2019a). We intend homonormative in two ways: (i) homonormative in the sense of neoliberalization of queerness such that “gay” or “lesbian” identities are mediated, interpellated, and validated through racial capitalism and US (white) nationalism projects of inclusion (Duggan  2002; Eguchi 2019; Puar 2007) and (ii) homonormative in the trans-­affirming sense that implicates cis-­centric presumptions of queer life being and becoming (Stryker 2008). Second, we then honor the wound, turning to Yep’s (2003, 2017) catalyzing essays in which he maps a blueprint for healing and worldmaking in queer relational terms. And then third, we imagine and enact a relational and performative means by which to realize a sense of healing, a fleeting encounter with the potential for healing in relational context and against US (white) nationalist projects of inclusion. What we desire is nothing less than liberatory ends that center racialized queerness and transness in a communism of incommensurable singularities (Muñoz 2013; Chambers-­ Letson 2018). And we invite you to join us; though know this: this is a political commitment to create, in every encounter, in perpetuity, radical and liberatory worlds.

Unresolved Wounds The faggots and their friends live the best while empires are falling.

Larry Mitchell (2019, p. 3)

She takes the mic, disheveled, after having fought people she considered “comrades and […] friends” to the stage (Rivera 2002, p. 168). It was, in her recollection, a “brutal battle on the stage that year” (p. 168). It’s Sunday afternoon, 24 June 1973, the fourth anniversary of the famed Stonewall Rebellion  – the second1 significant point of known recorded USamerikan



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anti-­police activism and resistance led by Black and Brown gender non-­conforming folks (largely femmes) of color like Miss Major Griffin-­Gracy, Marsha P. Johnson, Stormé DeLarverie, and Sylvia Rivera (Feinberg 1996; Stryker 2017). By 1973, the Christopher Street Liberation Day March was an anticipated event demanding visible and vocal queer acceptance. Sylvia Rivera stands firm, exhausted, the large crowd boos her. She holds the mic close to her mouth, asserting, “Y’all better quiet down now!” “Shut the fuck up!” Someone yells back from the crowd. The crowd continues to boo. Sylvia steps back, frustrated. She then pushes forward, yelling into the microphone, “I’ve been trying to get up here all day. For your gay brothers. And your gay sisters. In jail.” A committed abolitionist, Sylvia rejects the individualizing neoconservatism and classed whiteness taking hold of what is coming to be known as “Gay Pride.” She implicates the crowd, performatively weaving a utopic blueprint grounded in a communism of Gay Power over Pride: I do not believe in a revolution, but you ought to. I believe in the gay power… not men and women that belong to a white middle class white club. And that’s what you all belong to! REVOLUTION NOW!

Sylvia then leads the crowd in a call-­and-­response spelling out G-­A-­Y-­P-­O-­W-­E-­R! one letter at a time. By the time she arrives at the “R,” her voice is tired and cracked, she loses her breath, and chuckles at herself as she manages to exhale a paltry “gay power.” She gathers her strength and belts one final time into the mic, “Louder! Gay Power!” The crowd follows, boos shift to cheers as she exits the stage, the crowd revved by the gravitas of her speech. Sylvia has shifted the temporal politic even if but for a moment. Indeed, she highlights the temporal drag that growing neoconservatism was demanding of on an emerging sexual identity formation; to “believe in a revolution” alludes to an eventual futurity that Sylvia rejects for the here and now (Muñoz 2009). She is in the – not a – REVOLUTION NOW! And she has no choice as the impulse to survive was thrust on to her person beginning from a young age as a queer femme Puerto Rican fending for herself in New York beginning at the age of 10 (Rivera 2002, p. 145). That is to say, Sylvia highlights the continuing revolution that is being eclipsed by the allure of carceral protection brought on by a white middle-­class homonormative identity formation that fetishizes US (white) nationalist belonging. The sense of Pride to which the white middle-­class white club aspires is marked by an exclusionary impulse that does away with that which reminds white club members of their own marked difference(s). Gay Power, conversely, draws on difference as a core organizing mechanism. It marks and names the stigma through Power, as a point of consistent political departure rather than beginning with Pride, which marks an arrival. In the four years since Stonewall, Sylvia – a Brown gender non-­conforming femme and sex worker – encountered increasing resistance while white club members were beginning to experience relative acceptance in the (white) national imaginary as respectable gay and lesbian subjects. Sylvia, however, was not alone that day. She took the stage representing a communism of homeless queer and trans youth, most of whom were sex workers, femme, and of color. Following Stonewall, Sylvia and Marsha P. Johnson founded Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) (Feinberg 2006). Under the auspices of STAR, Rivera and Johnson sheltered and supported homeless queer and trans youth. STAR was a revolutionary group that, through Sylvia, was in political coalition with the Young Lords and the Black Panthers (Feinberg 2006). Sylvia was on stage speaking as a synecdoche of those excluded by the white homonormative core coalescing under the banner of “Gay Pride” by 1973. Illustrating the point, Jean O’Leary later takes the stage asserting an early utterance of what has come to be called trans-­exclusionary radical feminism (TERF), which is neither radical nor feminist, though it is absolutely anti-­trans: “There will be no political statements read today because one person, a man [sic], Sylvia, gets up here and causes a ruckus, we are not allowed

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to read our statement. And I think that says something right there” (see LoveTapes Collective 2019b). She continues, speaking on behalf of her collective, leveraging an important critique: Why do men get to capitalize off of that which is used to oppress women, namely misogyny? This is indeed a reflexive question that performers should encounter when embodying difference (Conquergood 1985); though, Jean’s trans-­exclusionary logic reduces all complexity of exceptional femme gender to men who perform as caricatures of women rather than as femme subjects who wear, and sometimes perform in, femme-­coded clothing, sometimes larger than life – to draw in a bigger crowd and, in turn, more coins. Or for no other reason  than a particular gender expression just feels right, no further explanation required (Hayward 2017; LeMaster and Johnson 2020; Vaccaro 2010). Jean’s oblivious white middle-­class critique dismisses the materiality of precarious racialized queer and trans life while amplifying the middle-­class white supremacy undergirding this early TERF utterance. Rather than focusing on racist capitalism, the structural mechanism white club members were using to leverage access into the US (white) national imaginary, Jean scapegoats a primary way queens may make money, performance, while dismissing the materiality of precarity and failing to implicate those who legislate sex. In essence, Jean’s anti-­trans logic performs in service of cis queer white supremacy. Her reductive logic reflects what African feminist theorist Oyewúmí (1997) characterizes as Western “bio-­logic” in which “social categories like ‘woman’ are based on body-­type and are elaborated in relation to and in opposition to another category: man; the presence or absence of certain organs determines social position” (pp. ix–x). In Jean’s bio-­logic, the symbolic image of the “man” represents all trappings of cultural power, and the “man” who embodies femininity is appropriating the alleged rightful property of so-­called “women.” Whereas Jean frames queens as a hinderance to her sense of (white) Gay Pride, Sylvia frames resistance to racist cisheterosexism in the form of prison abolition as her sense of Gay Power. In turn, Jean’s capacity to dismiss the poor Brown femme sex worker, under what she perceives as a costume, reflects her commitment to upholding racist cisheterosexism’s exclusionary status quo, save for the entrance of a few respectable white club members like herself. Said quite differently, Jean’s speech expressed to the US (white) national imaginary that she and her ilk are equally capable of dismissing the impurities that would soil whiteness; TERF logics are white nationalist cis queer assimilative strategies. Jean and her white nationalist TERF kin aren’t alone. White cis gay men have a long history of performing violent exclusion just the same. What white cis gay men may encounter in gender non-­conforming femmes are the embodiment of the faggot  – the symbolic image that bullies taunt and tease and that public figures demonize. The difference being that gender non-­conforming femmes do not have the privilege to pass as normatively masculine nor as men because they, unlike masculine cis gay men, are not necessarily masculine, cis, gay, nor men. White queen Lee Brewster (1971), founder of Drag magazine and personal financier of many legislative changes that enabled, for instance, “homosexuals” to drink in public, reflects on the Stonewall Rebellion in the inaugural issue of Drag magazine: “It was the effeminate or drag queen who stood up and yelled first and the loudest. It was their place! The so-­called ‘straight’ looking, manly homosexual stood back and watched the police hammer the effeminate boys … finally, they joined in” (p. 5). Lee highlights the propensity for straight looking cis gay men to rely on a hegemonic masculine façade that works in service of re-­securing the US (white) national imaginary whether through their own embodiment of white cishetero-­ intelligible masculinity or through the deployment of police state agents who embody the same. Said differently, straight looking white cis gay men don’t know how to take a hit with the regularity of gender non-­conforming femmes of color who lack the same state-­endorsed protective affordances under white supremacy. Moreover, Lee, a white queen with material means, fails to specifically name the classed Blackness and Brownness of those effeminate and drag queen bodies leading the charge. While the Stonewall Rebellion was about sexuality, it was about racism, classism, and cissexism just the same. Rivera’s (2002) clarifies in her recollection,



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the Stonewall “was not a drag queen bar. It was a white, male bar for middle-­class males to pick up young boys of different races” (p. 163). That is to say, queens and gender non-­normative queers of color, to be clear, posed more of a threat to the Stonewall’s social capital, among members of the white middle-­class white club, than the white fetishization of racialized flesh and racist fantasies of corporeal conquest. In all, gender non-­conforming femmes and queens signify a loss – a loss of the femininities that were violently taken from cis gay men in service of constructing a hegemonic masculine subject that fits within the US (white) national imaginary. One way cis gay men may try to enter the US (white) national imaginary is through the power to consume. The erroneous claim that gays have expendable income as a result of their disengaging from cisheteronormative reproduction dismisses the very real reality that Black, Indigenous, and other queer and trans folks of color experience disproportionately high levels of un-­and under-­employment when compared to whites while those who do have access to gainful and secure employment (not gig-­based employment i.e. ride share, adjunct professor) still encounter the violence of whiteness at the intersections of difference in the workplace and beyond. That the default presumption is that cis gay men are wealthy speaks to the normalization of classed whiteness as the discursive ground out of which “gay” continues to be constituted in the popular imagination. Thus, gender non-­conforming femmes and queens of color embody not just resonant femininities used to oppress white cis gay men, but also the racialized and criminalized poverty that follows violent structural exclusion of which anti-­trans cis lesbians and gay men, who aspire to whiteness, are busy distancing themselves through classed means, still. Since Stonewall, the white middle-­class white club has coalesced into a sexual-­relational formation intelligible to the US (white) national imaginary, which has in turn led to queer and gender non-­conforming femmes and queens of color being pushed further from the charmed circle constituting the new homonormative core that continues to animate Gay Pride and, in turn, what it means to be “gay” or “trans” in the popular imagination (Duggan  2002; Rubin 2011). In short, we find significance in this 1973 moment. Sylvia exits the stage, her radical temporal presence ruptured by Jean’s white supremacist bio-­logic parading as feminism, which tethers the futurity in Sylvia’s Gay Power to the white club members’ Gay Pride, a temporal anchor that leverages entry into the US (white) national imaginary through colonialist bio-­logics of old. In explicit terms, Gay Pride is constituted through a racialized and trans exclusionary impulse that makes it intelligible to the US (white) national imaginary, which demands coherent and static reproductive bodies. Respectability politics that cower to white supremacy inform these racist trans-­exclusionary logics at the core, which queer studies, in and out of the communication discipline, have yet to fully implicate nor engage. Said quite differently, at the core of many queer-­focused communication projects lies a performatively sedimented wound constituted through the perpetual erasure and concomitant exclusion of transness at the intersections of racialized difference. Our storytelling is necessarily winded, performing our point, teasing out nuances animating queer and trans histories that are often glossed over in cis-­centric communication literatures in favor of so-­called rigorous work that has little space for nuance, detail – the communicative blocks materially animating and constraining everyday life. One such lost nuance emerges in every queer-­focused communication study that universalizes cis experience through the strategic use of the LGBT acronym to mask a focus on cis LGB experience and/or who conceptualstraight, non-­ normative, ize of the T in exclusively queer or feminist terms namely not-­ transgressive (Keegan 2020). This is less the fault of individual cissexist queer communication scholars, of which there are more than a few to be certain, and more so the effect of a cisheteronormative discipline steeped in whiteness. As a result, the critical frameworks through which communication scholars often initially approach transness are queer or feminist theories – both authors notwithstanding – despite a unique tradition of emerging trans studies and thought. The result has included the dehumanizing framing of transness as either a disembodied heuristic

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used to destabilize cisheteronormative communication sans trans bodies such that cis folks can learn about their own cis-­genders and/or as an affect signifier used in service of garnering liberal sympathy for marginalized gender difference sans intersectional complexity and/or as an epistemic nuisance that gets erased through the inability to imagine trans lives outside of the narrow confines of the homosexual/heterosexual, monosexual/bisexual, cisgender/transgender, and man-­male-­masculine/woman-­female-­feminine binaries theorized in cis-­centric queer and feminist theories (Keegan 2020; LeMaster and Stephenson 2021). In turn, QIC scholarship is onto-­epistemically stunted in its capacity to adequately perceive and affirm transness, gender euphoria, and/or relational worldmaking – revolutionary grounds that emerge in the incommensurable spaces that constitute queer (and trans) of color communal life and becoming.

To Honor Wounds My healing is not my own, because health and healing occur beyond just that which is held within a single body. Ariel Estrella (2016, p. 234)

Onto-­epistemic wounds cut Deep.

Bone

soul

flesh

mind

deep.

Deeper.

What can communication scholarship do? Gust Yep (2003) suggests: heal. Communication holds within it the capacity to heal, deep onto-­epistemic wounds. And it is healing to which we focus our affective registers in this liberatory meditation. Our winded queer (and trans) storytelling points to an unresolved wound that sits deep at an inception of USamerikan queer and trans mythmaking, when homonormativity eclipsed the complexity of sex, gender, and sexual life and becoming in favor of an exclusionary monolith that privileges white cis queer formations. Starosta and Chen (2010) press us to distinguish and contemplate the “difference between what heals us and what destroys us” (p. 140). In conversation with Chen, Starosta nuances, “I try to live in the present, though I am a product of the past, perhaps innumerable pasts. For me, then there is no time but ‘now’ to learn how to heal and not to destroy; and to act on that understanding” (p. 142; Carrillo Rowe 2010). Without interrogating our intricately braided queer-­trans histories, we are doomed to continue to perform the iterative cishomonormative myths predicated on the exclusion of racialized gender difference operating under the “LGBT” and “Gay Pride” mantels. This is an onto-­epistemic task that requires deep introspection of the base assumptions that organize our sense of embodiment in sexed, gendered, sexual, and relational intersectional terms. With each QIC iteration that erases transness through the discursive construction of a disembodied heuristic, an affect signifier, or an epistemic nuisance deepens this onto-­ epistemic wound, performatively constituting a trans-­ exclusionary QIC practice. In this section, we explore the communicative capacity to facilitate healing in queer theoretical terms. Here, we theorize and propose a shift from queer (and trans) of color criticism to communism – a “reparative” move that refuses the “paranoid” readings that critical thought demands (Sedgwick 2003, p. 146). A paranoid reading limits our capacity to imagine beyond the limits of what is delimited in thought itself; it is onto-­epistemically constrained by its own



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terms of engagement proposing its own ending. Conversely, Sedgwick clarifies, a reparative read assumes “a different range of affects, ambitions, and risks” that reveal the “many ways selves and communities succeed in extracting sustenance from the objects of culture – even of a culture whose avowed desire has often been not to sustain them” (p.  151). Whereas the result of a QOCC is criticism, the result of a queer of color communism is deeper engagement with imagining and crafting means of/for survival in insurgent, relational terms (Muñoz 2013). To begin, we turn to healing. Thirty years after Sylvia took the stage, Yep (2003) interrogated the cisheteronormativity undergirding the communication discipline. In so doing, Yep affirmed the profound violence enacted on minoritized gender and sexual formations often left unaddressed in communication scholarship. Yep’s important essay performatively wove a utopic blueprint of queer and trans survival. Yep theorized  – and importantly affirmed  – that queer and trans subjects encounter institutional, discursive, externalized, and internalized cisheterosexist violences at the intersections of difference. To heal from these injuries, Yep suggests critical analyses that demystify the unnamed powers securing cisheteronormativity’s dominance. Yep’s initial focus on healing is best characterized as a cerebral exercise that is ironically derived of a disembodied foundation that presumes healing, and in turn queer worldmaking, as critical thought experiments. Later, Yep (2017) returns to the notion of healing from the violence of cisheteronormativity and specifically names that critical consciousness is but “one important step” to which he added “cognitive, affective, and bodily” healing as additional key elements in the relational path toward healing (pp.  118, 116). To get there, Yep focuses our communicative healing energies to queer relational space and time. Queer relationality references non-­normative modes of relating. Whereas cisheteronormareproductive relational modes, queer relationalities tivity asserts and privileges cishetero-­ include and affirm relational ties regardless of institutional legitimacy, recognition, or intelligibility. Yep (2017) clarifies, queer relationalities include: “modes of recognition, systems of intelligibility, cultural expressions, affective articulations, encrypted sociality, embodied relations, forms of belonging, community formations, and collective histories of oppression that circulate outside of regimes of [cis]heteronormativity” (p.  119). To focus our relational ­energies, Yep further theorizes that queer relationalities occur across “spheres” of desire and intimacy (p.  120). In the context of healing, spheres of desire draw our attention to spatial-­ relational dimensions including imagined desires (i.e. self-­determined gender possibilities; sexual fantasies) and externally articulated desires (i.e. self-­determined gender presentation; sexual fantasies realized) while spheres of intimacy draw our attention to temporal-­relational dimensions including fleeting relational connections (i.e. an activist action; anonymous sexual encounter) and enduring relational connections (i.e. enduring coalitional politic; long-­term relationships). Taken together, healing is facilitated within and through spheres of desire and intimacy or through space and across time. The goal, Yep (2017) offers, is to “maintain wholeness in a cisheteronormative world” organized by hegemonic forces that traffic in division and destruction (p. 116). Said differently, the goal is to maintain wholeness while preserving difference. Muñoz (2009) theorizes queerness in utopic terms animated by anticipatory affects of hope, which beg a sense of disappointment. That is, utopic thought is risky precisely because hope, utopia’s anticipatory affect, is more possible than it is certain. Still, Muñoz beckons us toward hope, which he characterizes as “a backward glance that enacts a future vision” (p. 4). The title of his monograph, Cruising Utopia, gestures to a metaphoric queer sexual encounter that desires and flirts with – cruises – utopia: the allure of a cruising sexual glance materialized in an anonymous sexual encounter in an alleyway, a conference site bathroom, or a bar. Muñozian utopias press us to imagine queerness, or a fleeting sexual encounter, as “always in the horizon” (p. 11). Like most queer (and trans) of color critics, Muñoz’s utopic thought is relationally-­ grounded, unfolding endlessly, refusing foreclosure. Writing later, Muñoz (2013) returns to queer’s horizon to theorize onto-­epistemic parameters that shape queer’s politic. Specifically, he

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theorizes queerness as simultaneously being about “a sense of the incalculable” and the “incalculable sense of queerness” (p.  104). More than the cruising backward glance at and toward utopia, queerness is about a sense: a relationally constituted sense of that which is (im)possible. Queerness marks the incommensurability of distinct entities in relational context of which the grounds for relating are predicated on a sense of being (with) someone/something else. To his utopic thought, Muñoz (2013) adds a “commons of the incommensurate” in which the experience of “being-­in-­common-­in-­difference, offers a map of life where singularities flow into the common, enacting a necessary communism” (p. 112). To be certain, Muñoz uses “communism” to signal both a “certain communing of incommensurable singularities” and “just plain communism” (p. 112). Sylvia and Marsha’s STAR house was communism comprised of youth of various gender and sexual experiences and identities each commonly-­distinctly surveilled by the carceral state and the (white homo) nationalist politics consuming notions of Gay Pride. For Sylvia, Gay Power marked the affective relational force keeping STAR youth alive despite neglect from the exclusionary white Gay Pride monolith. Said differently, STAR house’s capacity to survive was based on a relationally secured sense of hope, which they may not – some did not – ever realize. In this way, queerness is best understood as a “sense,” something that “exceeds politics” (Muñoz 2013, p. 104). Chambers-­Letson (2018) developed Muñoz’s (2013) communist thinking and argues for a “communism of incommensurability […] predicated on relations of incompleteness and nonequivalence” (p. 26, emphasis added). These communistic relations are predicated on incompleteness in the sense that they are performative, processual, relational becomings constantly renegotiating boundaries so as to account for nonequivalence. These relations are predicated on nonequivalence in the sense that, using Karl Marx’s (1891/2001) famous maxim, “From each according to his [sic] ability, to each according to his [sic] needs!” (p. 20). That is, we are different and unequal precisely because the existing structure was/is designed to thrive on inequity. In this regard, the use of “communism” recognizes and sustains the ways in which difference requires onto-­epistemic shifts in order to achieve a sense of communal healing – an ephemeral state that is never absolute nor guaranteed for racialized gender and sexual minoritarians but realized in fleeting relational contexts constituted in a communism of incommensurable singularities. This brings us to our final theoretical turn. The onto-­epistemic wound to which we direct y/ our attention involves the compulsory (mis)framing of transness in queer and feminist theoretical terms, which collapses the complexity of transness into a cis-­centric heuristic device that is epistemically sound to cis-­centric queer and feminist thought or as an affect signifier used to shore up uncritical liberal support for transness sans intersectional complexity. We are inspired by our trans elders who have long critiqued white academe’s propensity to mis-­read transness through queer and feminist theories (Namaste 2000; Prosser 1998; Stryker 2004). Such mis-­readings privilege so-­called transgressive genders while dismissing trans folks who pass as normatively gendered for failing to be queer (read: transgressive) enough (Sullivan 2006). Though, from this vantage, we might perceive how the white queer and feminist theorist’s pre-­occupation with transness can come from a fetishistic gaze that presupposes transgression as a choice rather than as an ontological reality in which one does not desire transgression so much as reprieve. Indeed, what the white queer and feminist theorist fails to recognize are gender non-­conforming folks of color do not enjoy the privilege of choosing to transgress a racist structure designed precisely to constrain gender possibility in white supremacist terms. To honor this onto-­epistemic wound, then, we strive for a communal sense of healing – a reparative move performatively fostered in queer (and trans) of color communisms that center the incommensurability of queerness with that of transness in pursuit of liberatory ends born of communal relational means. We cannot, then, proffer conclusions so much as horizons, a desire for a sense of healing derived of the incommensurable singulariconstituting queer and trans in relational antagonistic perpetuity, a forever dance ties co-­ simultaneously de-/re-constructing worlds of our own communal design.



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A Sense of Healing, or, Will You Stay with Me for a Bit While I Cry? But those fleeting moments of queer recognition, of touch, both human and divine, of communion and mystery can help us “know how to live.” Juan María Rodríguez (2014, p. 138)

Like Sylvia Rivera, we have no interest in becoming white club members. In fact, we reject the framework, just as Sylvia did decades ago, for its incapacity to imagine and theorize a broader, stronger horizon of liberatory ends derived of communal means. Our work here reaches toward, desires, a sense of healing – a reparative interrogation of the onto-­epistemic wounds cis-­ centric scholarship, in critical intercultural communication scholarship, has enacted against transness both by choice and by structural design – we, the authors, notwithstanding. We propose a move toward a queer (and trans) of color communism, a commitment to taking serious material survival/surviving in relational terms. We close our meditation with performance, derived of the incommensurable singularities animating our unique relational communism: a Brown cis queer and a mixed-­race Asian/white non-­binary trans femme. We performatively weave a blueprint of our intra-­and intercultural healing across time and through space, pointing to, while collapsing, the particularities that comprise our sense of “uniqueness” with that of common points of rejection, oppression, and for that matter, depression …

refuge

what is a constellation of care?

termination The difference between you and I. i am afraid, of

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Jean(s) that are drenched in scents from the night before. I hold them close take them in bathe in their madness their militancy they remind me of violence of the world they remind me of when we. . . . . . We were at that one bar together. Don’t you remember? It was that day after work and we wanted to be in a dark place. Not like a dark dark place but like a place that had little light. I guess I can’t remember what happened to us that particular day; probably nothing out of the mundane. But don’t you remember saying, “let’s meet at that one bar; talk shit?” Remember? We said, “let’s meet at this one bar and talk shit; because today was another day of exhaustion; because ‘it is better to speak remembering we were never meant to survive’ (Lorde  1997); because a beer is needed.” We were at that one bar together. And we were talking about nothing.

Anyway, I remember that day because we found love for each other. We held space for each other. We were buying beers until the “fuck yous” that came out of our bodies started to feel like daggers rather than tears and for that day, that was enough. The memory is there but it is s l i p p e r y I slip. Pull out. Feel whole. Fill up. Pump. The stomach. Once more. Pump.



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Together and separately our bodies are intertwined with another. Hands fondle our curves, a sense of healing, touch turns to affirmation. Our bodies worshipped. Desire no longer ethereal; it is material. Pleasure and melanin swirl and teleport us to realms where we are free (of empire). A dangerous queer and trans gesture. It is blissful. It is sinful. It is how we like it. It is how we live    desire. “Remember joy?” she says, laughing through her teeth, finishing her beer. I try and string the words together…

…except joy does not exist in a neatly strung line of words. We feel the joy between us, we know it’s ephemeral, and yet we will carry it in our bodies once we leave here. Our subject positions of difference coalesce into a communism full of joy. Smiles, gentle hugs, we rest for a moment knowing it is going to be OK; just for this one moment, it is going to be OK. Enough so that we will leave here revived sufficiently to face another day in a dark place. The difference between you and I; is to be seen, celebrated, and cared for. We are the constellation of care.

Note 1 Consider the catalyzing 1966 anti-­police activism and resistance that sparked at Compton’s Cafeteria in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district, a spot where queens and gender conforming sex workers and femmes convened while hustling throughout the night (Stryker 2017).

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Doing Critical Intercultural Communication Work as Political Commitment: Lessons Learned from Ethnographic Methods Gloria Nziba Pindi Department of Communication, California State University San Marcos

Introduction Over the past decades, intercultural communication scholars have engaged in critical ­scholarship relying on “varied tools and processes (for e.g. discourse analysis, political economy, in-­depth interviewing, oral histories, auto/ethnography, performance and narrative analysis, and surveys)” (Halualani and Nakayama, 2010, p. 9) to examine how “issues of power, context, and historical/forces [impact] culture and intercultural communication relations” (Halualani et al. 2009, p. 18). Despite the vastness of these methodological approaches, several scholars have addressed the need for more works foregrounding the role of inquiry or methods for critical intercultural communication projects (Nakayama and Halualani 2010; Willink et al. 2014). For instance, Willink et al. (2014) state: …but I searched in vain for a book or article that outlines Critical Intercultural Communication (CIC) methodologies. Could it be that, despite the abundant scholarship, we have no single piece that shows us how to locate ourselves amidst the diversity of CIC research methodologies? (pp. 289–290)

In response to this call, I reflect in this chapter on the impact of my use of ethnographic methods in my critical intercultural communication works. I identify as a postcolonial transnational critical intercultural communication scholar trained in qualitative approaches and more specifically ethnographic ones. From my graduate studies to my scholarly research as faculty in the United States, I have focused my attention on building a sustained productive research agenda highlighting identity issues of African/non-­Western marginalized communities with the specific goal of challenging mainstream Westernized and/or Eurocentric scholarship in the discipline of Communication, and particularly Intercultural Communication. My research interests are informed by my personal experience as a Black/Congolese female diasporic subject navigating at the borderlands of different worldviews. Nourished by ethnographic methods, my research attempts to explore various parameters that impact the performance of the self in transnational contexts around issues of globalization, migration, and identity negotiation within the African diaspora.

The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication, Second Edition. Edited by Thomas K. Nakayama and Rona Tamiko Halualani. © 2024 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2024 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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In this chapter, I attempt to foreground the role of three ethnographic approaches as modes of inquiry for conducting my critical intercultural communication research: critical performance ethnography, critical complete-­member ethnography (CCME), and postcolonial autoethnography. One thing I learned using each of these methodological approaches is that each type impacts the research process with specific epistemological questions and core commitments. To name a few of these questions: How is my commitment to doing critical intercultural communication work to promote social justice impacted by each methodological choice? What research goals am I trying to achieve and how such goals inform the choice of the method used? What are some of the benefits as well as challenges and/or tensions raised by each methodological choice? How does my choice of each methodological approach impact my relationships with the community I work with while simultaneously holding onto my commitment to promoting social justice through my critical intercultural communication works? I am invested in providing a reflexive account of how I use these three ethnographic approaches to engage in critical intercultural communication works as a political commitment with the explicit goal of promoting social justice. I share the lessons I learned from utilizing these methodological approaches as tools to “meet the goals of revealing and disrupting structures of oppression while recognizing [their impact in the] process of knowledge production” (Pathak 2013, p. 595). My goal is to unravel the complex process of utilizing these ethnographic methods as modes of inquiry “to their greatest value, in their best and most applicable ways, to ends that serve a greater good” (Pathak 2013, p. 606), yet while also keeping in mind that social justice scholarship “is always open to debate, always particular rather than abstract or general; it is an end we seek in particular instances of contingent action, rather than a telos at which we arrive once and for all” (Frey et al. 1996, p. 111). Thus, the discussion provided here stands as a methodological intervention by exploring the role of ethnographic methods in conducting critical intercultural communication work as a political commitment to social justice. In so doing, I exhort us as critical intercultural communication scholars to reflect on how we engage with the use of method in our scholarship to bring about change and what are the epistemological implications as well as ethical commitments of our methodological choices. This chapter is organized as follows: first, I elaborate on the significance of embracing critical intercultural communication research as a political commitment to social justice. Then, I discuss the epistemological implications and commitments I learned from using the three ethnographic methods: critical performance ethnography, critical complete-­member ethnography, and postcolonial autoethnography. Finally, I close the essay with some concluding thoughts.

Critical Intercultural Communication Research as Political Commitment to Social Justice As noted by several scholars, the field of critical intercultural communication is neither an ideologically uncontaminated area, nor apolitical (Halualani et al. 2009; Moon 2010). On the contrary, Halualani and Nakayama (2010) argue that as critical scholars, we should “make visible the full circle of critical intercultural communication as political projects (from inquiry to analysis to reflection to praxis)” (p. 5). The goal is therefore “to engage culture and intercultural communication as ideologically constituted and framed notions and spaces to uncover the ideological slants and imprints within cultures and their identity and communication practices” (Halualani et al. 2009, p. 26). For example, in their seminal work on the “White problem” in intercultural communication, Nakayama and Martin (2007) decry how the field is still filled with dominant ideologies rooted in the historical legacy of White hegemony/supremacy. As an illustration, Moon (2010) states: “in many ways intercultural communication remains seconded in colonial perspectives that de-­humanize ‘others’ and which implicitly (and perhaps explicitly) support and reproduce US imperialism” (p. 42). Consequently, numerous scholars



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have called for the deconstruction of such colonialist ideologies by advocating for the ­recentering of critical intercultural communication scholarship on non-­Western and marginalized experiences (Calafell 2020; McIntosh and Eguchi 2020; Pindi 2018). As argued by Moon (2010), “critical inter/cultural communication is a deep and abiding commitment to social justice and equity” (p. 36). Dempsey et al. (2011) argue that “a social justice approach is rooted in an understanding of how systems of oppression reproduce inequalities and a rejection (hatred) of those systems” (p. 258). Reflecting on the impact of social justice scholarship in the research process, Frey (1998) notes: “the major question most of us face in our lives as scholars is not whether our research should be useful; it is, rather, what it should be useful for and for whom it should be useful” (p. 157). For critical intercultural scholars, this means that, “our engagements of culture, power, and intercultural communication represent projects with urgencies and much at stake with real people and having real consequences” (Halualani and Nakayama 2010, p. 5). From this perspective, “the point of academic research into cultural differences is based upon a belief in the possibility of changing uneven, differential ways of constructing and understanding other cultures” (Martin and Nakayama, 1999, p. 8). Various critical intercultural communication scholars have pointed out how a conceptualization of culture as neutral is deeply problematic because it denies the subject positions of those involved in the research process (Collier et  al.  2001; Halualani et  al.  2009; Moon  1996). Advocating for a critical approach to the study of culture, Martin and Nakayama (1999) note that “culture, then, is not just a variable, nor benignly socially constructed, but a site of struggle where various communication meanings are contested” (p. 8). Therefore, doing critical work entails “analyzing cultural meanings and practices in the context of particular subjects’ interests and positionings vis-­à-­vis the ideological operation of power within a specific given social formation” (Halualani and Nakayama, 2010, p. 6). Ultimately, such theorizing of culture inevitably rejects a conceptualization of relationship researcher-­participant as natural and neutral; instead, it calls attention on the ethical commitments of the researcher’s involvement in conducting/doing critical intercultural work (Halualani et al. 2009). According to Frey et al. (1996), social justice work is based on a critical partnership between self and other as the sine qua non for genuine relationships in the research process. They note: “this critical perspective is grounded in the fundamental realization that we share a world with others, and thus ethical conduct requires consideration of the stories of others” (p.  111). Speaking on the researcher’s involvement in this process, Madison (2012) notes “we bring our belongings into the field with us, not only the many others who constitute our being but how we belong to what we know, how our epistemologies are yet another site of our belonging with and for others” (pp. 9–10). Therefore, as critical researchers, our “goal is not merely to build or propagate research for its own sake” (Halualani and Nakayama 2010, p. 9) but instead to reflect on “how our ontological, epistemological, and axiological commitments impact [our] methodological choices” (Willink et al. 2014, p. 292). In the next section, I discuss the epistemological lessons I learned from using three ethnographic methods − critical performance ethnography, critical complete-­member ethnography, and postcolonial autoethnography − in my critical intercultural communication social justice works.

Lessons Learned from Using Ethnographic Methods in Doing Critical Intercultural Communication Works This section provides a layered account of my personal experience using three ethnographic methods as modes of inquiry to conduct critical intercultural communication work to promote social justice: critical performance ethnography, critical complete-­member ethnography, and postcolonial autoethnography.

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Critical Performative Ethnography Several intercultural communication scholars have called attention on the ethical considerations that should guide the works of critical scholars (Martin and Butler  2001; Miike  2019; Nakayama and Martin 2014; Ting Toomey 2011). For instance, Martin and Butler (2001) discuss different ethical challenges critical intercultural communication scholars may encounter as ethnographers working with a given community. They address how the process of genuinely describing the cultural groups we work with is impacted not only by the training we received as scholars, but also the cultural context shaping the intercultural communication field. As discussed earlier, there is a colonial legacy of White/Western dominant ideologies that deeply impacts the works of critical intercultural communication scholars doing ethnographic research, and thereby raising ethical concerns about “representing the other” (Conquergood 1985). In reaction to this, some scholars have advocated for the deconstruction of the “othering” and/or “dehumanization” of marginalized groups in critical intercultural communication scholarship (Calafell 2020; McIntosh and Eguchi 2020). In response to this call, I believe that critical performative ethnographic fieldwork provides a pathway for a “genuine representation” of other cultures. Methodologically, critical ethnography emerged as a shift toward an ideology of class-­ based conflict research characterized by issues of struggle, power, and inequity (Thomas 1993). Madison (2012) claims that “critical ethnography begins with an ethical responsibility to address processes of unfairness or injustice within a particular domain” (p. 5). This ethnographic genre is always grounded in “the reflective process of choosing between conceptual alternatives and making value-­laden judgments of meaning to challenge research, policy, and other forms of human activity” (Thomas 1993, p. 4). Critical ethnographers work to disrupt hegemonic structures, accepted traditions and ideologies, in order to envision change and transformation. By doing so, critical ethnographers challenge the way we think about the world in terms of “what is” in order to move to “what is out there to know” or “what could be” (Madison 2012; Thomas 1993). Critical ethnography “takes us beneath surface appearances, disrupts the status quo, and unsettles both neutrality and taken for granted assumptions by bringing to light underlying and obscure operations of power and control” (Madison 2012, p. 5). As a critical ethnographer, fieldwork has always been an important aspect of the data collection process for me. Whereas I have been always involved with ethnographic fieldwork through “participant observation,” embracing a critical performative ethnographic stance as advocated by Conquergood (1985, 1991) offered me a different perspective on conducting ethnographic fieldwork. I came across the works of Dwight Conquergood on performative ethnography as a doctoral student when I was working on my dissertation. In my dissertaSaharan Women tion titled “Performing Black Feminisms in Diasporic Contexts: Sub-­ Negotiating Identity across Cultures,” I used critical performance ethnography to explore daily performances of feminism of female diasporic African immigrants in transnational context. Obviously, ethnographic fieldwork was an important part of my data collection process. However, one important thing I learned through the process of relying on Conquegood’s approach to critical performative ethnographic fieldwork is that, in lieu of “mere participant observation,” I was able to experience bodily immersion by co-­performing with the community members I worked with. According to Conquergood, participant observation carries “a shallow presence that lacked the depth of an invested, heartfelt self with the Other” (as cited by Madison 2006a, p. 349). In contrast, performative fieldwork allows the researcher “to displace the notion of ­participant-­observation with the more precise, body invested, and riskier term co-­performance” (Madison 2006b, p. 349). In the same way, shifting from participant observation to ­embodied fieldwork during my dissertation data collection allowed me to co-­perform with community



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members. Most of my co-­performances took place at various cultural events such as prayer meetings, woman to woman gatherings, parties, etc. Attending each of these events was more than just watching or observing; instead, as a community member, I was bodily immersed in a series of activities. For instance, during prayers meetings, I participated in reading scriptures, studying the Bible, singing, and dancing. Likewise, at different parties/social gatherings, as African women, we adorned ourselves in traditional African dressing style and made African dishes together in celebration of our shared cultural heritage overseas. In so doing, my relationship with the community members moved from that of “research subjects” and/or ­“participants” to “co-­performers” (Madison 2006a, b). This further reinforced a closer proximity with community members I worked with through an ongoing negotiation of bodily immersion rather than a distanciation from the Other. Critical intercultural communication scholars have mentioned that one of the main methodological concerns that has led to the historical othering of marginalized groups in scholarship produced in the field is the researchers’ lack of depth of bodily immersion with the community/culture studied (Calafell  2020; McIntosh and Eguchi  2020). For instance, using the teacher-­student perspective model as a metaphor to describe the nature of relationship in the research process between the Western world and non-­Western one, Asante et al. (2006) argue that the West positions itself as the teacher vis-­à-­vis the rest of the world often perceived as its student from which it cannot even learn anything from. Ultimately, such model of research “also promotes a teacher’s perspective on non-­Western cultures, which decenters and dislocates non-­Western communicators as subjects and agents” (Asante et al. 2006, p. 4). There is no doubt that such research approach is historically rooted in the colonial legacy of studying non-­Western groups as the other through “participant observation,” which “connotes an arrogance of seeing and judgment that co-­performance refutes in its being and doing with the Other in more intersubjective and interpersonal engagements” (Madison 2006b, p. 349). In contrast to the imperialistic student-­perspective approach, Jones (2002) argues that “if people are genuinely interested in understanding culture, they must put aspects of that culture on and into their bodies” (p. 7). Similarly, I believe that shifting from participant observation to body-­to-­body fieldwork could enable the researcher to embrace a dialogical encounter with the Other through co-­performance, which is “a doing with deep attention to and with others” (Madison  2006a, 323). In fact, Nakayama and Martin (2014) exhort critical intercultural communication scholars to embrace the dialogical principal as an ethical commitment, which “stresses the centrality of relationship in the human experience, and how human meet and relate to others – especially others who are different” (p. 104). Following this logic, I think critical intercultural communication scholars working with marginalized communities/minority groups can rely on dialogic performance in their ethnographic fieldwork to promote a genuine representation of the community members they are working with, and thereby deconstruct the hegemonic legacy of the “Western/colonial” gaze. A call to situate the body as a site of knowledge in critical intercultural communication scholarship has already been advocated by many scholars (Calafell  2020; LeMaster  2018; McIntosh and Eguchi 2020; Pindi 2020a). As pointed by McIntosh and Eguchi (2020), “the body matters and the matters of bodies signify a major site of power where a subject engages in the performance of identity in everyday life in intercultural interactions and social processes” (p. 5). In a similar way, Calafell (2020) argues that such move allows critical intercultural communication scholars “new understandings of the workings of power, making whiteness visible, and the humanization of the Other” (p. 3). In fact, McIntosh and Eguchi (2020) emphasize that “Intercultural Communication must value the body-­to-­centre enfleshed experiences and acknowledge the imperative realities of embodied politics” (p. 5). Along with that, Madison (2012) further notes that relying on performance ethnography’s embodied fieldwork can be helpful and relevant to critical ethnographers because this notion offers

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unique ways of (re)defining researchers’ and participants’ roles in the field. Therefore, she calls upon a “dialogic performative” stance to urge scholars embrace embodied reciprocity: I call upon a dialogical performative not to perpetuate ideologues of Otherness … The dialogic performative is charged by a desire for a generative and embodied reciprocity, sometimes with pleasure and sometimes with pain … It is a mutual creation of something different and something more from the meeting of the bodies in their context … You not only do what subjects do, but you are intellectually, relationally, and emotionally invested in their symbol making practices and social strategies as you experience with them a range of yearnings and desires-­co-­performance is a doing with deep attention with to and with others. (Madison 2006a, pp. 320–323)

Moreover, dialogic performance comes with the ethical commitment of reflecting on how one’s positionality impacts the research process. Moon (1996) notes that “if ‘culture’ signifies the intersection of various subject positions within any given society, then ways of studying intercultural communication that acknowledge this multi-­facetedness are needed” (p.  76). Yet, some critical intercultural communication scholars have also decried how due to a lack of self-­reflexivity in their methodological approach, some scholars fail to question how their positionality impacts the research process (Calafell 2020; McIntosh and Eguchi 2020). On the opposite, Halualani and Nakayama (2010) invite us as scholars to reflect on the intricacies of our own identities and “those of others for whom we care; in and around the contours of our intersecting positionalities in relation to surrounding ideologies and hegemonies of society, and deep within the struggles over power among cultural groups, members, and dominant structures” (p. 1). Regarding negotiating one’s positionality as a researcher, Calafell (2020) stretches how “the reflexive body as an instrument of knowledge is key in each scholar’s work” (p. 2). She further argues that “critical performative reflexivity requires not just intersectional reflexivity in the research process as we acknowledge both privilege and oppression, but asks us to perform or embody this on the page as well” (p. 3). Ultimately, this implies that our ethical commitment to politically embrace critical intercultural communication work as social justice is not solely limited to reflecting on our positionality on the field, but also the politics of representing other cultures in our writings (Willink et al. 2014).

Critical Complete-­member Ethnography (CCME) In my ethnographic research, I worked specifically with the diasporic community of African female immigrants living in the United States. From my master’s thesis to my dissertation including several other research projects, I was the insider within a community of Black women Saharan Africa with whom I shared a lot in common. from various countries of sub-­ Consequently, as a researcher, one thing I had to constantly negotiate within this community is my own cultural proximity and familiarity with my co-­participants. For instance, in my attempt of trying to make sense of my co-­participants’ process of identity negotiation in transnational context, I realized that I could “see myself in what the members said, how they said it, and how they made it meaningful among themselves … it was their and my ‘our’ cultural identity performance which I came to understand” (Toyosaki 2011, pp. 62–63). This type of ethnographic work made me understand how to some extent I myself was part of the research project. As a result, I was faced with a set of challenging methodological questions: How do I negotiate my positionality as insider within the community I studied? How do I negotiate the connections between my lived experience and those of my co-­participants? What are the epistemological implications resulting from such a negotiation process? In my quest for appropriate methodological tools that would allow me to negotiate my positionality of “insider within,” I came across CCME. Whereas CCME is still in burgeoning stage in the field of critical intercultural communication (Chuang  2015; Toyosaki  2011), I believe it



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­ rovides researchers good insights on how to negotiate their positionality of “insider within” p with the community members they are working with. Coined by Toyosaki (2011), CCME stands as an approach methodologically grounded in “three foundations: EOC (ethnography of communication), (a communicative element), autoethnography (a self-­reflexive or personal element), and critical ethnography (a critical ­element)” (Chuang 2015, p. 2). In his theorizing of CCME, Toyosaki defines this approach as follows: (1) CCME is an insider-­looking-­in-­and-­out-­critical approach; (2) CCME collects data through the researchers’ field observations, participant observations, ethnographic interviews, lived experiences, and self-­reflexive examinations; (3) CCME focuses on communicative practices and processes as analytical locales; (4) CCME engenders cultural criticism, both internal and external to the community under study; and (5) CCME deploys the researchers’ epistemological intimacy in rendering their intracultural interpretations and criticisms. (p. 66)

I first used CCME while I was working on my dissertation. As a Black African female immigrant doing research on African women’s identity negotiation in the diaspora, I entered the field as a CCME. Obviously, such positionality impacted my research and I was always aware of the significance of my own cultural proximity within this community of female diasporic postcolonial subjects. Toyosaki (2011) states that “CCMEers’ epistemological intimacy and self-­reflexivity are instruments for communal self-­realization” (p. 65). Likewise, I saw myself in how my co-­participants performed their identity and how they made sense of their lived experiences as transnational subjects. CCME allowed me to negotiate this “epistemological intimacy” (Toyosaki  2011, p.  66) by embracing an “insider-­ looking-­ in-­ and-­ out critical approach” (Toyosaki 2011, p. 66) through self-­reflexivity. Chuang (2015) notes that CCME’s epistemological intimacy “rests on the bases of knowledge, experience, and identity that derived from intraculturality, close proximity, and sameness between researchers and participants, and also on the communal, relational, and intersubjective negotiations” (p. 4). Following this logic, my positionality as a critical complete-­member ethnographer allowed me to establish contact with my co-­participants and gain their cooperation. I relied on our communal experience of being sub-­Saharan female diasporic subjects living in the United States to stimulate a deep collaboration. For instance, I used my personal stories to create an atmosphere of comfort, which in turn facilitated self-­disclosure among us. An important aspect of our identity that we negotiated as postcolonial subjects is a history of global coloniality. As noted by Toyosaki (2011), “CMEers and their participants share socialization and a cultural system of codes, symbols, and meanings. The common ground situates communicative, cultural, and experiential proximity in research” (p. 64). Likewise, our shared experience of colonization is illustrated by the use of the colonizer’s language (English or French) as the main language of communication. Similarly, we share a common struggle of oppression of othering as “cultural others” tied to our racial and ethnic identity. Using CCME, “the community members become empowered by coming to understand their own culture from the inside and connecting it with its neighboring communities through critical interrogation of cultural and political issues at stake, such as oppression, injustice, inequality, and dehumanization” (Toyosaki 2011, p. 65). In the same way, discussing these topics with my co-­participants also provided us the opportunity to engage in decolonial work by deconstructing some of these colonial practices. For instance, with some participants our use of English or French was mixed with various African local languages such as Swahili, Lingala, and so on. This linguistic disruption is a form of resistance to colonial legacy of the hegemony of English and French as linguae francae. Ultimately, CCME stands as a tool “of cultural transformation from within, inviting the community members’ narrative imaginations for ­possible communal changes” (Toyosaki, p. 75).

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Moreover, Toyosaki (2011) notes “CCME, by design, situates self-­reflexivity in order to critically observe and examine the researcher’s own participation in the community under study” (p. 65). More specifically, self-­reflexivity was useful to turn back to my own positionality and reflect on how my own lived experience impacted/related to those of my co-­participants. Simultaneously, due to the significance of my own cultural proximity within this community, I had to turn back to my own positionality and negotiate differences between my lived ­experience and those of my co-­participants. By doing so, I was able to work the hyphen between me and my co-­participants, not in terms of learning about the Other, but learning from the Other, which implies “learning about difference from the Other’s otherness” (Jones and Jenkins 2009, p. 481). An interesting methodological implication resulting from CCME’s epistemological ­intimacy is that a complete-­ethnographic member stance allows the researcher to some extent to refer to his/her co-­participants’ shared experiences in terms of “us” or “our” instead of “their.” This is not done to dissolve the differences between the research and the participants, but rather to reflect the communal experiences of their identities performed through and across differences. Thus, for critical intercultural communication scholars, CCME methodologically operates as “a point of connection across differences” (Jones and Calafell, 2012, p. 962).

Postcolonial Autoethnography Autoethnography stands as a performative mode of knowing grounded in one’s embodied lived experience recounted through stories/personal narratives (Calafell and Moreman 2009; Gutierrez-­Perez 2018; LeMaster 2018). Despite the rise of autoethnographic research in critical intercultural communication studies, and by extension the communication discipline, scholars have decried how research produced today is still predominantly White/ Western oriented (Chawla and Atay 2018; Griffin 2012; Pindi 2020a). In reaction to this, several intercultural communication scholars have advocated for the use of autoethnography as a decolonial method to challenge and/or deconstruct the legacy of Western/ Eurocentric canons of knowledge production in communication studies (Chawla and Atay 2018; Calafell and Moreman 2009; Pathak 2013; Pindi 2018, 2020a; Toyosaki 2018). Postcolonial autoethnography emerged out of this tradition as a scholarly approach “which seeks to shift marginal voices to the center” by “carving out spaces to articulate a plethora of cultural experiences specifically rooted in colonial histories” (Chawla and Atay,  2018, p. 4). Postcolonial autoethnography allows the researcher to “analyze herself as both the subject of study and as a product of larger social, political, and cultural systems” (Pathak 2013, p. 595). Aligning myself with other postcolonial scholars (Chawla and Rodriguez  2008; Chawla and Atay 2018; Pathak 2013; Toyosaki 2018), I used postcolonial autoethnography in my works as a tool to make sense of my lived experience as a postcolonial transnational Congolese/ African scholar whose identity is shaped by the power dynamics of colonization and ­decolonization at the intersection of various layers of my identity such as race, gender, ethnicity, immigration, education, and so on. Describing postcolonial autoethnography, Toyosaki (2018) states: That is, the postcolonial turn that autoethnography is trying to make is always in its processes at various cultural locations, dialectically struggling between academia’s cultural and institutional past of colonization (i.e. racism, heteronormativity, patriarchy, xenophobia, cultural Othering, sexism, classism, Standard English, etc.). The postcolonial turn also promotes the academic cultural present of changing and turning. Postcolonial autoethnography is always in motion in this liminal space, examining and reenvisioning history/ies, and changing and turning. (p. 34)



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In a similar way, through the process of embracing embodied knowledge, postcolonial ­autoethnography provided me the opportunity to use my lived experience as a tool to call attention to the systemic forms of injustice impacting my selfhood in transnational context. In other words, postcolonial autoethnography “allows for me to explicitly name and critique the very systems that attempt to name and critique me” (Pathak  2013, p.  604). Relying on “autoethnographic writing as a means of resistance” (Griffin 2012, p. 139), I decried the colonization of my academic selfhood in the ivory tower as a marginalized international female African scholar (Pindi 2018, 2020a, 2021). For instance, I called out the racist and xenophobic social construction of my Black African identity as “the cultural exotic other.” Likewise, as a nonnative English-­speaking scholar, I condemned the hegemony of linguistic expectations of “speak English like an American.” In the same way, I used autoethnography to challenge the social construction of my Black Congolese female hairy body in US culture as “sick” and “abnormal” in light of so called White European standards of health and beauty (Pindi, 2020b). Whereas, postcolonial autoethnography has been an important methodological tool for me as a postcolonial scholar to conduct decolonial intercultural communication work, Chawla and Atay (2018) in their seminal work on decolonizing autoethnography pose a set of important questions in relationship to this decolonial agenda. They write: Can there be a decolonial autoethnography? If yes, what could such an autoethnography look, sound, and feel like? If not, then what are the impediments that disallow a move to a decolonized autoethnographic work? Where would decolonization take us? What does it mean to write the self in and out of colonial historical frameworks? (p. 3)

The above questions remain crucial to me given the complexities of my identity because as a transnational Black African scholar, I live in a liminal space where I am constantly engaged in a process of identity negotiation simultaneously shaped by colonial and decolonial forces. Whereas autoethnography proved to be a useful method for conducting decolonial critical intercultural communication works, I have come to realize the importance of negotiating the multiple contradictions tied to my use of this method given the complexity of my transnational self. More precisely, through the process of self-­reflexivity, I came to realize that: Becoming a postcolonial autoethnographer is not a ceremonial moment that signifies the complete departure from colonizing research; rather, it marks the beginning of and a pledge for our continuous labor of self-­reflexive interrogation to trace and mark the colonial ways through which we become autoethnographers, how we do autoethnography, and how autoethnography works in global knowledge production systems and movements. (Toyosaki 2018, p. 35)

Speaking of the impact of postcolonial scholars on their academic research, Pathak (2013) notes “given our training, we often inadvertently reproduce the colonialist voice” (p. 598). Likewise, my being educated in the language of the colonizer  – first French in my home ­country and now English in the United States – speaks volumes to the cultural tensions I have to navigate in my decolonial work. While my primary goal in using autoethnography is to decolonize the field of critical intercultural communication as demonstrated above, I also struggle because in this academic endeavor I have to use English, the language of the colonizer. Likewise, I have heard people recommend that I do my work in French because I am a “native-­French” speaker. However, the reality is that both of these languages are inherited from ­colonization. Ultimately, as a transnational Black Congolese female nonnative English speaker scholar, my use of autoethnographic method carries a set of nuances because “I feel I am both empowered/decolonized and displaced/recolonized while doing autoethnography” (Toyosaki 2018, p. 33). Moreover, my moving to the United States to further my education was a conscious choice, yet such choice also comes with several consequences that shape my academic selfhood and the

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type of work I do as a critical intercultural communication scholar. Discussing community as a core commitment of postcolonial autoethnography, Pathak (2013) states “community calls to the very people whose stories are being told; it reminds the scholar that the story and her work are not separate from those whom they are about” (p.  599). Whereas my decolonial work addresses matters of colonization pertaining to the Congo, and to some extent Africa in general, I also struggle to connect with my Congolese/African fellows on the continent. As an African scholar who has been living in the United States for more than 10 years now, I am sometimes seen as an “outsider” in the eyes of my fellow Africans living on the continent (Ogundipe-­Leslie 1994). Whereas I still carry in me my African/Congolese roots, I also feel somehow uprooted because I have been away from home for such a long time. I am the non-­ Western scholar who now resides in the Western world often perceived as the “world of the colonizer” (Ogundipe-­Leslie 1994). For instance, I now use more the language of the colonizer (English) than any of my local Congolese languages. In fact, I speak English every day, I teach in English, and publish in English. Yet, this language is not accessible to people from my country. Although I should abide to the politics of language of US academy, I also struggle because “I am a benefiter, a recipient, and an accomplice to academic culture and English hegemony. I am one of the problems” (Toyosaki 2018, p. 39). Ultimately, I cannot deny how I benefit from the Western world.

Concluding Thoughts In this chapter, I explored the role of ethnographic methods as modes of inquiry in conducting critical intercultural communication work as a political commitment to social justice. Stretching the significance on reflecting on our use of various methods in critical intercultural communication works, Willink et al. (2014) note “as scholars advance, our evolving research questions, our shifting commitments, and changes in the field itself call on us to move beyond our comfort zones to engage the questions and communities that our hearts long to know” (p.  290). Likewise, I attempted to examine some methodological issues emerging from my use of three ethnographic approaches: critical performance ethnography, CCME, and postcolonial autoethnography. As demonstrated throughout this chapter, the use of each methodological approach comes with a set of specific epistemological implications. Yet, a common theme emerging from my use of these three different ethnographic genres is that the use of method in doing critical intercultural communication social justice work is a complex process filled with tensions. Pointing to the complexity of navigating tensions in the research process, Toyosaki (2018) writes “it is difficult for us to investigate and document how our explicit challenges are implicated by and reproductive of the institutionalized knowledge production that we collectively challenge” (p.  34). Through the processing of navigating the methodological tensions discussed in this essay, I came to the conclusion that as a researcher invested in critical intercultural communication social justice work, I have to remain flexible in my use of any method because I will always be dealing with some type of tensions and/or contradictions. Thus, the lessons shared here demonstrate that my using of these methodological approaches consists also of learning how to embrace these tensions and contradictions with optimism as uncertainties, which provide me with an opportunity to grow as a scholar. Whereas the lessons shared here come from my own lived experience, I believe that they provide some useful insights to us critical intercultural communication scholars “to examine and explicate how [our] trainings and experiences influence the way we see the world and the ways in which [we] see and describe others [in our social justice works]” (Martin and Butler 2001, p. 288). I think that critically reflecting on our use of methods in our intercultural communication works can serve as a way “to liberate and decolonize our researcher identities and practices, which are constructed, validated, and constrained by the very



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e­ducational institutionalization and ritualization through which we ‘become’ researchers” (Toyosaki 2018, p. 33). For instance, another important thing this essay revealed is the role our positionality plays in the research process. Willink et  al. (2014) eloquently explain the importance of reflecting on our positionalities as critical scholars as follows: researchers must continually consider their own positions within the relationship with the community, which leads to questions about how to maintain academic legitimacy while responsibly meeting a community’s expectations or how to write up nontraditional methodological processes in traditional formats for publication (p. 299).

For critical intercultural communication scholars working specifically with minority/marginalized communities, reflecting on our methodological journeys could help “shift the dynamics of power in research processes” (Calafell 2020, p. 3) in order to create positive changes in the communities where we live.

References Asante, M.K., Miike, Y., and Jing Ying, J. (2006). The Global Intercultural Communication Reader. New York: Routledge. Calafell, B.M. (2020). The critical performative turn in intercultural communication. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1080/17475759.2020.1740292. Calafell, B.M. and Moreman, S.T. (2009). Envisioning an academic readership: Latina/o performativities per the form of publication. Text and Performance Quarterly 29 (2): 123–130. https://doi. org/10.1080/10462930902774833. Chawla, D. and Atay, A. (2018). Introduction: decolonizing autoethnography. Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies 18 (1): 3–8. https://doi.org/10.1177/1532708617728955. Chawla, D. and Rodriguez, A. (2008). Narratives on longing, being, and knowing: envisioning a writing epistemology. International Journal of Progressive Education 4: 6–23. Chuang, H.S. (2015). Complete-­member ethnography: epistemological intimacy, complete-­membership, and potentials in critical communication research. International Journal of Qualitative Methods 14 (4): 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1177/160940691561155. Collier, M., Hegde, R.S., and Lee, W. (2001). Dialogues on the edges. In: International and Intercultural Communication Annual (ed. M.J. Collier), 219–280. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Conquergood, D. (1985). Performing as a moral act: ethical dimensions of the ethnography of performance. Literature in Performance 5 (2): 1–13. Conquergood, D. (1991). Rethinking ethnography: towards a critical cultural politics. Communication Monographs 58: 179–194. Dempsey, S., Dutta, M., Frey, L.R. et al. (2011). What is the role of the communication discipline in social justice, community engagement, and public scholarship? A visit to the CM Café. Communication Monographs 78 (2): 256–271. Frey, L.R. (1998). Communication and social justice research: truth, justice, and the applied communication way. Journal of Applied Communication Research 26: 155–164. Frey, L.R., Pearce, W.B., Pollock, M.A. et al. (1996). Looking for justice in all the wrong places: on a communication approach to social justice. Communication Studies 47: 110–127. Griffin, R.A. (2012). I am an angry black woman: black feminist autoethnography, voice, and resistance. Women’s Studies in Communication 35 (2): 138–157. https://doi.org/10.1080/07491409.2012. 724524. Gutierrez-­Perez, R. (2018). Theories in the flesh and flights of the imagination: embracing the soul and spirit of critical performative writing in communication research. Women’s Studies in Communication 41 (4): 404–415. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07491409.2018.1551695. Halualani, R.T. and Nakayama, T. (2010). Critical intercultural communication studies: at a cross roads. In: The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication (eds. R.T. Halualani and T. Nakayama), 1–16. Wiley.

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Halualani, R.T., Mendoza, S.L., and Drzewiecka, J.A. (2009). Critical junctures in intercultural communication studies: a review. The Review of Communication 9 (1): 17. Jones, J.L. (2002). Performance ethnography: the role of embodiment in cultural authenticity. Theatre Topics 12 (1): 1–15. Jones, R.G. and Calafell, B.M. (2012). Contesting neoliberalism through critical pedagogy, intersectional reflexivity, and personal narrative: queer tales of academia. Journal of Homosexuality 59 (7): 957–981. https://doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2012.699835. Jones, A. and Jenkins, K. (2009). Rethinking collaboration: working the indigene-­colonizer hyphen. In: Handbook of Critical and Indigenous Methodologies (eds. N.K. Denzin, Y.S. Lincoln, and L.T. Smith), 471–486. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. LeMaster, B. (2018). Embracing failure: Improvisational performance as critical intercultural praxis. Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies 14 (4): 1–21. http://liminalities.net/14-­ 4/ embracing.pdf. Madison, D.S. (2006a). The dialogic performative in critical ethnography. Text and Performance Quarterly 26 (4): 320–324. Madison, D.S. (2006b). Dwight Conquergood’s “Rethinking ethnography.”. In: The Sage Handbook of Performance Studies (eds. D.S. Madison and H. Hamera), 347–349. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Madison, D.S. (2012). Critical Ethnography: Methods, Ethics, and Performance, 2e. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Martin, J. and Butler, R.L.W. (2001). Towards an ethics of intercultural communication research. In: Transcultural Realities: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Cross-­ Cultural Relations (eds. V.H. Milhouse, M.K. Asante, and P. Nwosu), 283–298. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Martin, J.N. and Nakayama, T.K. (1999). Thinking dialectically about culture and communication. Communication Theory 9 (1): 1–25. McIntosh, D.M.D. and Eguchi, S. (2020). The troubled past, present disjuncture, and possible futures: intercultural performance communication. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research 1–15: https://doi.org/10.1080/17475759.2020.1811996. Miike, Y. (2019). Intercultural communication ethics: an Asiacentric perspective. The Journal of International Communication 25 (2): 159–192. Moon, D.G. (1996). Concepts of “culture”: implications for intercultural communication research. Communication Quarterly 44 (1): 70–84. Moon, D.G. (2010). Critical reflections on culture and critical intercultural communication. In: The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication (eds. R.T. Halualani and T. Nakayama), 34–52. Wiley. Nakayama, T.K. and Martin, J.N. (2007). The “white” problem in intercultural communication research and pedagogy. In: Whiteness, Pedagogy, Performance: Dis/Placing Race (eds. L.D. Cooks and J.S. Simpson), 111–113. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Nakayama, T.K. and Martin, J.N. (2014). Ethical issues in IC competence: a dialectical approach. In: Intercultural Communication Competence: Conceptualizations and its Development in Cultural Contexts and Interactions (eds. Y. Dai and G.-­M. Chen), 97–112. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Ogundipe-­ Leslie, M. (1994). Re-­Creating ourselves: African Women and Critical Transformations. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. Pathak, A. (2013). Musings on postcolonial autoethnography. In: Handbook of Autoethnography (eds. S. Holman Jones, T. Adams, and C. Ellis), 595–608. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. Pindi, N.G. (2018). Hybridity and identity performance in diasporic context: an autoethnographic journey of the self across cultures. Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies 18 (1): 23–31. https://doi.org/ 10.1177/1532708617735636. Pindi, N.G. (2020a). Speaking back to academic colonial gatekeeping: the significance of intercultural performance studies works in promoting marginalized knowledges and identities. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research 49 (5): 442–457. Pindi, N.G. (2020b). I’m not sick, I’m hairy: cultural constructions of Women’s bodies in the OB/Gyn exam. In: Intercultural Health Communication (ed. A. Spieldenner and S. Toyosaki), 101–127. New York: Peter Lang.



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Configuring a Post-­and Decolonial Pedagogy: The Theory-­method Conundrum Devika Chawla Ohio University, Athens, OH

Coming to Postcolonial Pedagogy For me, critical intercultural work is postcolonial work. Both are committed to defending, recognizing, and advocating for different ways of being in the world. Specifically, I view postcolonial work in terms of a struggle for knowledge. In the case of communication studies, this means who gets to define and dictate what constitutes communication knowledge, communication theory, and communication methods (Chawla and Rodriguez  2011; Rodriguez and Chawla 2014; Rodriguez 2017). Broadly, I engage postcolonial work as an intellectual movement that challenges dominant paradigms that enforce a division of labor between theory, method, and pedagogy in communication and adjacent fields. In this chapter, I illustrate one way of working around these separations by discussing a doctoral-­level course in postcolonial studies that I teach at a predominantly white institution (PWI), a mid-­sized state university in the Midwestern United States. For many years, after joining my current job, there seemed to be some confusion about what kind of an “expert” course I could teach at the doctoral level. This confusion is perhaps familiar to many faculty of color (FoC) who are relegated to be caretakers of the diversity curricula in their programs, and therefore it becomes hard for colleagues to discern our intellectual and scholarly expertise outside of teaching about culture and communication. So, I requested to teach a special topic graduate course entitled, “Introduction to Postcolonial Studies.” I have scholarly expertise in the area of post/de-­colonial work and the subject matter is unique enough that it does not encroach upon anyone else’s intellectual or pedagogical territory, which we know can be a cause for consternation in departments. I also thought there was potential for such a class to become the niche area that I would teach for the program. Over the years the course has been incorporated into the rotation for the course requirements for doctoral students in the Rhetoric and Culture track of my program. As of 2021, I have taught several iterations of the course and the course itself has evolved parallel to the political environment/s in which we find ourselves. In this chapter, I lay out the framework of this postcolonial studies course with a goal to demonstrate the importance of the convergence of theory and methods in critical communication work. I am making a broader argument that theories and methods in the critical domain are deeply entwined and separating them undermines the transformative power of critical

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intercultural communication work. I extrapolate the process of crafting a course where the split between theory and method is mostly invisible. I explore the trajectory I use to navigate a diverse set of readings to show how theory and research practices (what we often reduce to just naming as “method”) mingle within the various movements of the course trajectory. My argument is that areas of study such as postcolonialism are a part of a larger set of approaches within critical theory scholarship wherein theory, criticism, voice, and method commingle. I conclude with engaging the lessons, possibilities, and impossibilities of intercultural, decolonial, and postcolonial methods, theories, and pedagogies.

Crafting a Pedagogy Before I embark on the crafting process of the class, a caveat seems necessary. Ever since I first taught this course, I have shied away from describing it as either a theory or method course. I simply title it, “Introduction to Postcolonial Studies.” In hindsight, there are a few reasons for this, some of them linked with the self-­definitions of the field. For, there is not any singular theory known as postcolonial theory, but there is a field of postcolonial studies that engages a  set of intersecting frameworks that can be brought to bear on texts, contexts, fields, and phenomena (Loomba 2015). The field of postcolonial studies includes a few key influential texts that have shaped its emergence. Into the twenty-­first century, it includes a plethora of contemporary transdisciplinary work. Additionally, there is no clear consensus about the meaning of the word “postcolonial.” There is resistance to considering “postcolonial” as a temporal marker that signals “after” colonialism because we know that myriad versions of neo/colonialisms persist in our global condition. Or in other words, we can no longer claim a world outside of colonialisms, past or present. Postcolonial scholar, Ania Loomba (2015) notes that it is therefore more constructive to think of, . . . postcolonialism not just as coming literally after colonialism and signifying its demise, but more flexibly as a contestation of colonial domination and the legacies of colonialism. Such a position would allow us to include people geographically displaced by colonialism such as African-­Americans or people of Asian or Caribbean origin in Britain as “postcolonial” subjects although they live within metropolitan cultures. It also allows us to incorporate the history of anti-­colonial resistance with contemporary resistances to imperialism and to dominant Western culture. (pp. 32–33)

The field has no center other than an agreement that we live in a world that was colonized and any work that is considered postcolonial might focus on who is being studied, where something or something is being studied, what are the histories shaping a study, what are the methods shaping a phenomenon or a set of issues, ideas, texts, and so on. For this reason, I structure the goals of the course as a set of questions that merge theory, context, and methods: • What relationship does postcolonial studies bear with the presents that we inhabit? • How can the present, in any world – east or west or north or south – be understood as emanating from a history of colonialism? • What do terms such as “colonialism” and “postcolonialism” have to do with contemporary social research? • Do we live in an era of colonial pasts or colonial presents or both? • In what ways does postcolonial studies continue to help us to consider fresh ways of understanding and studying borders, boundaries, dis/locations and identities? What is the relationship between postcolonialism, feminism, and communications studies? • Why has communication studies neglected issues in postcolonial and decolonial theory? • How and why is postcolonial studies relevant to communication theory? • What is the promise (or not) of postcolonial work in its contemporaneous understanding?



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These goals also amplify my own intellectual commitments, which are rooted in a rejection of the theory and method divide, a division that is rooted in enlightenment (colonial, European) logics wherein we are “disciplined” to believe that phenomena can be unanchored from their contexts and histories to be studied systematically in pristine isolation to uncover some truth (see for instance Eze 2001; Smith 1999). For me, every class on theory is a method class and every class on method is a theory class. Such a commitment leads me into some troubled waters because I am often accused (albeit mildly) by doctoral students of having too much theory in my method classes and vice versa. This perception arises because students are disciplined and socialized into theory and method as separate units in their graduate programs. In most method classes, students are forced to attune to the perceived theory-­ method separation. In method classes, they are told to immerse themselves in the “data” and focus on the minutiae. And even though the minutiae are important, in much narrative, interpretive, even post-­positivist work we are taught how to break down larger units of human experience into little pieces and then more little pieces in order to analyze the “meaning.” This process is akin to surgically cutting into something/someone to such an extent that it becomes unrecognizable. In the end, what we might get from all that systematic cutting is the death of the subject and meaninglessness, or more poetically stated, an epistemological death. The dissection is a carry-­over from the methods used by colonialists to study “native” populations. In her landmark book, Decolonizing Methodologies, Linda Tuhiwai Smith (1999) alludes to such dissection as disorder, stating: . . . imperialism and colonialism brought complete disorder to colonized peoples, their languages, their social relations and their own ways of thinking, feeling, and interacting with the world. It was a method of systematic fragmentation which can be seen in the disciplinary carve-­up of the indigenous world: bones, mummies and skulls to the museum, art work to private collectors, languages to linguistics, “customs” to anthropologists, beliefs and behaviors to psychologists. (p. 28)

To separate theory and method is an inherently colonial endeavor. A dire consequence of this separation in most fields of human social research, including communication studies, is that much scholarship becomes de-­historicized and de-­politicized. My commitment to keeping theory and methods entangled is a form of decolonial pedagogy, which also pushes me to begin the class with history.

First Movement: Framing Colonialism, Postcolonialism, Anti-­colonialism A course on the subject of postcolonialism begs the question – Why is such a seminar important now, at this moment in history? A week before we begin, I ask enrolled doctoral students to send me a page of reflections on the following questions: • What brings you to this course? • Why do you think this is an important area of study? • Reflect on any text, location, or personal experience that relates to your interest in colonial and postcolonial histories (broadly defined). • What is your view of history in terms of geography, nationhood, sovereignty, and space? • What do people in Africa, East Asia, Latin America, and south Asia have to do with you? • What do the terms colonial and postcolonial mean to you? This movement is critical because I enter the course with the assumption that we have unequal knowledge of world history and all students are new to this material. The first class session begins with studying a large world map. We use our collective knowledge to locate places and people that have “not” been territorially colonized. It is my attempt for us to

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collectively track the movement, both forced and unforced, of people across the globe. We finish this activity with the realization that there are no “pure” spaces on a world map and every region has a history of colonization (internal, external, settler, neocolonial). Hereon, we begin what is always a robust discussion about their prepared reflections to the questions posed by me. In their responses over the years, students address contemporary geopolitical issues such as the Syrian civil war and refugee crisis, the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, undocumented migrants in the United States, the rise of China, Brazil, and India as a neocolonial economic actors in Africa, #BlackLivesMatter, indigenous protest movements for land and water (NoDAPL), among many other resistance movements. In more recent years, many students who identify as LGBTQ+ position their politics within a European framework of colonization that has pushed binary notions of gender and sexuality across the globe, thereby erasing indigenous ways of understanding our bodies in/with the world. Many students who grew up in former European colonies bring their personal experiences into the discussion. The purpose of these questions is to generate, evoke, invoke, and center contemporary personal and political issues and locate them within a postcolonial framework. Broadly, the first three weeks of the course focus on maps, definitions, and understandings of Othering/Otherness and racial formation. The most critical segment for the first three weeks is the introduction of the idea of racial formation and Otherness. How did the idea of a racial divide come to be? Who made race? Why? To what end? We engage these questions by relying upon critiques of enlightenment philosophy by postcolonial thinkers such as Kwame C. Eze (2001) and Ania Loomba (2015), who deconstruct how the Other came to become Other in Western philosophical thought by showing how the work of European philosophers such as Immanuel Kant, David Hume, and René Descartes contributed to the consolidation of racial otherness. Broadly, these readings illustrate that even though ideas about racial hierarchies were solidified by enlightenment philosophies, the sorting of human beings predated modern European colonization and can indeed be found in ancient Greek and Roman writings. Ultimately, through these texts we understand how racial hierarchies became the rationale for and impetus to colonize and capture those deemed as “inferior Others” leading to the spread to European imperialism and subsequently the legalization of slavery/slave ownership in North America. The purpose of this set of readings is to also demystify race and migration. Understanding racial formation is another way to understand why “travel” and “travelers” are identified unevenly and unequally. Understanding Otherness allows us to understand why the expatriate-­ traveler is always assumed to be a white, European, and why the migrant-­refugee is always assumed to be a person of color, Third World figure. In other words, we come to understand how non-­white immigrant bodies anywhere in the West are and become racialized bodies. We end this segment with secondary readings that engage the problematics of defining terms such as postcolonial, colonial, neocolonial, and settler colonialism. This defining is critical because all these conditions persist in newer incarnations in our contemporary world. Most importantly, we conclude this section on a consensus that in this seminar we reside and speak from various subjective positions, one of which is that of settler-­colonists in the United States. After this movement, we enter what I refer to as classical work in postcolonial studies.

Second Movement: Orient/Occident, Hybridity, Colonial and Postcolonial Identities, Sublaternity This movement of the course is devoted to thinkers such as Edward Said, Frantz Fanon, Homi Bhabha, and Gayatri Spivak, scholars who are considered stalwarts in postcolonial studies. Said’s (1978) work, published long after Fanon and Bhabha, is read first because his influential



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book Orientalism is a historical argument for how the West (Occident) produced to East (Orient) in intellectual works in the disciplines of history, linguistics, and literature in order to maintain and recognize itself as the West. Said’s work is meta-­analysis of how knowledge becomes reproduced and legitimized. That is, to identify as the West, the West had to “fix,” “freeze,” and “stabilize” in – writing, art, texts, histories, maps – an understanding of what the East was allowed to be. Reading Said first is a critical segue between the first and second segment in the course because Said’s work is now even more relevant to the positioning of the figure of the Arab, Muslim, and Other in a post 9/11 America. His work further emphasizes how the Other is reproduced in different epochs, especially when knowledge about the Other is largely determined and controlled by Western structures of thought. More importantly, Said’s work is fundamental to the argument that “methods” in critical work cannot be divorced from theory. By centering the concept of “discourse,” Said relies on a textual engagement with written works of creative writers, thinkers, historians, statesman, political philosophers, philologists, even travelers who, through their writing produced and therefore controlled “ways of knowing, studying, believing, and writing” (Loomba  2015, p.  61). Said’s major theoretical argument would be impossible without his reliance on Foucaultian “discourse” and his use of critical discourse analysis. He uses texts/writings by individual writers and connects them to structures of thought and the workings of power to show how “knowledge about and power over colonized lands are related enterprises” (Loomba 2015, p. 61). Orientalism can, in fact, be read as both an ontological and epistemological argument, thereby serving as an exemplar of how theory and method should not be untethered from each other. Said is followed by Frantz Fanon’s (1952), Black Skin, White Masks, a book that renders visible the psychological impact of colonialism on the identity of so-­called native populations. This influential work humanizes the brown, the black, and the native Other. It allows students to perhaps empathize, if not locate the suffering of the black dehumanized body. Fanon’s work generates, among many other conversations, the targeting of the bodies of American Muslims post 9/11, the hatred and surveillance unleashed on undocumented Mexican immigrant bodies, contemporary liberatory resistance movements such as #BlackLivesMatter, and the school to prison pipeline in discussing the racialized prison industrial complex in North America. The figure of the “postcolonial subject” and how this subject is defined, emplaced, and homogenized, is crucial to Fanon’s argument, which he elaborates using a psychoanalytical approach relying on his medical notes with his black Antillian patients. Fanon’s work, written using the first person with a reliance on medical notes, poetry, psychoanalysis, anecdotes, and stories, provides a model for anti-­colonial theory and methodology. This segment concludes with Location of Culture by Homi Bhabha (1994) and a few influential essays by Gayatri Spivak. Theoretically, these writings complicate the idea of pure identity/ies of both the colonizers and the colonized. They allow us to understand the notion of interstitionality, hybridity, and the impurity across and within cultures. They allow is to continue to return to mulling over observations such as – How is the Other sedimented in everyday discourse? How is the fixedness maintained, even nurtured? Who benefits from this process of stabilizing and stabilized identities? Importantly, these readings generate robust discussions about what is the “object” of analysis and what is the method in each of these writings. Bhabha’s work centers on the novel (and therefore literary texts) as the object of study, Fanon’s anti-­colonial ideas are built based on the words of his patients intermingled with his critique of psychoanalytical thought, and Spivak’s (1998) analysis in “Can the Subaltern Speak?” relies on a deconstructionist Derridian approach (reading works of philosophy against themselves) to Western philosophy and historiographical/archival work on widow burning in colonial India. Each reading highlights how the subject and objects of analysis, the practices used to analyze, and the theories guiding those analyses are entwined and cannot be separated out into distinct units.

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Ultimately, this segment aims to evoke what Rodriguez (2017) positions as the central struggle of postcolonial theory, “In postcolonial theory, the struggle nearly always comes down to knowledge. Who defines it? Who legitimizes it? Who creates it? Who gets the resources to pursue it?” (2017, p. 1). Moreover, central to my argument, this movement further reinforces how the set of critical thinkers who form the corpus we call postcolonial studies rely on a constellation of methods and empirically diverse evidence, including autobiographical experience that cannot be separated from the broader theoretical arguments they make in their work.

Third Movement: Transnational Feminism; Globalization; Settler Colonialisms; Decolonial At this moment in the course, we leave classical work and enter newer understandings of colonization located in the intellectual ideas of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s (2012) subversive book-­pamphlet Declaration, to Leela Fernandes’s (2013) book, Transnational Feminism in the United States, decolonial writing and fieldwork in Latin America, The Extractive Zone by Macarena Gómez-­Barris (2017), among others. Declaration is critical to understanding the newer forms of colonialism as deterritorialized processes, where the figure of the indebted individual or nationstate is more critical than physical dominance. At the same time, Declaration also reinforces the continuity of European and US dominance in geopolitical affairs, a legacy of early and later European colonization. It can be read as an analysis of neo-­ colonialism using the Occupy Wall Street movement as a case study. Leela Fernandes’s work, both deconstructive and reconstructive, uses case studies such as the discourse of human rights, the US war on terror, a film text such as Slumdog Millionaire to analyze how transnational feminism, a movement meant to be inclusive and overarching to the project of feminism, has become tied to US centered national discourses, thereby reproducing another form of hegemony within critical work. Alongside Fernandes, we also read classic work by Audre Lorde (1984), Gloria Anzaldúa (1987), and Trinh T. Minh-­Ha (1989) who, in their deeply philosophical, political, and personal writing provide anti-­colonial and decolonial registers for how – theory, method, writing – merge, emerge, and submerge from/with each other. These self-­identified Third World and transnational feminist scholars offer what feminist Lauren Fournier (2021) describes as “. . . another way of being with theory that is less assimilative – one becomes a certain thing – and more akin to an ally or a friend, something positioned beside, in the sense espoused by Eve Kosofsky’s Sedgwick in her own experimentally autotheoretical treatise, Touching Feeling” (p. 110). Theory, in this sense, moves away from something that is “applied” to a certain phenomenon and context via a certain method, but becomes a part of the entire process of making knowledge. From here we segue into important contemporary readings on the purchase of postcoloniality and communication studies. We peruse work that centers decolonial frameworks in communication studies (for instance the special issue on postcolonial studies in Communication Theory by Shome and Hegde  2002, among others). There is no single takeaway from this segment, but we read various exemplars of how postcolonial theorizing has only minimally influenced current thinking in our field. We leave the segment knowing that our field often de-­historicizes, de-­politicizes, and de-­contextualizes both its origins and its engagement with the roots of knowledge. Much (not all) of this writing is deconstructive and tends to elaborate and make an argument for postcoloniality in the field. A point that I note to my students repeatedly is that postcoloniality and decoloniality are proposed as just another theoretical idea that can be “applied” rather than as a worldview with which we can shift the way that we do work. In a way, a theory that is meant to be radical, becomes reduced to an “application.” To show a coalescence of theory and method, in recent years I have taken to assigning Macarena Gómez-­Barris’s (2017) book The Extractive Zone: Social Ecologies and Decolonial



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Perspectives. This is a multi-­sited ethnography of five ecological extractive zones (ecological spaces belonging to indigenous groups that are extracted for profit by large corporations) in different parts of Latin America through which Gómez-­Barris provides a radical exemplar of how theory and method should not be distilled in critical and decolonial research. Gómez-­Barris’s outlines the goals of her work as follows: .  .  . to document geographies where coordinated forms of capitalist power advance, while also examining the complexity social ecologies and material alternatives proposed and proliferated by artists, activists, movements, submerged theorists, and cultural producers. Second, I explicilty challenge the frames of disciplinary knowledge that would bury the subtlety and complexity of the life force of the worlds that lie within the extractive zone. I address the importance of epistemological autonomy and embodied knowledge as necessary to pushing away from a paradigm of mere resistance into the more layered terrain of the potential, moving within and beyond the extractive zone. (p. xv)

This work that is equal parts theory, practice, activism, and pedagogy brilliantly showcases that to comprehensively understand human social-­political-­economic-­environmental life we have to do what Gómez-­Barris refers to as, “perceive otherwise.” She proposes an entangled theory-­method practice located in a “relational field of multiplicity” that situates the “theory and practice of de-­linking from the colonial as refusing to see from a singular frame of analysis, standpoint, interpretations, or experience” (2017, p.  9). This work is an astute example of decolonial theory in practice, wherein “submerged perspectives,” perspectives “that allow us to see local knowledge that reside within what power has constituted as extractive zones” (p. 11). This culminating book allows me to illustrate how theory and method cannot and must not be separated in critical work. Gómez-­Barris hones into this argument when she states: By raising submerged perspectives, I am often blurring the boundaries of nation-­state and Area studies, reconsidering the operations of the disciplinary, conversing and dialoging in scholarly and regional idioms that are my own and not my own, and stepping into the multiply defined and often overdetermined territory of the other’s other. (p. 12)

After this we arrive into the final few weeks of the semester, where we relinquish all academic postcolonial theorizing and read contemporary essayists writing about pressing issues, both in the United States and globally. We read Ta-­Nehisi Coates’s (2014) influential Atlantic Monthly essay, “The Case for Reparations,” wherein he argues for how much and ultimately why there is a moral imperative to provide reparations for slavery. The essay, which engages history, the tools of investigative journalism, critical race theory, political economy, and narrative allows students to not only address the moral, but the gigantic economic empire that was slavery, an empire created on the backs of forced migration, kidnapping, torture, and violence. It generates further discussions about the school to prison pipeline, gerrymandering, the voting rights act, housing and housing loan policies, and other systemic issues that keep the business of slavery intact. In other words, we engage with the very the material legacies of colonization, as we live them in this country. The final essay, “Fractured Lands: How the Arab World Came Apart,” is a full-­length New York Times magazine feature in which the writer, Anderson (2016) follows the stories of six people from Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, and Yemen to show the human cost of conflict in parts of the world that have never fully recovered from late European colonization, which was mapped and remapped upon them/us for centuries. The choice to end the course on this note is deliberate because it is critical to understanding the ongoing legacy of colonization and to know that there is simply no temporal “post” in postcolonial theorizing and to show the material reality of colonialism in the present.

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Justifying It is also critical for me to model and demonstrate the purchase of the subject matter. I do this in a variety of ways by relying upon my experiences as both an immigrant in the United States as well as the offspring of a Partition refugee family from North India. I rely upon my own work and experiences to explore key ideas in postcolonial thought – colorism, hybridity, language, mimicry. For instance, we have robust discussions about the global domination of English in educational settings. We try and envision educational systems in other languages. I bring in my own experiences of growing up as a proud English speaker, who learned how not to embrace and be proud of her own national and regional languages. I tell stories of an educational system where, as an undergraduate studying English literature in Delhi University in the 1990s, the only South Asian novel I read was by V.S. Naipaul, an Indian author who did not even grow up in India. My own experiences generate talk of other repressed literatures in settler colonies such as North America, Australia, and New Zealand where indigenous literatures and languages face constant erasure, thus eliminating entire ontologies. Black American students bring in discussions about the repression of Ebonics and of the devaluing of black speech. All of this inevitably leads to discussions about media representations of non-­Christian communities of color in the United States. My pedagogical goal in encouraging these conversations is not about celebrating and tolerating differences between cultures. Instead, our goal is to focus on the modes and means (methods and theories) used by marginalized groups within colonized societies to survive in a neocolonial world. I am committed to making my students understand that movements such as #BlackLivesMatter and NoDAPL are not simply resistance movements against racism and indigenous erasure in the United States, but are also decolonial theories and methodologies to counter structural inequity. Our goal is to arrive at an interconnected understanding of issues such as slavery, settler colonialism, the pervasiveness of colonialism, and the continuity of racial subjugation. Ultimately, my objectives for the class are overarching and extend beyond the physical limits of the course. I want students to leave the course with a broader, more nuanced view of history. I want them to question how our ways of being and knowing are situated within colonial frameworks. I want to students to understand, as Rodriguez notes, “postcolonial theory is about disrupting dominant ways of perceiving, understanding and experiencing the world by showcasing how such ways diminish and threaten the flourishing of life in all its expressions and manifestations” (2017, p.1).

Lessons, Impossibilities How does one succeed in teaching a course such as postcolonial studies within north American academia which is immersed in colonial logics? I am not sure what the measure of success for such a class might be. This is a class that is as much about knowledge and the nature of knowledge as it is about history and politics. It is a class about theory, about method, and about pedagogy. It comes with many sets of challenges. First, the seminar is a specialized course and yet it is almost a fundamental course about the nature of knowledge, who defines it, whose interest it serves and so on. Idealistically, this seminar ought to be compulsory for all graduate students in our field who are grappling with theoretical questions about ontology and epistemology in their own areas. And yet, the students who choose this course tend to be students of color, international students, and a few white students who might have become interested in transnational studies owing to some international exposure. When I enter the classroom space, I know that I am speaking



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to a friendly audience, but it is those who choose not to enroll in this course that worry me. Do they think that these theories do not impact them? Do they think postcolonial worlds are elsewhere, in other continents where people of color reside? Do they think colonization does not continue to touch their lives on a daily basis? Do they think Western philosophy is neutral? Or that knowledge is apolitical? Or how we know is not deeply ideological? The class trajectory attempts to make the course relevant to everyone in this contemporary moment, yet the self-­selection continues. This process is problematic because the students who have micro and homogenous views of social life (of which communication is an intrinsic part) are the very students who need to take such a class (not to mention many educators). The dilemma is – how do we speak to the people who are unwilling and unprepared to be spoken to? Second, it is very easy for a seminar such as this to become appropriated by students who are not fully aware of the political and historical reach of colonization. This inevitably leads to their desire to localize the scope of the discussions and start applying the ideas to more specific issues, such as student debt in the United States and avatars and characters in the gaming industry. Our field of communication studies presents us with many theories with attendant methods in the fields of interpersonal, organizational, and health communication. My commitment is to move us outward, to historicize, to politicize, and therefore to contextualize our meta-­thinking about our work, what is, ultimately the purchase of postcolonial studies. Another challenge is one that generates multiple reflexive class discussions during the semester. How can we decolonize the space of the classroom? How do you enact a postcolonial stance as we teach the theories associated with postcolonial work? Such questions pose a set impossibilities. Right from the crafting of a syllabus within the confines of a Western academic system, to structuring the reading and assignments, to teaching generally within a pedagogical system imbued with and emerging from an imperialist ideology, decolonizing the classroom space seems like a radical impossibility. For instance, every time I ask students to write a response to weekly readings based on certain evaluative stipulations, I apply a sort of ideological apparatus that is part and parcel of a Western-­based graduate education. Further, each time I structure a final paper into my syllabus, complete with page lengths, style, format, I know I am imposing modes and means of learning that come to us from a colonial and Eurocentric mentality. In the end, I view the course as aspirational; it performs how I would like my scholarship and my pedagogy to live and be in the world. I aspire to arrive at a performative form that challenges the divide between theory, method, and pedagogy. I engage in constant self-­ reflection alongside my students about how my own work on narrative, performance, affect, and autotheory within the context of urban North India is not tidily explained by one set of theories being applied to a phenomenon via a particular set of methods. I assign my own book, Home, Uprooted: Oral Histories of India’s Partition (2014), a monograph about the conceptual notion of home in refugee oral histories of India’s postcolonial Partition of 1947 into India and Pakistan by the British. Ordinarily such a book would be used in a class on method, but I assign it to show what it means when Lauren Fournier (2021) notes about writing “beside” theory and method. In fact, my recent work on objects, memory, and postcolonial displacements through the lens of art, criticism, theory, and autobiography – enacts an emergent form of writing called autotheory, an amalgamation of the person/scholar’s world with the philosophical ideas and object under study. I try to persistently illustrate that theory is not merely theory and method is never merely method. They are imbricated within each other, along with history, geography, and economy. The post-­and decolonial intervention I want to make is to show it is problematic to segment human experience into manageable, systematic, and contained parts. I aspire for the course itself to stand on its own as a postcolonial intervention.

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References Anderson, S. (2016). Fractured lands: How the Arab world came apart. The New York Times Magazine (10 August). www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/08/11/magazine/isis-­middle-­east-­arab-­spring­fractured-­lands.html (accessed 15 June 2023). Anzaldúa, G.E. (1987). Borderlands = la Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books. Bhabha, H.K. (1994). The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. Chawla, D. and Rodriguez, A. (2011). Postcoloniality and the speaking body: revisioning the English oral competency curriculum. Cultural Studies Critical Methodologies 11 (1): 76–91. Coates, T. (2014). The case for reparations. The Atlantic Monthly (June). www.theatlantic.com/­ magazine/archive/2014/06/the-­case-­for-­reparations/361631 (accessed 15 June 2023). Eze, E.C. (2001). Achieving Our Humanity: The Idea of a Postracial Future. New York: Routledge. Fanon, F. (1952). Black Skin White Masks. New York: Grove Press. Fernandes, L. (2013). Transnational Feminism in the United States: Knowledge, Ethics, Power. New York: New York University Press. Fournier, L. (2021). Autotheory as Feminist Practice in Art, Writing, and Criticism. Boston: MIT Press. Gómez-­Barris, M. (2017). The Extractive Zone: Social Ecologies and Decolonial Perspectives. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Hardt, M. and Negri, A. (2012). Declaration. New York: Argo Navis. Loomba, A. (2015). Postcolonialism/Colonialism, 3e. London: Routledge. Lorde, A. (1984). The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. In: Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (ed. A. Lorde), 110–114. Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press. Rodriguez, A. (2017). A new rhetoric for a decolonial world. Postcolonial Studies 20: 1–11. https://doi. org/10.1080/13688790.2017.1361309. Rodriguez, A. and Chawla, D. (2014). Family communication in postcolonial discourse. In: Communicating Colonialism: Readings on Postcolonial Theory(s) and Communication (ed. R.L. Schwartz-­Dupre), 210–227. New York: Peter Lang. Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. New York: Random House. Shome, R. and Hegde, R.S. (2002). Postcolonial approaches to communication: charting the terrain, engaging the intersections. Communication Theory 3: 249–270. Smith, L.T. (1999). Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. London and New York: Zed Books. Spivak, G.C. (1998). Can the subaltern speak? In: Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (eds. C. Nelson and L. Grossberg), 271–313. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Trinh, T.M.-­H. (1989). Women, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

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Critical Embodiment: Reflections on the Imperative of Praxis in the Four Seasons of Ethnography Sarah Amira de la Garza Arizona State University

Personal Context for the Original Thought In 1991, I was in the midst of an ethnographic project exploring the sharing of Lakota spiritual practices with persons with no Native American indigenous ancestry and that I would eventually refer to with the title, “Painting the White Face Red” (González 1998).1 I had begun the work as an outgrowth of my personal efforts to consciously reconnect with my own Indigenous ancestral roots which had been either lost, forgotten, or otherwise obfuscated through generations of the racial politics of colonization, religious practices, migration, and settler colonialism. As more fully described in the 1998 piece, these efforts ultimately located my experience within a phenomenon of persons who did not share such a historical past, largely of European or non-­Hispanic Euro-­US American ancestry, who were drawn to learning Native American Indigenous practices and spiritual ways. If I had been paying more attention to the world around me during my doctoral studies in the early 1980s, I might have seen this possibility while distracting myself from writing my dissertation by reading the book, Out on a Limb (MacLaine 1983), which in many ways launched the profit-­potential of spiritual entrepreneurship (Easton 1987) and made the crafting of one’s spiritual identity vital to what contemporary entrepreneurial parlance might refer to as branding. Had I been a bit more critically focused and less driven by the practical compulsions to emphasize my dissertation research and complete my doctoral studies, get a job, and such, I might have been able to discern what these new age trends were setting up. Might, I say, because in many ways, the unconscious manner that characterized my academic focus was itself indicative of the need for the wake-­up call that “Painting the White Face Red” provided me. My life arose within the context of generations of deep political activism largely spurred by my grandfather, Manuel Ramírez González, known simply as “M.R.” within the sociopolitical worlds of Fort Stockton, Texas. I grew up aware of how he had worked with others and engaged the community as an organizer, collaborating with LULAC, “the largest and oldest Hispanic organization in the United States” (League of United Latin American Citizens n.d.), in efforts to change racist policies and laws that impacted our families and community. He and my father, Alejandro Ramón (Alex) González, told me of how my grandfather had nearly been lynched several times, had it not been for his ability to escape or hide from those who were The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication, Second Edition. Edited by Thomas K. Nakayama and Rona Tamiko Halualani. © 2024 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2024 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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looking for him. One of my earliest memories is of my father giving a victory speech when I was three years old, after his election as the first Latin American to serve as justice of the peace in Pecos County, Texas. I was fully aware at some levels that racism existed and that influencing laws and policy was vital to assuring our rights. Having fought this was key to our access to schools and higher education, jobs, housing, and equal rights in the marketplace. What I was not as conscious of was the pernicious manner by which these very same privileges and rights, once secured, came armed with discourses of self-­entrapment and unconscious hegemonic contracts. My grandfather had tried to warn me, I came to realize while reflecting upon his many lessons taught me through oral tradition (González 1993), but to speak out required rigorous and conscious violation of disciplinary and sociocultural norms. My willfully decolonizing Indigenous self needed a new way to be present in the world. I could not ever rest easy in the presence of efforts to do what Gloria Anzaldúa called “taming a wild tongue” (Anzaldúa 1987, p. 75). This unconscious consciousness, like the phenomenological dimensions of experiential awareness written about by Jacqueline Martinez (2000), calls for what Martinez identifies as transformation through praxis. It is a form of such corporal knowing that I found lacking as I sat with my field notes in 1991, faced with dilemmas of cultural ancestry and questions of racial and colonial ethics that my ethnographic project awakened in my spirit. I found myself asking myself what the ethnographic method would be like if it had been created by my ancestors who were not colonizers, if my Indigenous ancestors had somehow developed the practices and guidelines for studying, understanding, and sharing cultural knowledge about groups they encountered. My essay, published under my birth name of González in 2000, and reprinted under my new name (De la Garza 2007), provides a foundation for what I saw as a requisite conscious ontological foundation for inquiry: If rooted firmly in the taken-­for-­granted assumptions of an ontological position, the methodology for the application of particular methods will reflect the ontology in the ways the methods are developed, utilized and interpreted. The results of one’s research cannot be assumed to reflect a particular ontological position, simply because of the prototypic appearance of the methods. (González 2000, pp. 627–628)

In this quote, is the kernel of necessary awareness that is the starting point for the critical reflection I will be sharing in this chapter. I repeat it here for emphasis: “The results of one’s research cannot be assumed to reflect a particular ontological position, simply because of the prototypic appearance of the methods” (p. 628). This can be translated to mean, for example, that simply referring to the stages of one’s research as seasons and citing the essay does not necessarily imply that the work utilized a methodology whose epistemology-­in-­praxis was rooted in an ontology distinct from that of much post-­positivist social science research.

The Imperative of Praxis In the original 2000 publication of the Four Seasons of Ethnography (González  2000), I emphasized an organic, “creation-­centered” ontological approach, meaning that the “center” of the ontological perspective is rooted in the patterns of natural ecological phenomena and the cycles of all of life, rather than human-­centered structures and epistemologies that often emphasize colonized and culturally driven agendas. As we increasingly experience the effects of human impact on global ecology, the significance of such a position cannot be overstated. Anthropocentric approaches, particularly those that continue to be colonizing in their ethos, intimately embracing industrial modes of production and capitalist imperatives for action, have brought us to the brink of irreversible catastrophe, embedded deeply in all manner of



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dependencies and routines in our lives. The paradox of this for those wishing to understand and respond in a culturally and ecologically conscious fashion is that our very cultures are reproductions and reproducers of unsound and unsustainable premises and practices. Such an awareness motivated me as I imagined The Four Seasons’ ontologically rooted methodology, to seriously ask myself how I might envision a praxis for inquiry growing from an Indigenous sensibility, rather than vestiges of colonizing sensibilities; I asked myself, how might it alter the ways we engage in ethnographic work? I applied it to ethnographic method and imagined the ways such praxis could be based on new guiding principles or ideals, but The Four Seasons is really about how we live as humans in an intercultural world, how all human inquiry might alter if we consciously adopted creation-­centered guiding ideals. It was a call to return to earth-­based Indigeneity – not as a utopian panacea or simple imaginary, nor to suggest a metaphoric reverie, but as a committed system of praxis. The suggestions are living metaphors, each connected to ways our embodied practices in the field of our inquiry would be guided. There is an ethic to revering and abiding by the insights of seasonal patterns, not simply in epistemological control and definition. This is what the various possibilities and cautions delineated for each “season” of ethnographic practice in the essay were attempting to illustrate, something that Soyini Madison understood when writing Critical Ethnography: Methods, Ethics, and Performance Madison (2011,  2019), incorporating the entire table of the “Synthesis of integral concepts for the Four Seasons of Ethnography” (González 2000, pp. 639–640) into her book. These integral concepts identify maps for guidance and reflection as one proceeds through the cyclical patterns of how one comes to know and understand through repeated spirals of experience. The integral concepts listed are a representation of a decolonial, critical practice; they are critical because the human on the path of inquiry is held to the organic standards of intrinsic patterns of appropriateness, relevance, and respect. They represent how the work should be carried out and illustrate how the many aspects of process in ethnographic method are always being touched by the shifts in purpose and focus ethnographers have for the work. When our purpose and focus of a human on the path of inquiry is not understanding, but rather to advance materialist colonial, socially competitive accomplishment or personal imposition of interpretation, The Four Seasons ontological approach guides us towards epistemological praxis that compels the researcher to radical reflection; and abiding by the awareness of what that reflection reveals through shifts in praxis and embodied integration and adaptation of purpose and goals. The key element for me in the detailed table of integral concepts has always been the “cautions” it delineates for each season, highlighting the risks in researcher orientation, action, or perspective that are possible due to the particular emphasis and motives during each season of inquiry. What I did not consider at the time I wrote the essay was the need to identify similar risks for those attempting to use or cite The Four Seasons in their work when not actually being guiding in their praxis. Over the decades since the essay was published, I have become aware that the most common reading of my work is met with appreciation of the metaphor, and not a grasp of what is necessary for an actual employment of the critical, Indigenous, and decolonial praxis called for with the work. The discipline of Communication is really not a unified discipline, in that there is little sense of what discipline makes for a communication scholar, or as we are known in many non-­US-­ centered locations, a communicologist. Communication Studies academic careers and graduate programs are most often-­publication-­centered, rather than praxis oriented, our mentorship acknowledged for its influence on professional success, how far up the academic ladder of accomplishment we can go. Ours is a community of scholars who are not characterized by the learning of an identifiable, disciplined and dedicated form of inquiry recognized as what communication studies does. I have come to recognize that in a social world largely incapable of critiquing the damages of colonial thought and processes (much less un-­doing them), that these patterns are deeply integrated and incorporated in assumptions formed through (neo)

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colonization, industrial organization, and capitalist economic influence on professions, and the chances of actually coming to employ and sustain decolonizing practices in one’s work are slim if not supported by radical change in how one approaches work. These changes in approach should be incorporated, in many ways literally as we take on what we are learning in and through our bodies and how we use (or don’t use) them as we repeatedly demonstrate and demand our sense of belonging in the field. In such an arena of professional demeanor, simply emphasizing skilled use of vocabulary and tropes of critique without lived demonstration of change does very little to alter the deeper level at which assumptions and practices persist. “It is the openness to radical change in direction or purpose of one’s study that characterizes methods that reflect the ontology of natural experience” (González 1998). I had written about this aspect of the methodology I had been employing even before the 2000 essay was published. Throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s, I traveled with cohorts of students for intensive summer immersions to teach the embodied methodology of The Four Seasons. These two-­to three-­week learning experiences invite the deep critical reflection and response that is requisite for one’s scholarship if one’s work to be driven by The Four Seasons ontological approach (rather than compared to it or simply acknowledging it). Examples of this are palpable and reflected in the publications of those who describe their experience with The Four Seasons (Calafell  2006; Pitts  2012; Mendoza  2016). The Four Seasons require a deeper commitment to one’s evolving comprehension of what is being studied than to one’s professional itinerary for a piece or work or project, a willingness to write about what is actually known through the embodied intellectual understanding, and not to violate this through distortion for the purpose of curating the appearance of one’s work or negotiating its chances for publication. (In fact, strategically publishing a distortion or significant contextual omission in one’s work is quite an unethical practice!) In my essay about the ethnographic project, I was conducting when I began to outline the methodology of The Four Seasons (González 1998), I share how I developed a poetic methodology for writing my ethnography in response to realizations about how my study was liable to be utilized and read, after sharing aspects of the work before several academic audiences. In the chapter, I outline the integral questions such a methodology poses, the questions that led to my choices for how to share the work: So, although the “four seasons” may seem on the surface to simply be a scheme for organizing methods in which others already engage, it is actually a worldview for doing research, one that says that the researcher is not in charge; rather, it is the natural unfolding of experience that determines the process and outcomes of the study. This powerful role of naturally occurring experience, both personal and social, was infused into the study by regularly asking the following questions throughout observation, interviews, analysis, and writing: Do I know why am I doing this study, both personally and professionally? (Purpose, motives) Is this the right time for engaging in the method I choose to use, or is there a better time – or none – for doing what I want to do? (appropriateness) Am I open to all available sources of information in my data, even if it is not in agreement with my “hypotheses” and preconceived notions and wishes for this research? (rigor) Will my study accomplish what I intend without distorting the nature of what others have shared with me, or the relationships I developed? (ethics) Should I change my study, or its focus given what I have learned? (adaptability) (González 1998, pp. 487–488, formatting added)

What should be apparent upon reflection on these guiding questions is that the ideals of ­purpose, motives, appropriateness, rigor, ethics, and adaptability, if espoused for one’s work, are one thing if simply appreciated and voiced – quite another if allowed to have determining force in practice.



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On the Difficulty of Change These considerations make visible the political and social entrenchment of our work and the hegemony of ideology in our professional norms and practices, their situatedness in our well-­ socialized professionalized routines. This is when critical work should become viscerally uncomfortable – when the reality must be confronted of the internalization and incorporation into our embodied minds and actions, habituated affect and scripted interpretation of emotion, of that which we critique. The hubris and ego-­enmeshed nature of our performed academic identities is not likely to be decolonized or readily amenable to what a call to Indigenously informed and ecologically harmonious life/work demands. It is, in large part, why the other branches of my scholarly and pedagogical work (and life practice) involve what I have coined as “mindful heresy” (De la Garza 2022), and my pedagogy calling for “awakening ecological relationality with praxis of movement, art, and poiesis” (De la Garza 2020). As highly performing and achievement-­oriented humans, it should not be surprising that we would realize we do not have the skills or embodied capability to endure what it takes to support such a praxis, that for our work as a discipline to effectively move toward such efforts will require collective commitment to confront what professionalized habituation has privileged. In many ways, this is a paradox of privileged routines and norms of production of discourse and pedagogical practices – we develop a certain form of blindness to that which we are structured not to value or respect as worthy of a response in action. Resistance and rebellion are not embodiment of change, but more often expressions of deepened levels of discomfort with the dynamics of a status quo that resists change. We cannot simultaneously call for change and continue to enforce policies, practices, and intellectual norms of (re)production in our writing, research, and teaching. It must be embodied, employed, and perhaps more vitally, learned and reinforced through repeated practice. This is a harsh reality. We have seemed to want to change the culture of our academic work without seriously considering the fact that when culture changes, the expected, natural, human response is to resist that change. We struggle with even slight changes in our everyday habits in what we eat and drink, the route we take to work, or an update to a software program. Our critical work is inherently a call for change, but in deeper, more complex and enmeshed well-­scripted and rehearsed behaviors and evaluative norms. Is it any wonder that so little change occurs? It is not kind to be gentle and nurturing of a colonizing mindset during times of sociocultural and environmental crisis; we must call it out and be willing to be called out. It is not realistic to expect change if we expect our own personal processes and routines to remain comfortable while we continue to demand change, to write about and express our litanies of grievances. Our institutions, our society, and our personal lives are all in times of flux. It may sound cliché, but we are in a time of unprecedented urgency that demands radical changes. In many ways, the tweaking of our language and topics of communication research is perhaps easier than the bulk of the change that is imperative today. “Like the circular progress of a spiral, the researcher and theories develop cumulatively and rhythmically, with no claims of absolute knowledge,” I wrote when espousing what I called “tentative certainty” as a workable way to deal with our adapting ideas in research (González 2000, p. 628). We must repeatedly practice the routine of new embodied methods of inquiry, recognizing that if we wish to know in a way in harmony with the natural world and cycles, our epistemology should require conscious praxis. With repetition, we can begin to approach change. The spiral has also been acknowledged as an appropriate metaphor for an undesirable repetitive pattern, with Deetz and Stevenson (1986) referring to the fact that it is the repeated nature of the pattern that gives the spiral its power. Garland et al. (2010) specifically refer to the attributes of a negative, or “downward” spiral as “self-­perpetuating and damaging,” in contrast with “upward” spirals which they claim are linked to optimal functioning (p. 5). That which we repeat gradually becomes habitual and largely unconscious. In the best of circumstances, this aids us in not having to labor with choices and conscious intentions and focus in every

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situation. In the worst of circumstances, I believe, this lack of conscious effort is precisely what impels hegemonic social processes and allows for social dynamics to repeat themselves as if on autopilot. When we are attempting to change behaviors, attitudes, and patterns, it is precisely those things we have repeated into habit that are exceedingly difficult to change. Human beings are, for good or for bad, creatures of habit, and living lives in ways that are colonized, systematically biased, environmentally wasteful (among other things), has been so often repeated without conscious awareness, that they are in many ways resistant to change. That is precisely why my call for mindful heresy emphasizes the intentional consciousness vital to disruption of orthodoxies of thought and action that we wish to alter and replace with alternatives. Our work as scholars, as researchers, teachers, mentors, and writers has been complicit in our own entrenchment in many undesirable repetitive patterns. If we wish to flip the direction of these negative spirals, it will take not only intention, but conscious action, engagement with our whole bodies, repeated over time until we create new habits. Creating such new habits that are decolonizing (if not decolonized), ecologically sound, and centering of natural organic patterns of emergence is not accomplished simply with new citation habits or repeated critique of the undesirable. If anything, we create a deceptive habitual armor built with rhetorics of critique that keep us from doing the more difficult labor of embodying new practices, creating and embracing, teaching and developing conscious awareness of specific patterns of praxis that we can repeat until they are habitual, not merely reactive. When we claim a need for a shift in direction or practice in our work, we should be prepared to also ask ourselves what practical actions are going to be the evidence in our embodied lives of our sincerity and integrity of intention (González 1994). What is it that we are actually doing? If certain contexts make it more difficult, we ought to look more seriously at how to accomplish these changes in those contexts, not reflexively step back and avoid change. We should ask ourselves how we nonetheless find ways to embody through practice, that which we claim we are doing, what we claim we need and want. In all seriousness, each time we allow the rubber band to snap us back into hegemonic order, we are strengthening the repetitive pattern, building resistance to change as we habituate our passive acceptance of discomfort and pain. We need to stretch those rubber bands until they break, incapable of snapping back. The Four Seasons of Ethnography to many is a nice metaphor, poetic perhaps, and easy to contemplate, palatable; it is not easy, however, and its social desirability and the ease with which it can be cited, should be a red flag. When claiming affinity or application of any decolonial or Indigenous, critical methodologies or epistemological assumptions, we should ask ourselves seriously to consider what it is that is actually practiced in our work that is the demonstration of our embodied embrace of desired and necessary change. It is not just about our inquiry; it is not just about ethnography, or epistemology. It is a call to deep attention at the most constant, visceral, and embodied levels of our beings – in every aspect of our lives. The Four Seasons of Ethnography is a framework, a heuristic metaphoric system, that can help with the practice of checking in to locate where we are (and aren’t) practicing what we preach. It is, and always has been, I have come to realize, a call to mindful heresy – the realization that we must violate the rules of those associations we have come to value, in order that we might be able to maintain and sustain them in new ways capable of supporting our moves away from oppressive norms and histories. Are we up to the call?

Note 1 The author Sarah Amira de la Garza published under her birth name, M.C. González, prior to a legal name change in 2002.



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References Anzaldúa, G. (1987). Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. Aunt Lute Books. Calafell, B.M. (2006). Pro(re-­)claiming loss: a performance pilgrimage in search of Malintzin Tenépal. Text and Performance Quarterly 25 (1): 43–56. https://doi.org/10.1080/10462930500052327. De la Garza, S.A. (2020). MAP, Cartographies of forgotten and ruptured relations: awakening ecological relationality with praxis of movement, art, and poiesis. Departures in Critical Qualitative Research 9 (2): 72–84. https://doi.org/10.1525/dcqr.2020.9.2.72. De la Garza, S.A. (2022). Mindful heresy as conscious social praxis: modeling change through violations of cultural orthodoxy. Western Journal of Communication 86 (2): 232–240. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/10570314.2021.1949033. Deetz, S. and Stevenson, S. (1986). Managing Interpersonal Communication. Harper & Row. Easton, N. (1987). Shirley MacLaine’s mysticism for the masses: She’s the super saleswoman for a fast-­ growing new age movement. Los Angeles Times. www.latimes.com/archives/la-­xpm-­1987-­09-­06-­ tm-­6352-­story.html (accessed 12 July 2023). Garland, E.L., Fredrickson, A.M., Kring, A.M. et al. (2010). Upward spirals of positive emotions counter downward spirals of negativity: insights from the broaden-­and-­build theory and affective neuroscience on the treatment of emotion dysfunctions and deficits in psychopathology. Clinical Psychology Review 30 (7): 849–864. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2010.03.002. González, M.C. (1993). In search of the voice I always had. In: The Leaning Ivory Tower: Latino Professors in American Universities (eds. R.V. Padilla and R.C. Chavez), 77–90. State University of New York Press. González, M.C. (1994). An invitation to leap from a trinitarian ontology in health communication research to a spiritually inclusive quatrain. In: Communication Yearbook XVII (ed. S. Deetz), 378–387. Sage https://doi.org/10.1080/23808985.1994.11678893. González, M.C. (1998). Painting the white face red: intercultural contact presented through poetic ethnography. In: Readings in Cultural Contexts (eds. J.N. Martin, T.K. Nakayama, and L.A. Flores), 485–495. Mayfield Publishing Company. González, M.C. (2000). The four seasons of ethnography: a creation-­centered ontology for ethnography. International Journal of Intercultural Relations 24 (5): 623–650. https://doi.org/10.1016/ S0147-­1767(00)00020-­1. League of United Latin American Citizens (n.d.). About us. All for One and One for All. https://lulac. org/about (accessed 23 December 2022). MacLaine, S. (1983). Out on a Limb. Bantam Books. Madison, D.S. (2011). Critical Ethnography: Method, Ethics, and Performance, 1e. Sage. Madison, D.S. (2019). Critical Ethnography: Method, Ethics, and Performance, 3e. Sage. Martinez, J.M. (2000). Phenomenology of Chicana Experience and Identity: Communication and Transformation in Praxis. Rowman & Littlefield. Mendoza, S.L. (2016). Doing “indigenous” ethnography as a cultural outsider: lessons from the four seasons. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 9 (2): 140–160. https://doi. org/10.1080/17513057.2016.1154181. Pitts, M.J. (2012). Practicing the four seasons of ethnography methodology while searching for identity in Mexico. The Qualitative Report 17 (79): 1–21.

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The Depths of the Coatlicue State: Mitos, Religious Poetics, and the Politics of Soul Murder in Queer of Color Critique Robert Gutierrez-­Perez California State University, San Marcos

“Spirituality is oppressed people’s only weapon and means of protection. Changes in society only come after the spiritual” (Anzaldúa 2000, p. 11). In the opening quotation, Gloria Anzaldúa articulates how spirituality and spiritual practices for queer people of color and other marginalized groups on the periphery of society and culture are often our only means of fighting back against systemic oppressions that wants us erased, on the margins, and silenced by any means necessary (Andrade and Gutierrez-­Perez 2017 and Gutierrez-­Perez 2017a, b, 2021). She writes, “myths and fictions create reality, and these myths and fictions are used against women and against certain races to control, regulate, and manipulate us. I’m rewriting myths, using the myths back against the oppressors” (Anzaldúa 2009, p. 219). This task of rewriting myths or using myths back against the oppressors is an opportunity for queer of color critics to make queer of color worlds that address what Gust Yep describes as the “soul murder” of heteronormativity. Soul murder is an apt definition for the internalization of homophobia, which often leads to harmful and violent self-­infliction of injuries, and in many ways, soul murder is fueled by self-­hatred and self-­destructive thoughts because of heteronormative systems (Yep 2003, 2013). As a queer cisgender man of color, I have felt this loss of soul as I have deviated from the heteronormative standard in my everyday life, and it is “anxiety-­ridden, guilt-­producing, fear-­inducing, shame-­invoking, hate-­deserving, psychologically blemishing, and physically threatening” (Yep 2003, p. 21). Or, at least, this is what the communication surrounding queerness in Western, US-­centric contexts has taught me and others throughout life. Yes, the soul and the spirit feel like we are murdered by the violence of heteronormativity internally and externally (Gutierrez-­Perez 2017a, b; Yep 2003, 2016). I hear her rattle just behind me haunting my ancestors now me What do you want me to know? I am tired The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication, Second Edition. Edited by Thomas K. Nakayama and Rona Tamiko Halualani. © 2024 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2024 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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Robert Gutierrez-­Perez Ready to be destroyed Turned to stone just stop the feeling Don’t mourn for me, the essay explains it all frozen is a new beginning petrified is still life Just face me East I want to see the sunrise hoping for amor eterno a new transformation Please

Affects of self-­hatred, fear, pain, deep depression, loss, and repressed anger and/or sexuality lead queer people of color into what Anzaldúa describes as the Coatlicue State. Coatlicue (“kwat-­LEE-­quey”) is the Mexica/Aztec Earth mother goddess, and her name in Nahuatl means “she of the serpent skirts.” She is a daunting figure having a “face of two serpents facing each other. She has human skulls around her neck; her skirts are serpents, and her hands are eagle claws. She’s so animal, so totally other, not human” (Anzaldúa 2009, p. 94). Like me, Coatlicue lives between worlds; she is both/and neither/either because she “is a symbol of life and death,” and “she represents a dual force” (Elenes 2014, p. 46). As queer people of color, our lives are dangerous and in danger (Gutierrez-­Perez 2017a, b), and as such, our worlds are often immersed in emotional and spiritual conflict that have us “owning, acknowledging, and working through our psychic and physical trauma and its connections to colonialism” (Calafell 2015, pp. 63–64). Intercultural scholarship looking for praxis needs to grapple with performance studies and return to the body in research and in writing about research (Gutierrez-­Perez 2019, 2020a, b). In this essay, I share how the performance and performativities of the Coatlicue State enacts a healing or reparative theory, which gives people on the periphery a language to describe feelings and experiences that may have been inarticulable (Anzaldúa 2009; Calafell 2015; Sedgwick 2003). In looking to a healing and reparative praxis in intercultural communication, this chapter engages spirituality by interrogating the mito or myth of Coatlicue, the Mexica mother goddess of creation and destruction. Further, this chapter shares data collected during an oral history project on nonheteronormative mestiza/o performances of gender and sexuality as a means to demonstrate an intercultural praxis of healing (Gutierrez-­Perez 2020a, b). Jay, a gay, cisgendered Chicano male from Colorado, in his oral history interview detailed a moment of deep depression after the loss of his biological mother as a young man. During the interview, Jay’s sleeves were slightly rolled up, and when I asked him about the tattoos that ran from his wrist to his shoulder on both arms, he (re)told the Mexica “creation story” as a way to explain the meanings behind the artwork. However, Jay’s version of this narrative, like most (re)­ tellings of mitos, was different from the version that I had been researching. In his version of the mito, he describes the reason behind the tattoo of Coatlicue was a means to remember and honor the life and passing of his biological mother. In this way, he (re) told with his own voice the mythos of Coatlicue and her son, Huitzilopochtli, the Aztec sun god and war god. Further, he permanently inked it into and onto his body. In the following section, I share through poetic transcription the found poem from Jay that details this mythological narrative through his experience as a gay Chicano male, and additionally, I proceed to analyze this found poem through the lens of “religious poetics” to argue that queer people of color utilize spirituality and myths to create more livable worlds in the intercultural present.



The Depths of the Coatlicue State “I Would Have Been Her Ride or Die”                                                            

Up here is Coat-­la-­coo-­ey (“I usually pronounce it Kwat-­lee-­quey”) which is the mother It starts with her. She has the very interesting story with Huitzilopochtli (“The sun god and war god”) She got impregnated by feathers You know the whole story The creation story She’s sweeping   her house A ball of feathers comes down and impregnates her She has children the stars No    the moon is one of her children I want to say the stars but the stars is the sister and the sister gets dismembered and thrown into the sky and the whole reason there’s a fight is because the children find out that she gets impregnated by this ball of feathers who happens to be Huitzilopochtli in her womb and he’s understanding that they’re coming to kill her behead her for what has happened upon them getting to her he jumps out of the womb which is so hilarious to me and he   kills   his siblings dismembers the sister

                                   

You can see her arms and legs are all dismembered and thrown into the sky to make the stars Getting my arms sleeved was a very big commitment, because I want to be a professional but I also want  to be    my authentic self Part of the conversation for doing all of this, specifically was just in general every tattoo I have on my body means something specific My mother’s death was a very big loss and the primary focus and influence on why I’m at where I am at today

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Robert Gutierrez-­Perez                                        

If you come from a similar background as I do then you know that you don’t disobey your mother I couldn’t stop thinking that she would roll over in her grave if I sleeved myself out unless I chose to dedicate them completely to her So both arms are completely dedicated to my mother They all are representations of something in regards to her The creation story even though I’m not mad at my siblings and stuff and I don’t wish they were dismembered and thrown up into the sky it was more about Huitzilopochtli protecting her and his thoughts toward his mother I just viewed    us    as you know I would have been her ride or die type of guy

The Decoloniality of Mythos and Religious Poetics In this found poem obtained from an oral history interview with Jay, a 35-­year old gay Chicano from Denver, Colorado, I utilized poetic transcription and performative writing to share his narrative in a way that captured the rhythms and cadences of his oral speech patterns (Madison 1993: Calafell  2007). As a performance studies method, poetic transcription attempts to share the embodied experience of the original performance of the interview by utilizing poetic aspects in the presentation of data. Given the focus on religious poetics in this chapter, I wanted to share the experiences of Jay in a way that showcases the everydayness in which queer interlocutors make their worlds more livable. Luis León explains that religious poetics are “a variation on the ways religious discourse is performed and symbols are deployed” (2014, p. 29). Meaning that interlocutors will often utilize religious discourses, texts, and symbols toward their own needs and wants, and in the case of Jay, he deployed the creation myth of Coatlicue and Huizilopochtli to transform and move through the grieving process to heal from a deep loss in his life. Further, these mitos are narrative forms that serve “power as an ideological mechanism of social control, exploitation, and domination” and are “also effectively deployed in attempts to destabilize those very same forces by people who have access to only the bare resources that constitute conventional power” (León 2004, p. 5). León (2004, 2014) draws on the work of women of color feminisms as a point of departure to explain and create his innovative form of rhetorical criticism: mestiza/o consciousness, nepantla, nepantla spirituality, the Coatlicue State, La Facultad, and nepantilism are all key concepts to understanding religious poetics as discursive analysis (2004, 2014). In the found poem, Jay rolls up his sleeves, points out different tattoos on his arms as his eyes light up and almost possessed by the story he is about to tell me, and through the use of poetic transcription, the intercultural communication research writes with a performative goal to capture the body in the writing of research. Performative writing as a destabilizing enactment is part of the toolbox that the queer of color critic deploys to challenge the modern-­colonial myths and fictions about what research is or can be. Within the matrix of domination that is the modern/colonial gender system (Hill Collins 1991; Lugones  2010), Jotería communities are under siege as the massacre at Pulse nightclub in



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Orlando, Florida calls on us to remember and never forget (Andrade and Gutierrez-­Perez 2017; Eguchi 2016; Gutierrez-­Perez 2017a, b). To cope with the trauma of living in perpetual liminality due to their colonial condition, Chicanos often draw on mitos of Mesoamerican gods and goddesses in their celebrations, art, and literary works to create worlds in the present that are more livable (Gómez-­Cano  2010). Chicana feminists were the first within this Latinx community to re-­visit and redeploy indigenous Mesoamerican myths to push back on heteropatriarchal structures within Chicano/Latino cultures (Garza 2011). Cuentos of legendary and mythological figures, such as Coatlicue, Coyolxauqui, Tlazolteotl, Cihuacóatl, Malintzin Tenépal, La Virgen de Guadalupe or Tonantzin, and La Llorona not only record history,1 but these mitos provide archetypes for other ways of being and thinking in the world. Mythos, or appeals based on cultural values and beliefs, push back on stereotypes of women, people of color, and Jotería, and they perform a kind of decolonial rhetoric invested with non-­Western worldviews and belief systems (Alarcón 2013; Anzaldúa 2000, 2009, 2012, 2015; Arrizón 2006; Capetillo-Ponce 2011; de la Garza  2004; Flores Carmona  2014; González-­ López 2011; Hamilton 2013; Heredia 2011; Lara 2005; León, 2004; Wanzer Serrano 2015; Zaytoun 2011). In diving into the intersections of spirituality, sexuality, history, and queer of color communication, I am essentially asking: how do queer people of color, specifically Jotería, deploy mitos to make their lives more livable? Mitos have the ability to entrap everyday performances of culture and identity into tropes of monstrosity, so like other narrative forms, mitos have the potential to silence Jotería and reinforce dominant narratives of otherness and difference (Calafell 2015). As Chicanos and Latinos, Jotería are part of a community where “two in three (66%) LGBT Latino youth [say] religious leaders were a source of negative messages about being LGBT” [Human Rights Campaign 27 (2012)]. Further, “Second only to African Americans, Latinos are the most religiously observant population in the country . . . Faith is deeply embedded in Latino lives – in the communal practice of worship, the devotional life of individuals, and values that inform family experience” [Human Rights Campaign 5 (2012)]. Part of the reason why I am arguing for a focus on spirituality and spiritual practices is because of the soul murder that many queer people of color experience from religious institutions and the other repressive and ideological state apparatuses enmeshed in this discourse. Monstrosity, myths, and fictions through the lens of religious poetics is a methodological approach to the deconstruction of text and performance that is about understanding power and processes of control and resistance. One example from the found poem of Jay is how it deviated from the dominant narrative of the creation story to poetically create, do, and make a different narrative of the world around him by not faking or mimicking, but he works with and against this dominant narrative. Specifically, Jay did not tell key information about Coyolxauhqui who is the daughter of Coatlicue and is the Aztec/Mexica goddess of the moon. However, in the found poem, Jay imagines and describes her not as the moon but as the stars (“She has children the stars/ No the moon is one of her children/ I want to say the stars”). As a theory in the flesh embodied through the oral (re) telling of mythos narratives, León describes this social-­historical phenomenon where the narrative ruptures from the dominant discourse as a religious poetic. He writes, “Through a strategy of performed and narrated religious discourse, tactics, and strategies, social agents change culturally derived meanings and, indeed, the order of the phenomenal world by rearranging the relationships among symbols and deftly inventing and reinventing the signification of symbols – especially those held sacred” (León  2004, p.  4). In most versions of the creation myth, the stars are Coyolxauhqui’s 400 god-­brothers known as the Centzon Huitznahua (“400 Southern Stars”) who also are part of the family drama of this creation narrative (Garza 2011). As Garza explains, “From their perspective, the violation of their mother is, by extension, a violation of their collective identity and as such a surrender of their power” (p. 43). These moments of rupture with the dominant narrative are where Jay both resists with his interventionist voice and yet succumbs to various structures of intersectional control within this creation story.

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When interviewing Jay and discussing his tattoos, it was clear that Jay had been in the Coatlicue State, and by working on and against identity, hegemonic structures, and cultural norms, beliefs, and values, Jay deployed religious poetics to create a queer of color world in which he could survive without his biological mother. For example, in re-­imagining Huitzilopochtli (“Southern Hummingbird”), Jay drew on his experiences of losing his mother at a young age, and because of this maternal loss, Jay grew up within an all-­male household until his father remarried much later in life. His mythological narrative is filled with masculine agency choosing to (re)tell this myth of Coatlicue with violent and aggressive words like impregnated, dismembered, thrown, behead, and kill. As previously mentioned, religious poetics are “a variation on the ways religious discourse is performed and symbols are deployed,” which is “distinguishable by an emphasis on the intersection of the sacred and political” (León 2014, p. 29). As a performance studies scholar, I am very familiar with the concept of poiesis, which is a making, doing, and acting process of artistically drawing out. As the root word for poetry, poiesis is an important concept for understanding, creating, and analyzing cultural performances because myths are powerful forms of communication that produce and reproduce dominant cultural values, beliefs, and norms that continue colonial/modern discourses, which inevitably implicate historical/political hierarchies of race, gender, class, sexuality, nationalism, and religious intolerance. In this case, there is a masculine agency in this narrative that works on this myth to focus on the dynamic of a mother-­ son relationship that is deeply connected to the survival of both. For Jay, a religious poetic is worked through his flesh to allow him to heal from a loss that was deeply connected to a personal and collective identity, culture, and history. After first identifying the mythological narrative in terms of masculine agency, Jay later works through and with this ideology to disidentify and transform Huitzilopochtli into a different kind of warrior  – a loving son who is protector and savior for his lost mother. As the god of war, Huitzilopochtli and his birth in the creation story is the ushering in of a new era in the world – one of violence and bloodshed. Knowing that Coyolxauhqui had the gift of foresight as a goddess of sorcery and was able to see what Coatlicue was about to unleash changes how one understands the motives behind the goddess. As a communication studies scholar, it is not lost on me that Coyolxauhqui utilizing her great power as an orator and with the power of communication convinces all of Coatlicue’s children (the southern sky) to murder their own mother. Coyolxauqui is a powerful woman. Yet, after she is slayed by Huitzilopochtli, she is known as the first sacrificial victim, and her dismembered body floats through the sky coming together (the full moon) and falling apart (the new moon) in a celestial reenactment. In many versions of this creation myth, the rising of the sun and the retreat of the night sky every morning is another celestial reenactment of this narrative that Jay reworks. In his version, Huitzilopochtli is a different kind of man and a different kind of warrior. At first, he sets the mythological scenario in a deeply patriarchal and masculine viewpoint given his own particular location in culture and society. However, midway through his mito, he begins to transform Huitzilopochtli to make this sun and war god a source of empowerment through the mother-­son relationship. Jay discloses that “every tattoo I have on my body/means something specific” and that his mother “would roll over in her grave if/I sleeved myself out.” From this embodied remapping of mythos, we witness how Jay utilizes “the method of religious poetics disrupt[ing] social norms” as he “probes, challenges, and dismantles the oppressive structures wrought of a colonial enterprise that underpinned and still supports racial, gender, and class histories” (León 2014, p. 29). The (re)telling of this myth is a purposeful attempt to grapple with the trauma of loss and death. According to León, mythos are understood as a form of sacred poetics performatively done/made by “religious actors” to “manage the often harsh and potentially overwhelming conditions they confront – the battle for survival and more, dignity, love, freedom – by deploying the most powerful weapons in their arsenal: signs, myths, rituals, narratives, and symbols” (León 2004, p. 5). The images of Coatlicue and Coyolxauhqui in this oral history narrative mean something beyond their original meanings, and Jay utilizes these religious poetics



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to make his life more livable. Jay’s tattoos are “completely dedicated to [his] mother,” and “They are all representations/of something in regard to her.” For Jay, he does not view this mythological narrative as the birth of war in the world or the subjugation of women over men within the Aztec mytho-­ontological worldview. For him, “it was more about Huitzilopochtli protecting her/ and his thoughts toward his mother/ I just viewed us as you know/ I would have been her ride or die/type of guy.” As León writes, myths are “narratives that make truth claims, establishing worldviews and identities not verifiable by historical, modern, or scientific methods” (2014, p. 13). What claims to truth are lost by ignoring the body and the spirit in intercultural communication research? How can intercultural communication theorize and practice knowledge and the production of knowledge as a decolonial praxis? The Age of Huitzilopochtli Culture swims made of identity     liquified changing, changed, changes gargling, gargles, gargled third eye blinks throat choked the chronic illness returns with a pinche tiki torch shouting war #icantbreathe Suffocating, I go for a walk pray to Rabbit Oh totem, i’m raining petals falling red-­orange oche fire like carnelian but harder, more fierce dropping bits of wisdom leaking old memories from el cenote Our ancestors have endured more Light the sage gente bring out the turquoise for voice pray for pounding pavement walk it, stomping on bigotry dance it, breaking silences fuck the oppressor swoop into battle one puff    at a time Darkness, shadow, shadows Ignite the heart chakra papa to see, wear rose quartz for loving, to know, trust the moon

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Robert Gutierrez-­Perez Night, nightly, lighting the sky mama transformed matricide on the mind the rebel daughter guiding us protecting us from him committed to her vision she emerges again broken  full crescent to wage the battle joined by las mujeres muertes childbirth warriors fighting for their loved ones compassionately twinkling las estrellas de las noches granting cool reprieve a different fury a different frame #blacklivesmatter Like a 5 AM tweet he rises searing your day burning, slashing your spirit yellowing the milk laboring hot and heavy sweat stinging the wound whipped, you rumble up the sun temple in line, you stare at the red stairs each step, losing your humanity orange-­faced, he feeds swinging his golf clubs on indigenous lands The age of mass sacrifice continues But watch culture and identity can change in the blink of a violet, violent eye vibrating the chords of the nation-­state loosening the spiritual imagining emotions arching long but toward something in the dark Does that bring you some comfort?

Conclusion: The Politics of Soul Murder in Queer of Color Critique “Depression is useful – it signals that you need to make changes in your life, it challenges your tendency to withdraw, it reminds you to take action.” (Anzaldúa 2015, p. 132).



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At a conference hosted by the Association of Jotería Arts, Activism, and Scholarship (AJAAS) in Minneapolis, Minnesota, I found myself restless after a powerful ceremony performed with the entirety of the conference participants. Something had been shaken loose. I had been shocked at the plenary to learn that it would take nearly 700–800 books a year for 10 years for my Latinx and Chicanx community to catch up to the amount of children’s books available featuring characters, heroines, and heroes that looked like them. The consistent theme from panel to panel was “write your story” and “tell your childhood story” – our community is in need of our Jotería-­ historias like never before (Perez). Jotería-­ historias are borderlands narratives that seek to voice through cuentos (cultural stories), mitos (myths), consejos ­ (advice), and testimonio (political/spiritual testimony) a story of resiliency and adversity for nonheteronormative mestiza/o/xs who perform gender and sexuality in often hostile spaces and places. Jotería studies is located “under the umbrella of queer Latinx/a/o theories and frameworks” (Duran, Orozco, and Gonzalez 2020, p. 69), and Jotería interlocutors reclaim the negative and violent connotations of language, such as joto and jota, to resist the historical, systemic targeting of queer Latina/o/x communities (Duran, Orozco, and Gonzalez 2020, p. 69). As an intercultural communication scholar, I am locating “sequins in the rubble” that bring marginalized communities into dialogue with theories and methods concerned with hegemonic power structures, policy, legislation, and social movement discourses (Alvarez 2019). At this conference for Jotería studies, the participants enacted a praxis that is a critical/­ decolonial gesture endemic to this area of research and the community that seeks to disrupt interlocking systems of oppression (Duran, Orozco, and Gonzalez 2020). It loosened something deep within me and shook me to my core – individual/collective joy, love, and healing can do that (Tijerina Revilla and Santillana 2014). After pacing in the parking lot for a few minutes, I decided to take a walk in the Minnesota neighborhood. This conference was prior to the murder of George Floyd. As I walked, I was grateful and aware that once again Squirrel, one of my longest and most committed spiritual guides, came to visit me encouraging me to face this arrebato head on, so after a meditative breath, I return to our conference. Inspired by the work of these young people and their mentors, teachers, and community members at our host location, I began to write poetry diving into my childhood, and like an inexperienced mason, I chipped the brick too hard and tears began to spring forth. Conditioned to believe that men crying is disgraceful and embarrassing (especially in public), I raced to the front of the building just in time before the dam broke – before I broke. Like the overcast sky, I am caught gray with no support to catch me or to help me catch myself. I call my brother. The only other person who has lived through what we have lived through. “I can’t talk about my childhood. I blacked it on purpose. Why do I have to face this now? Here?!” I am upset and wet in public. My brother says something that surprises me, “I think it is good that you are finally feeling this. I think you should keep crying.” With his permission to cry, I finally worked myself through the Coatlicue State. Drawing on queer intercultural communication, religious studies, and performance studies, this essay journeys into the depths of the Coatlicue State to articulate, interrogate, and redeploy the mitos (myths) of Jotería through the lens of religious poetics. Critical intercultural communication provides a home for queer studies because it is a juncture that is concerned with how we think critical theory and methodological work, and this queer intercultural communication home revolves around issues of institutional powers that oppress LGBTQ peoples and seeks to disrupt and/or empower interlocutors with theory and practice (Calafell and Nakayama 2020). Bernadette Calafell, in a published dialogue on the nexus between queer studies and intercultural communication, writes: “the future of critical intercultural communication has to be more inclusive of critical performative and automethodologies that are often connected to decolonial, feminist, and indigenous methodologies” (Calafell and Nakayama  2020, p.  264). This essay, which performatively brings together research poetry, found poetry, critical analysis, and personal narrative answers this praxiological call to the future of critical intercultural communication.

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In closing, critical intercultural communication in order to move from theory to practice needs to embrace a performance approach to praxis. Specifically, this chapter advances thematics of paradigms beyond/outside Western queer formation (the Coatlicue State and queer of color critique), decoloniality (healing soul murder and found poetry), and relationality/coalition (religious poetics and poetic transcription) (Eguchi, Jones, Long, and Zariñana 2020). Further, as Jotería studies in communication, this work addresses through identity and language, terminology, and academic translation current considerations in Latina/o/x communication studies that pushes “back against perceived norms in the communication discipline” (Hernández, Bowen, De Los Santos Upton, and Martinez 2019, p. 6). Taking this soul journey in this essay has been like traveling through the underworld – what will I transform into? Will my soul survive? Anzaldúa writes that when one is in the Coatlicue State, “You used to be this person but now you’re different in some way. You’re changing worlds and cultures . . . When you’re in the midst of the Coatlicue State – the cave, the dark – you’re hibernating or hiding, you’re gestating and giving birth to yourself. You’re in a womb state” (Anzaldúa 2009, p. 226). Confronting our shadows, our shadow beasts, and our darkness is a way to move beyond us versus them identity politics toward an understanding of humanity as a we (Anzaldúa 2015). Feelings of otherness and difference, which are highlighted throughout this chapter, are not restricted to one political class or “race” or gender or sexuality, so “confronting darkness means confronting loss and, moreover, the possibility of profound loss” (De Guzmán 2011, p. 216). The Coatlicue State is often “triggered by intense inner struggle” and “can entail the juxtaposition and the transmutation of contrary forces as well as paralysis and depression” – it is “resistance to new knowledge” (Anzaldúa 2009, p. 320). What this means to a scholar of intercultural communication and performance is that myths are powerful forms of communication that produce and reproduce dominant cultural values, beliefs, and norms that continue colonial/modern discourses, which inevitably implicate historical/political hierarchies of race, gender, class, sexuality, nationalism, and religious intolerance. Meaning that more attention needs to be paid to the power relations, discourses, and rhetorics deployed by mythos in our ever-­globalizing local and international cultures.

Note 1 For instance, Grisel Gómez-­Cano (2010) charts the historical record of the Mexica pilgrimage from Aztlán to the Mexico Basin alongside Mexica mitos (myths/legends) of goddesses to track the slow move toward more patriarchal societal structures in Aztec society, and further, she connects these mitos through an anthropological approach to historical events and figures whose lives influenced the very creation of these goddesses and their various mitos.

References Alarcón, N. (2013). Anzaldúan textualities: a hermeneutic of the self and the Coyolxauhqui imperative. In: El Mundo Zurdo 3: Selected Works from the 2012 Meeting of the Society for the Study of Gloria Anzaldúa (eds. L.M. Mercado-­López, S. Saldívar-­Hull, and A. Castañeda), 189–208. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books. Alvarez, E.F. (2019). Finding sequins in the rubble: the journeys of two Latina migrant lesbians in Los Angeles. Journal of Lesbian Studies 24 (2): 77–93. Andrade, L.M. and Gutierrez-­Perez, R.M. (2017). Bailando con las sombras: spiritual activism and soul healing in the war years. Qualitative Inquiry 23 (7): 502–504. Anzaldúa, G. (2000). Interviews/Entrevistas (ed. A.L. Keating). New York: Routledge. Anzaldúa, G. (2009). The Gloria Anzaldúa Reader (ed. A.L. Keating). Durham: Duke University Press.



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Anzaldúa, G. (2012). Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, 4e. San Francisco: Aunt Lute. Anzaldúa, G. (2015). Light in the Dark/Luz en Lo Oscuro: Rewriting Identity, Spirituality, Reality (ed. A.L. Keating). Durham: Duke University Press. Arrizón, A. (2006). Queering Mestizaje: Transculturation and Performance. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Calafell, B.M. (2007). Latina/O Communication Studies: Theorizing Performance. New  York: Peter Lang. Calafell, B.M. (2015). Monstrosity, Performance, and Race in Contemporary Culture. New York: Peter Lang Publishing. Calafell, B.M. and Nakayama, T. (2020). Dialoguing about the nexus of queer studies and intercultural communication. In: Queer Intercultural Communication: The Intersectional Politics of Belonging in and Across Differences (eds. S. Eguchi and B.M. Calafell), 259–266. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Capetillo-­Ponce, J. (2011). On borderlands and bridges: an inquiry into Gloria Anzaldúa’s methodology. In: Bridging: How Gloria Anzaldúa’s Life and Work Transformed Our Own (eds. A.L. Keating and G. González-­López), 165–171. Austin: University of Texas Press. Duran, A., Orozco, R.C., and Gonzalez, S.A. (2020). Imagining the future of Jotería studies as a framework in the field of higher education. Association of Mexican American Educators (AMAE) Journal 14 (2): 67–86. Eguchi, S. (2016). The Orlando pulse massacre: a transnational Japanese queer response. QED: A Journal of GLBTQ Worldmaking 3 (3): 164–167. Eguchi, S., Jones, S., Long, H.R., and Zariñana, A.R. (2020). Closing thoughts: the future of queer intercultural communication. In: Queer Intercultural Communication: The Intersectional Politics of Belonging in and across Differences (eds. S. Eguchi and B.M. Calafell), 267–279. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Elenes, C.A. (2014). Spiritual roots of Chicana feminist borderland pedagogies: a spiritual journey with Tonantzin/Guadalupe. In: Fleshing the Spirit: Spirituality and Activism in Chicana, Latina, and Indigenous Women’s Lives (eds. E. Facio and I. Lara), 43–58. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press. Flores Carmona, J. (2014). Cutting out their tongues: Mujeres’ Testimonios and the Malintzin Researcher. The Journal of Latino-­Latin American Studies 6 (2): 113–124. de la Garza, S.A. (2004). María Speaks: Journeys into the Mysteries of the Mother in my Life as a Chicana. New York: Peter Lang. Garza, T. (2011). The rhetorical legacy of Coyolxauhqui: (re)collecting and (re)membering voice. In: Latina/o Discourse in Vernacular Spaces: Somos de Una Voz? (ed. M.A. Holling and B.M. Calafell), 31–56. Blue Ridge Summit: Lexington Books. Cano, G. (2010). The Return of Coatlicue: Goddesses and Warladies in Mexican Folklore. Gómez-­ Bloomington: Xlibria. González-­López, G. (2011). Conocimiento and healing: academic wounds, survival, and tenure. In: Bridging: How Gloria Anzaldúa’s Life and Work Transformed Our Own (eds. A.L. Keating and G. González-­López), 91–100. Austin: University of Texas Press. Gutierrez-­Perez, R. (2017a). Bridging performances of auto/ ethnography and queer bodies of color to advocacy and civic engagement. QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking 4 (1): 148–156. Gutierrez-­Perez, R. (2017b). A journey to El Mundo Zurdo: queer temporality, queer of color cultural heritages. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 14 (2): 177–181. Gutierrez-­Perez, R. (2019). Theories in the flesh and flights of the imagination: embracing the soul and Spirit of critical performative writing in communication research. Women’s Studies in Communication 41 (4): 404–415. Gutierrez-­Perez, R. (2020a). Performance and everyday life, or a Latina/o/x in intercultural communication. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research 49 (5): 433–441. Gutierrez-­Perez, R. (2020b). A return to El Mundo Zurdo: Anzaldúan approaches to queer of color worldmaking and the violence of intersectional heteronormativity. Women’s Studies in Communication 43 (4): 384–399. Gutierrez-Perez, R.M. (2021). Jotería Communication Studies: Narrating Theories and Methods of Resistance. Peter Lang. de Guzmán, M. (2011). “Darkness, my night”: the philosophical challenge of Gloria Anzaldúa’s aesthetics of the shadow. In: Bridging: How Gloria Anzaldúa’s Life and Work Transformed Our Own (eds. A.L. Keating and G. González-­López), 210–217. Austin: University of Texas Press.

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Hamilton, E. (2013). Mythology, new edn. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company. Heredia, J. (2011). My path of Conocimiento: how graduate school transformed me into a Nepantlera. In: Bridging: How Gloria Anzaldúa’s Life and Work Transformed Our Own (eds. A.L. Keating and G. González-­López), 39–44. Austin: University of Texas Press. Hernández, L.H., Bowen, D.I., de Upton, los, S., S., and Martinez, A.R. (2019). Introduction: Latina/ o/x communication studies: current considerations and future directions. In: Latina/o/x Communication Studies: Theories, Methods, and Practice (eds. L.H. Hernández, D.I. Bowen, S., S. de los, Upton, and A.R. Martinez), 1–43. Lanham: Lexington Books. Hill Collins, P. (1991). Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge. Human Rights Campaign, and League of United Latin American Citizens (HRC). (2012). Supporting and caring for our Latino LGBT youth. www.hrc.org/youth-­report/latino-­youth/ (accessed 28 June 2023). Lara, I. (2005). Daughter of Coatlicue: an interview with Gloria Anzaldúa. In: EntreMundos/ AmongWorld: New Perspectives on Gloria Anzaldúa (ed. A.L. Keating), 41–55. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. León, L. (2004). La Llorona’s Children: Religion, Life, and Death in the U.S.-­Mexican Borderlands. Berkeley: University of California Press. León, L. (2014). The Political Spirituality of Cesar Chavez: Crossing Religious Borders. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lugones, M. (2010). Toward a Decolonial feminism. Hypatia 25 (4): 742–759. Madison, D.S. (1993). That was my occupation’: Oral narrative, performance, and black feminist thought. Text and Performance Quarterly 13 (3): 213–232. Sedgwick, E.K. (2003). Touching feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity. Durham: Duke University. Tijerina Revilla, A. and Santillana, J.M. (2014). Jotería identity and consciousness. Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies 39 (1): 167–179. Wanzer-­Serrano, D. (2015). The New York Young Lords and the Struggle for Liberation. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Yep, G.A. (2003). The violence of heteronormativity in communication studies: notes on injury, healing, and queer world-­making. Journal of Homosexuality 45 (2–4): 11–59. Yep, G.A. (2013). Queering/Quaring/Kauering/Crippin’/Transing ‘Other Bodies’ in intercultural communication. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 6 (2): 118–126. Yep, G.A. (2016). Toward thick(er) intersectionalities: theorizing, researching, and activating the complexities of communication and identities. In: Globalizing Intercultural Communication (eds. K. Sorrells and S. Sekimoto), 85–94. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Zaytoun, K. (2011). Shifting. In: Bridging: How Gloria Anzaldúa’s Life and Work Transformed Our Own (eds. A.L. Keating and G. González-­López), 204–209. Austin: University of Texas Press.

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Culture Counts: Quantitative Approaches to Critical Intercultural Communication Srividya Ramasubramanian1, Julius Matthew Riles2, and Omotayo O. Banjo3 1

S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, Syracuse, NY 2 University of Missouri 3 University of Cincinnati

Although the three of us come from three different cultural heritages, we collectively identify as scholars of color who study media effects and intercultural communication. Trained as social scientists, we primarily use quantitative research methods such as experiments, surveys, and quantitative content analysis in our work. While traditional quantitative social scientific methods are not commonly associated with critical intercultural communication, in this ­ ­chapter, we orient the reader to the main principles, theories, and methods that have been used within this area. Srividya’s (Srivi) sense of culture while growing up in Chennai in South India was shaped by multilingualism, post-­coloniality, and global trade liberalization. Her lived experiences as one of the few women at the Jesuit-­run Loyola College informed her politics on gender, religion, and caste. When she moved to the United States for her doctoral education, she navigated multiple cultures and languages through code-­switching, hybridization, frame switching, and mixing. 9/11 marked a new era of hate crimes that shaped her research on implicit racial bias and media literacy. Throughout her professional career, she has worked on building bridges across cultures, disciplines, methods, and communities for social justice and intergroup coalitions. A child of Nigerian immigrants, Omotayo’s (Tayo) identity formation was informed by both her parents’ heritage and her home culture, America. She initially distinguished herself by her family’s language, food, dress, and music – all attributes of what defines culture. Her cultural identity was Nigerian American until while in college she was called a racial epithet which ­challenged her to more seriously and actively engage a self-­concept that included her social identity and racial location. Fascinated by the interactions between self and social identity, her scholarship explores our interactions with our social identities and the contexts in which we engage with these layers. In this chapter, we provide an overview of the types of theories, concepts, and methods that are typically used within quantitative intercultural communication studies. Within social ­scientific approaches in communication, such quantitative research on intercultural communication is generally referred to as “intergroup communication.” Intergroup communication looks at the role of group identities in shaping the dynamics of human interactions. Age, race, The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication, Second Edition. Edited by Thomas K. Nakayama and Rona Tamiko Halualani. © 2024 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2024 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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ethnicity, ability, occupation, and religion are some of the social identities that are studied within intergroup communication. Common theories that are used within this area as social identity theory, acculturation theory, communication accommodation theory, and intergroup contact theory. Quantitative methods such as experiments, surveys, and content analyses are the dominant mode of research. Intergroup communication theories typically do not consider issues such as power, context, hierarchies and structural inequalities across groups. However, more recently, social scientists such as Mohan Dutta, Walid Afifi, Jimmie Manning, Jordan Soliz, among others, have called for more critical theories and perspectives to be incorporated into intergroup communication. The Critical Media Effects framework (Ramasubramanian and Banjo 2020) is an example of a recent theory where quantitative approaches to critical intercultural communication are incorporated within the context of media effects scholarship. We provide examples of emerging scholarship in quantitative critical intercultural communication from experimental, survey and content analytical studies from our publications to illustrate the trajectory of typical studies in this area.

Quantitative Approaches to Critical Intercultural Communication Critical intercultural communication is mostly associated with interpretive and qualitative methods. However, there are many intercultural communication theories and methods that also stem from allied social and behavioral sciences such as social psychology, psycholinguistics, cultural anthropology, and applied linguistics that have shaped intercultural communication scholarship. Social sciences are often seen as apolitical, unbiased, and objective. However, they have played a significant role in reinforcing social hierarchies through colonial, imperialist, and racist framing of data and findings. At the same time, sciences have also had to contend with political and religious contexts where their value is questioned and ridiculed. From an intercultural communication perspective, we appreciate the role of culture and communication in shaping perceptions of science, even as we continue to critically examine how science could contribute to our understanding of culture and communication. A primary affordance of quantitative and statistically-­oriented methods pertains to their capacity to detect nomothetic patterns and reveal causal phenomena (Stage and Wells 2014). Post-­positivist paradigm seeks to observe measurable realities in order to predict, whereas ­critical theories believe reality is created by power structures with a goal to emancipate. Quantitative research from a post-­positivist paradigm invites the practice of objectivity, and critical approaches focus on what plays a role in our construction of reality. Critical approaches advocate for, and enact, transformative change in pursuit of equity (Pasque et  al.  2012). Critical work points to the influence of power, but doesn’t give much insight into how we can be empowered, or the cognitive, affective processes which yield emancipatory behaviors. It would be helpful to see to what extent these critical perspectives can be measured and yield predictions which can guide how we may be empowered to emancipate. Quantitative methods, and indeed empirical methods more broadly, have been rejected within critical intercultural communication scholarship because they often do not take into consideration how power and social hierarchies shape intercultural relations. For instance, within education research, QuantCrit approaches critique how racial identity as a social construct is measured and constructed within Eurocentrism ideals of white supremacy (Gillborn et  al.  2018). Quantitative research approaches also often do not give agency for marginalized groups to voice their opinions and perspectives. For example, the ways in which race is often incorporated within statistical models as a causal factor is taken for granted without much reflection. Of course, an interdisciplinary pursuit, such as the one outlined in this chapter, will not be without tradeoffs. As Stage and Wells (2014) suggest, many critical/quantitative endeavors



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may not be able to directly yield the same types of concrete transformation as purely critical approaches, such as action research designs. However, they, like us, argue that there is “value [to] any research, no matter the method, that reveals inequity and unfairness in [communicative] practice” (Stage and Wells 2014, p. 4). Critical/quantitative research endeavors have the capacity to lay the foundation for large-­scale revelations of inequity patterns, as well as antecedents and consequences that can aid in equitable transformation, so long as steps are taken to mitigate the reification of loss of agency and power among participants. An oft-­cited (e.g. Baez 2007; Stage and Wells 2014) related set of assumptions for conducting critical research include the perspective that all thought is mediated by power relations, facts can never be isolated from values, relationships between concepts and objects are never fixed, language is central to subjectivity, there are groups in society privileged over others, oppression has many faces and interconnections, and mainstream research often reproduces oppression (Kincheloe and McLaren 1994). Inherent in this articulation of critical research assumptions is the idea that the potential for oppression and inequity exists with all research, even critical approaches, and the concrete motivations and practices of the researcher are what notably facilitate the pursuit of equitable research outcomes. As such, the potential affordances of critical/quantitative research approaches warrant an examination with regard to what such practices may entail. However, these approaches are not necessarily incompatible, and there may be too much of an emphasis on methodology rather than researcher motivations. The overarching idea is that so long as “quantitative data can answer critical questions [and] expose the power of institutional arrangements that dictate how we live and work” (Baez 2007, p. 22), there is opportunity to benefit from the mutual incorporation of these research practices. Stage (2007) suggests that meritorious work in this domain has two primary tasks. First, researchers must effectively represent large-­scale outcomes with their data that reveal inequity. Second, it is vital for c­ ritical/ quantitative researchers to question previous models, measures, and practices that prior research has developed in order to allow participants in specific contexts to be seen. Sablan (2019) describes this latter aim pursuant to a primary objective of all critical and intercultural research: to allow participants to effectively tell both their stories and counter-­stories.

Theories Used in Quantitative Intercultural Communication Research Social scientists have employed a number of frameworks to investigate intergroup dynamics including bias and cultural adjustment.

Social Identity Theory One of the most popular theories centered on intergroup bias is Tajfel’s (1979) Social Identity Theory (SIT). Stated succinctly, SIT assumes that within a societal structure there are those who share similarities (ingroup) and those who do not (outgroup) and posits that ingroup members favor one another more than those who are dissimilar. Specifically SIT has long held that ingroup members are more likely to generalize and discriminate against outgroup ­members as doing so reinforces their own self and group esteem. Turner’s (1985) work on Self Categorization Theory (SCT) expanded on SIT by first identifying the multiple group affiliations which exist for an individual and then examining the varying contexts in which some identities within one individual may be more salient. Similar to identity negotiation theories, SIT and SCT identify tensions between personal and sociocultural identities which inform our tendency to confirm or disconfirm people’s assumptions about us. However, social identity theories help explain our motivations to manage our identities.

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Several studies in communication have examined intergroup dynamics among gender (Abrams and Bippus  2011), race, cultural identity, and partisan affiliation across different kinds of communication utilizing SIT/SCT precepts. Identifying television as a source of “intergroup competition,” Mastro (2003) examined the extent to which Whites’ exposure to stereotypical portrayals of Latinos compared to negative portrayals of Whites on television would boost White participants’ positive evaluations of their ingroup. Consistent with the main assumptions of SIT, Mastro’s (2003) experimental study found that White participants were more likely to justify the crime of a White character than that of a Latino character. Furthermore, White participants exposed to stereotypes of Latinos reported higher self-­esteem than those who were exposed to White criminals. In an experiment, Bond et al. (2018) tested the assumptions of social identity theory when they examined how participants evaluated the morals of those with shared political affiliation compared to known and unknown outgroups. Not only did scholars find support for SIT whereby participants reported higher views of morality and more enjoyment in discussions for those within their shared political groups, but the researchers also found that participants reported more positive feelings toward outgroup members who they knew compared to those they hadn’t met illustrating the significance of relationship to how we view one another. Though SIT is typically used in quantitative post-­positivist work, its predictions can offer insight into critically-­oriented inquiries. For example, in an attempt to interrogate the assumptions of SIT, Banjo and Williams (2014) conducted focus groups with Black listeners of Gospel music (majority Black market) and White listeners of Contemporary Christian Music (majority White market) in order to explore how each group evaluates the other based on the premise that the Christian music industry is purposefully racially coded. Lending support for SIT, the researchers’ findings revealed favoritism for the racial congruent genres along with some disparaging views of the opposition genres yielding implications for the extent to which each genre exacerbates racial tension among Christians. Furthermore, the scholars argued that unfavorable responses to racially incongruent genres was an outcome of industry recruitment and marketing practices which typically categorized Black artists as Gospel despite their sound. As such, as a quantitative theory, SIT helps clarify motivations to belong and maintain a positive image in critical approaches to understanding intercultural or intergroup interactions.

Intergroup Contact Theory Another theory which engages the questions of bias between social groups is contact theory. Based on the premise that prejudice is based on a lack of familiarity with outgroup members, social psychologist Allport’s (1954) contact theory has been used to explain the extent to which personal interaction, whether in person or mediated, has the potential to reduce stereotypes through shared status and common goals. A plethora of studies in psychology and communication have used experiments to determine the role that interpersonal contact has on attitude change toward an outgroup member. Creating a fake Facebook page of a Chinese international student, Kim and Harwood (2020) tested how likely American students would desire to engage with international students who were proficient in English. Scholars found that high proficiency in English motivated American students to form connections with Chinese students. Testing the physical prerequisites of contact, Turner et al. (2007) found that pure imagination of an intergroup interaction has the ability to minimize intergroup biases. In one experiment heterosexual men who imagined having a conversation with gay men reported less bias against gay men. Research on outcomes of contacts have examined the societal status as a significant intervening variable between an interaction and changed attitude. Most studies have found supporting evidence among high-­ status group members, compared to low-­ status groups (Immaura et al. 2011). Such work is congruent with the assertions of co-­cultural theory or dominant group theory research which takes into account group status within a stratified system. To the researchers’



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point contact theory seems to help explain the benefits of intergroup contact for majority groups or groups with more power. Although critical intercultural theories like these explain the manner in which dominant and minority groups interact and negotiate, contact theory provides potential interventions into how such interactions can develop into positive behavioral and ­attitudinal change. For example, dominant group theory may explain how privileged group members may inadvertently communicate in ways which dismiss minority groups’ concerns. However, critical studies may help provide more nuance to the theory by investigating how privilege, intersectionality, or status change may interact with the assertions of this theory. For example, what is a fair skinned biracial individual’s experience when interacting with White people compared to people of color? How might their cultural upbringing play a role in the degree to which their prejudice is impacted? Even more interesting, is to what extent might a biracial or bicultural person need to negotiate their prejudice.

Communication Accommodation Theory As it relates to unpacking the degrees to which group members adapt themselves in order to adjust to new cultural environments, communication accommodation theory and acculturation theory have yielded much insight. Social psychologist Howard Giles’ (2016) communication accommodation theory describes the extent to which people either amplify or minimize their differences in social situations in order to maintain a positive self-­image. Similar to SIT, CAT centers on communication between in-­groups and outgroup members; unlike SIT, CAT focuses on a language. According to CAT, people may either adapt other people’s communication styles or characteristics to minimize differences (convergence) or they may distinguish themselves from the person they are interacting with (divergence). Scholars have applied CAT to the study of interactive listening in interpersonal settings (Roche et al. 2021), nurse–patient interaction in health contexts (Jones et al. 2018; Watson and Gallois 1998), and conflict management in romantic and family relationships (Dhillon et al. 2020; Soliz and Colander 2017) using a range of methods including survey, experiment and interviews. Muir et al.’s (2016) work considers the concept of social power in adjusting compared to non-­adjusting behavior suggesting that people who are in low power positions will be more likely than those with power to converge. The concept of social power certainly resonates with critical scholarship which foregrounds societal structures as a context for our social interactions. Whereas critical theories such as Razzante and Orbe’s (2018) dominant group theory and Orbe’s (1998) co-­cultural theory engage the roles that power, privilege, and status play in interactions between low (minoritized) and high power (majority) individuals, theories rooted in the social sciences such as SIT, SCT, and CAT address the cognitive motivations behind the communicative behaviors. Understanding and unpacking motivations behind intercultural interactions can provide more nuance to critical theories. For example, while dominant group members may interact in ways which reinforce their social dominance, it may be productive to discuss these patterns as motivated by self-­esteem needs rather than xenophobia. Likewise, critical scholarship identifies the extent to which one’s social location informs how individuals adjust their communication as well as how convergence or divergence can work to challenge oppressive ideological messages. Together, these theories may help to address knowledge gaps and cover experiences which have been unaccounted for in communication scholarship.

Acculturation Theories Whereas contact theory examines interactions between people, acculturation theories examine contact between cultures. According to Berry (2005) acculturation is both a cultural and ­psychological adjustment whereby individuals either conform, abnegate, or negotiate their identities

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and cultural practices when transitioning into a host country. Kim’s (2012) cross-­cultural adaptation theory describes this process of adapting to a host culture as enculturation, deculturation, acculturation, and assimilation. In this model, immigrants distance themselves from their heritage in order to fully embrace their new host culture. Scholars have examined the adaptation processes of various cultural groups (Muwanguzi and Musambira 2012; Yang 2018), within the various contexts including organizational identity (Adams and Johnson 2020), media use (McKelvey and Chatterjee 2017; Raman and Harwood 2016), and online gaming environments (Ward 2010), and using a wide range of methodologies. Though theories of acculturation explain a process by which immigrants or newcomers adjust to new environments, they are predictive of individuals’ psychosocial well-­being. Much of the effects work has examined the role that media play on the acculturation process finding potential positive correlations between American media exposure (Moon and Park 2007) and negative impacts of ethnic media on intergroup interactions (Raman and Harwood 2016). Other studies have identified perceived reality, interpersonal ­experience, acculturation needs (Raman and Harwood 2016), personal identity gratifications (Chen and Hanasono 2016), and quality of host (Raman and Harwood 2016) as significant mediating variable between exposure to mainstream media and an individuals’ acculturation. One of the critiques of acculturation theory is that it “fail[s] to take into account an ­individual’s capacity in sustaining intricate diversified identities” (Pang and Wang 2020). Croucher and Kramer’s (2017) cultural fusion theory attempts to capture the degree to which immigrants sustain their minority status, but also engages the degree to which dominant cultures are influenced by foreigners. Critical scholarship emphasizes the ways in which structure shapes reality and creates meaning which have meaningful implications for understanding the negotiations immigrants may make when adjusting to a dominant culture; however, the data derived from empirical acculturation studies reveal insight into the role that an individual’s needs and interpersonal experiences inform their agency and help them navigate their personal adaptation process. Findings also yield insight into the impact that dominant structures play on an individual’s psychosocial development and well-­being.

Critical Media Effects Framework The theory that is most closely aligned with critical intercultural communication is the Critical Media Effects Framework. Ramasubramanian and Banjo (2020) have critiqued existing ­intergroup communication theories for their lack of attention to the role that critical concepts such as power, intersectionality and agency plays in group affiliation and how individuals view themselves, and their group in relation to others. These very aims are ensconced in the ­critical/ quantitative conceptual framework of critical media effects, which will be incorporated below to guide our articulation of opportunities for inter-­methodological pursuits. In alignment with critical approaches, more broadly, the Critical Media Effects (CME) Framework suggests that by focusing on the social, cultural, political, and technological contexts that influence experiences, in part, by being increasingly sophisticated in how intersectionality is considered, researchers will be better equipped to address challenges to participants’ power and agency (Ramasubramanian and Banjo 2020).

Types of Critical Quantitative Intercultural Research Studies Critical Experimental Design The experimental method involves examining how participation in specific conditions p ­ roduces concrete outcomes (Baxter and Babbie 2003). Participants are randomly assigned to specific social and material situations in order to establish their causal outcomes. Experiments can be



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used to examine how cultural ideas and messages may be influencing individuals’ social ­orientations toward one another. For example, in one experiment, Banjo (2013) sought to better understand how co-­viewing (i.e. consuming media content with others) Black-­oriented films could influence the social attitudes Black viewers perceived others to orient toward them. This experiment randomly assigned Black participants to one of two co-­viewing conditions. Participants either co-­viewed a film solely around other Black people (i.e. all-­Black condition) or they co-­viewed the film with both Black and White others (i.e. mixed condition). This latter condition included White individuals in order to examine the potential for what is referred to as an audience effect, or the heightened potential to perceive bias toward an ingroup when considering message exposure on a particularly vulnerable audience (e.g. a socially distant outgroup; Gunther and Schmitt 2004). Participants were exposed to clips from either the film ATL or Diary of a Mad Black Woman. These films were chosen based on formative research indicating that the population of interest identified these as the most recent “Black films” that differed by genre (a drama and a comedy, respectively). Results indicated these films were perceived by Black participants to produce more negative attitudes among White people about Black people when the films were viewed in a mixed co-­viewing condition. As such, evidence was observed of a perceived audience effect, wherein the manipulation of a viewing situation could produce perceptions of cultural stigma pertaining to a marginalized community, even when the messages, themselves, were targeted toward that community. In another experiment, Banjo et al. (2015) sought to examine how co-­viewing conditions could influence, among other perceptions, the perceived connection participants had with characters in a Black-­oriented television program (i.e. The Boondocks). Each participant was randomly assigned to watch an episode of the program with two confederates (i.e. one male and one female) that were either of a racial ingroup or a racial outgroup. All participants were either Black or White. Black study participants were observed to experience significantly greater perceived similarity and identification with the media characters when they co-­viewed with the ingroup rather than the outgroup. No such effect was observed among the White study participants. As a result, these studies demonstrate that the social and cultural identity composition of those in one’s environment can dramatically influence how media use is experienced. Moreover, it can influence how we experience our own identity. In general, pursuit of empirically verified cultural transformation techniques necessitates examinations of cultural phenomena and their outcomes. Research investigating the capacity of such phenomena to influence the hearts, minds, and actions of individuals is necessarily an investigation of a causal process, which notably requires experimental verification. The goal of seeking out transformation requires the incorporation of researchers’ and advocates’ full set of tools. A concerted engagement of experimental methods by critical theorists can influence the assumptions, motivations, and methods by which such systematic observations are made.

Critical Quantitative Survey Design In general, quantitative surveys are utilized to understand how various phenomena statistically relate to one another (Baxter and Babbie 2003). They provide opportunities to assess links between various experiences and perceptions that have implications for understanding broad phenomena within a chosen population. For example, Ramasubramanian et al. (2017) investigated how Indian Americans’ exposure to varied media forms could predict concrete social identity perceptions, as well as participants’ own self-­concept. Specifically, participants reported on their exposure to American mainstream media (i.e. popular print, film, television and online outlets in the United States) and exposure to relatively more ethnic media related to this social group (i.e. popular print, film, television and online outlets originating in India). Though exposure to both of these types of media were associated with one another, only exposure to

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ethnic media was associated with increases in ethnic pride, and tendencies to perform ­ethnically oriented behaviors (e.g. language use, dietary habits, etc.). Exposure to mainstream media, on the other hand, was associated with decreases in self-­esteem for the Indian-­American participants. As a result, evidence is provided indicating the intercultural influences of ethnically divergent routine media use. In another survey emphasizing intercultural dynamics, Yang et al. (2008), sought to e­ xamine how exposure to popular American media could be associated with potentially divergent outcomes for two ethnically diverse Asian identities. Specifically, routine consumption of this media, due to its prominent themes of excess and opulence in America, was predicted to ­negatively influence perceptions about the affordances of society for those who lived in South Korea and India. The expectation was that rampant materialism and wealth demonstrations in American media, relative to other cultural media systems, could create circumstances that produce perceptions of relative deprivation and subsequent dissatisfaction with participants’ own society. Evidence was observed that recurrent exposure to American media was directly associated with dissatisfaction with Indian society by Indians and indirectly associated with dissatisfaction with South Korean society by South Koreans. In the latter case, dissatisfaction was revealed to increase only as a function of whether South Korean use of American media first led them to internalize perceptions of American affluence. As such, evidence of relative ­deprivation processes were observed within both Asian populations, however, the survey data revealed that these parallel phenomena were emerging for different reasons. This study reveals the utility of this methodology to go beyond suggesting relationships regarding intercultural phenomena, but to also be able to parse out how explanations for similar phenomena may differ between those with different cultural identities.

Critical Quantitative Content Analysis Quantitative content analysis is typically undertaken with the goal of counting the prevalence of various message characteristics and determining how those characteristics may be systematically linked with one another (Baxter and Babbie 2003). Very often, such studies will examine how individuals of different backgrounds and identities are proportionately connected to various activities and outcomes. For example, Riles et al. (2018) examined the degree to which race and ethnicity were determinants of the types of relationships (e.g. romantic, work-­related, friendship, acquaintance, etc.) in which characters engaged on prime-­time television. In this design, in addition to assessing raw numbers of the prevalence of various racial identities, equity of representation was also assessed by way of statistically calculating the degree to which specific identities were proportionally connected to specific characteristics across these mass exposure messages. Findings revealed that nearly all (97%) of televised interactions contained a White character and the nearly two-­thirds (65%) of interactions consisted of White characters solely interacting with other White characters. In terms of interactions between ethnic minorities, findings revealed these to be virtually non-­existent when a White character was not also present. When cross-­ ethnic interactions were portrayed, they were disproportionately less intimate and close, and overrepresented as focused on business and other instrumental tasks. This content analysis demonstrates that popular cultural messages in America are not only lacking in diversity, in the extreme, but intercultural contact among ethnic minorities is far from ­equitably prioritized. In a subsequent examination of social identity intersections with mental illness health status in 30 years of popular film, Riles et  al. (2021) observed that nearly all (97%) emphasized ­representations of characters with a mental illness in popular film are of a White character. The vast majority (79%) of those representations are focused on males, a statistically significant overrepresentation of this gender identity with this health identity. Those identified as ­managing mental illness in film are rarely ever children or the elderly, and they are also ­disproportionately associated with indicators of religious identity. These data reveal a number



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of erasures within this multi-­billion-­dollar media industry indicating a symbolic annihilation (Gerbner and Gross 1976) of the intersectional experience of a number of social identities and their management of mental health concerns. Such content patterns could produce feelings of isolation and lead to perceptions that some social identities are more abnormal when they are associated with specific health concerns. Research techniques, like content analysis, hold value for critical theorists in that they can empirically reveal large-­scale patterns of societal inequity that can be used to characterize a broad landscape of social phenomena.

Final Reflections In this chapter, we primarily advocate for the additional inclusion of quantitative methods within critical intercultural communication. Quantitative research techniques that involve the community in measurement formation and development, that conduct member-­checks for statistical observations, and engage in iterative research to assure fidelity to community experiences can serve as vital tools within intercultural communication. Of course, none of this is to insinuate any deficits in value for qualitative critical approaches. Indeed, thick phenomenological descriptions of participants’ experiences and stories are vital for unearthing the most particular manifestations of inequity. A prohibition (even if informal) on particular methodologies, when critical analysis is the goal, is limiting to researchers and to the very public that research is meant to benefit. As suggested by Baez (2007), we must ask ourselves “To what extent does research – any research – question society, to what extent does it offer suggestions for transforming society, and to what extent does it judge itself?” (p. 21). If under-­ utilized research techniques have the capacity to question society, transform it, and judge itself, it is incumbent upon researchers to explore means through which it can be optimized to meet these ends. Therefore, we call for the integration of data-­driven, empirical, quantitative research within critical intercultural communication as a way to address social inequalities and biases in the public sphere. We believe that mixed methods research that strategically triangulates multiple methods can help provide meaningful insights about understanding root causes for structural and societal inequalities. They can also help with designing, assessing, and refining community-­based interventions that can help bring about social transformation.

Acknowledgments The authors thank Emily Riewestahl for her assistance with proof-­reading.

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Culture-­centered Method for Decolonization: Community Organizing to Dismantle Capitalist-­colonial Organizing Mohan Dutta Massey University Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa

Drawing on the dialogue between Marxist and Subaltern Studies theories exploring the interplays of culture and capital in the reproduction of marginalization, the culture-­ centered approach (CCA) attends to the ways in which communicative inequalities are shaped by, and in turn shape, structural inequalities in the distribution of resources (Dutta  2008). Communicative inequalities reflect inequalities in the distribution of infrastructures, architectures, and resources around information, participation, and voice. Subalternity, the condition of being erased, refers to the raced, classed, gendered, colonized margins. The subaltern is continually and violently effaced from discursive spaces, produced as the primitive figure without agency to be acted upon through the racist infrastructures of capitalism and colonialism. The production of the subaltern as primitive, as a category in deficit, forms the basis of the civilizing mission of colonization as whiteness, upholding the values of white culture as universal. Educating the subaltern forms the underlying infrastructure legitimizing the violence of colonial occupation, literally evident in a wide array of practices from the uplifting of Indigenous children by missionaries all the way to military interventions carried out to grab Indigenous land and resources. The capitalist logic of the colonial project is built upon generating profit through extractive habits that mark the culture of the colonized as needing saving, building the rhetorical basis for the ongoing expansion of whiteness. Historically in Communication Studies, the marking of the subaltern as the primitive subject of empowering social change interventions, has shaped the approach to culture. The theoretical registers of communication scholarship, emergent from the encounters of the whiteness of the discipline with the newly independent postcolonial nations of the Global South, were shaped by the Cold War agendas of the US Empire (Dutta  2005). Communication, constructed within the overarching whiteness of liberalism, was constructed as the instrument of enlightenment, securing the newly independent postcolonial nations as markets for US capital and as spaces for geostrategic support for the Empire. The encounter with the Brown/Black bodies of the Global South formed the basis of the emergent theories of communication, reflected in universal articulations of diffusion of innovations and pathways of modernization. The whiteness of the ideology of modernization colonizing the cognitive structure of the discipline constructed communication as a linear instrument for transforming targeted subjects from states of primitiveness to democracy loving consumers participating in the market. The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication, Second Edition. Edited by Thomas K. Nakayama and Rona Tamiko Halualani. © 2024 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2024 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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Communication as an instrument in the Empire’s promotion of democracy and civil society ushered in new markets for US-­based transnational corporations. The neoliberal turn further crystallized this ideology of the market, violently intervening into postcolonial spaces to assert the hegemony of the market, often through the deployment of direct violence in the form of supporting coups and dictatorships. Cultural responses to the neoliberal turn have offered participatory models and community-­ based models constructed in the ambits of the free market. Participation, incorporated as the method for securing community consent, has been incorporated by neoliberal financial structures such as the World Bank (WB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) to secure the consent of communities, often through manipulation and opaque techniques, into development projects consolidating the global reach of techno-­financial capital. Simultaneously, culturalist essentialisms propping up and pushing forth extractive capital across the globe outside of the West have turned to techniques of authoritarian repression, often deploying the language of static cultural values (such as the Asian values narrative deployed by Singapore to legitimize its exploitative and repressive practices). Shaped by the commitments of decolonizing methodologies to undoing the large-­scale harm brought about by the forces of colonialism and capitalism (see Smith 2021), cultural centering as method continually turns to voice, embedded within and negotiated in contexts, to co-­construct meanings of health, wellbeing, development, and social justice (Dutta 2018). Working alongside the margins, culture-­centered co-­constructions interrogate the workings of power, explore the necessary strategies for co-­creating voice infrastructures at the margins, and work in solidarity through these voice infrastructures to build strategies for structural transformation. The presence of the subaltern margins in hegemonic discursive spaces disrupts the taken-­for-­granted assumptions, rendering visible and audible the violence of neocolonialism and neoliberal capitalism that is strategically obfuscated through the hegemonic machineries of communication. Hegemonic approaches to communication, participation and culture are dismantled through the organizing of community voices at the margins, putting forth alternative forms of organizing resources, communities, and economies based on principles of care, mutual support, and community collectivization. In outlining the key threads of method in the CCA, I will draw upon the organizing work of building voice infrastructures at the margins carried out under the umbrella of the Center for Culture-­centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE). Currently based within the contexts of the settler colonial state in Aotearoa New Zealand, CARE began its journey in Singapore a decade ago, seeking to build a register for theorizing community-­led social change at the crossroads of Asia. Many of the over 30 community-­led decolonizing interventions co-­created by the center across over 50 communities in the Asia-­Pacific are organized around exploring the role of voice infrastructures at the margins in organizing for structural transformation, putting forth discursive anchors for social, political, and economic organizing based on principles of love, mutual care and cooperation, community ownership, sovereignty, and collective organizing.

Voice Infrastructures: Community and Agency The CCA as method generates theoretical interventions through the presence of community voices at the margins participating in processes of social change. Theory is emergent from meanings held by communities, and owned by communities in building their conceptual registers to guide the struggles for structural transformation. Theory in other words is embedded within struggles against the interpenetrating forces of colonialism and capitalism. The processes of co-­creating voice infrastructures involve building dynamic and continually shifting advisory groups, attentive to the erasures and inviting in reflexively the margins of the constituted formations. These advisory groups participate in learning together about the broader



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structures that constitute their marginalization, situating these structures in relationship to their lived experiences, and mapping out research designs embedded within co-­constructive ethnographies examining the marginalizing processes. The narratives emergent from the various threads of the ethnographic work are made sense of through collaborative analyses carried out by advisory groups, activists, and academics. These sense-­making processes shape the emergent interventions, which often involve PhotoVoice, digital storytelling, and community-­ led campaigns and mobilization for structural transformation.

Community Advisory Groups Community advisory groups comprise community members at the raced, classed, gendered margins, attending closely to the experiences of marginalization produced by colonization, migration, and racism. Drawing upon their lived struggles against the intertwined forces of colonialism and capitalism, advisory groups develop theories of social change, attending to the structures that constitute violence, suffering, and risks to health and wellbeing. Communicative norms of the hegemonic structures are critically interrogated, attending to the processes of erasure that work within contexts. Critical collective analyses of the processes of erasure constituted in the networks of power and control shape the co-­construction of strategies for building voice infrastructures in communities. Advisory groups in culture-­centered interventions emerge as spaces for practicing democratic pedagogies at the grassroots, developing critical analyses of the policies that shape development, and articulating frameworks for laying claims to development from the margins (Dutta et al. 2020). The formation of the advisory groups is shaped by community grassroots workers, peer leaders, and community researchers living in the community, and with lived experiences of negotiating the intersecting forms of marginalization. That communities are unequal spaces, constituted in raced, classed, gendered, colonial logics shapes the organizing work of the CCA, attending to the work of listening for erasures. For instance, negotiating the repressive workplace policies in Singapore, community advisory groups of foreign domestic workers create the “Respect our rights” campaign, foregrounding the discursive register of labor rights (www.facebook.com/FDWRespectOurRights). The concept of labor rights, embedded within the empirical context of the lived experiences of foreign domestic workers, disrupts the erasure punctuated by the state, based on the framing of rights as Western. The voices of foreign domestic workers at the margins of Singapore’s extreme neoliberalism disrupt and dismantle the hegemonic culturalist narrative of “Asian values” crafted by Singapore’s elite (Dutta 2019).

Co-­constructive Ethnographies The advisory groups are built through immersive participant observations in communities, with academics participating in communities in the day-­to-­day life of community work. Participation and observation are intertwined, closely attending to the textures of power within communities, the inequalities in the distribution of power, and the inequalities in the distribution of communication resources. Guided by the commitments to listening to  the voices of those at the margins of communities, the ethnographic framework of the  culture-­centered approach is emergent from within community struggles, shaped by the participation of community members in the sense-­making process. The co-­constructive process of participation mobilizes transformative action by disrupting the whiteness of hegemonic communication theory. In-­depth interviews as dialogues are built on the commitment to listen to articulations that are erased through the violence of the structures, attending closely to the traces of erasures and

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absences. For instance, Basu’s (2010) ethnographic fieldwork with sex workers organized as collectives of resistance de-­centers the hegemonic rationality of HIV/AIDS, turning to sex worker agency as the basis for securing health and wellbeing. The alternative rationality of health is tied to the everyday and collective forms of resistance to the power and control that constitute the lives of sex workers. The construction of health as impossibility decenters the hegemonic cultural assumptions that constitute HIV/AIDS prevention, shaped by individualistic behaviorism. Falnikar’s (2018) ethnographic participant observations, immersed in villages experiencing the onslaught of the agrarian crisis in India and the ongoing cycles of farmer suicides, foregrounds the voices of farming widows that disrupt the hegemonic narrative of growth-­driven agriculture as development (see also Falnikar and Dutta 2019). Tan’s (2017) ethnographic fieldwork with workers in factories poisoned by exposure to Benzene creates discursive registers for foregrounding the violence scripted into the neoliberal organizing of political economy in China. In a multi-­year culture-­centered co-­construction of community-­ led heart health prevention solutions among African American communities in Indiana, US, the voicing of everyday racism as the fundamental risk to heart health builds the anchor for anti-­racist action to secure heart health (Dutta et al. 2017). In culture-­centered interventions emergent from within communities at the margins, the problem to be explored emerges from within the everyday articulations of struggles, through the participation of those at the margins. This is a critical element that sets the CCA apart from participatory methods such as participatory action research (PAR) and community-­based participation research (CBPR). In the dominant approaches to participation, whiteness is kept intact as participation is scripted into organizing under the problem configurations that are determined by the networks of state, non-­governmental organizations, foundations, and privatized capital (Dutta 2018). The participation of communities at the margins in dialoguing on the challenges to health and wellbeing, beginning with the question “What does health mean to you?” shapes the emergent research design. For instance, the participation of Santalis, an indigenous community in Eastern India on identifying the challenges to health foregrounds the spirits that enter human bodies when trees are cut (Dutta  2004). The participation of Muslims in Aotearoa New Zealand in the backdrop of the Christchurch white supremacist attacks foregrounds white supremacy as the fundamental threat to health and wellbeing, constructing health communication as anti-­racist resistance.

PhotoVoice, Digital Storytelling, and Creative Expression For communities at the margins, telling stories through images interrupts the communicative strategies deployed by the hegemonic structures (Elers et al. 2021). The erasures of the subaltern margins are intertwined with the rendering invisible of subaltern claims to health and wellbeing. Through their participation in creating images, subaltern communities participate in disrupting the invisibilities crafted into the hegemonic structures (Dutta et  al.  2013). Images disrupt the hegemonic forms and norms of communication, building visual registers for witnessing exploitative practices and forms of oppression. The articulation of the everyday struggles with voice, health, and wellbeing is narrated through images and visual stories. For instance, the participation of foreign domestic workers in Singapore in documenting the everyday violence of exploitation through visual storytelling creates entry points for rendering visible the overarching structures of migrant labor organizing (www.facebook.com/ FDWRespectOurRights/photos/1300542289981927). The visual registers render visible the communicative erasures, communicative inversions, and strategies of dehumanization that legitimize the practices of exploitation. The overarching strategies, visual guidelines, and themes are co-­created by advisory group members, guided by the solutions they would like to see to the problems they experience. For instance, Bangladeshi



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construction workers negotiating hyper-­precarious working conditions narrate health as intertwined with food security, documenting through images, digital stories, and poetry their struggles with hunger (www.facebook.com/Migrant-­Workers-Rights-SG-1557463061204402). Placing their messages about the hunger experienced by low-wage workers in public spaces, on transit systems and wrapped around buses disrupts the hegemonic silence around the poor quality of food available to migrant workers, the problems of chronic hunger, and the effects of poor food quality on workplace accidents. Similarly, in the organizing strategies crafted by households experiencing and negotiating poverty, building digital stories centering the experiences of poverty disrupt the erasures crafted by the authoritarian state (www.facebook.com/ No-­Singaporeans-­Left-­Behind-­1703496076595132).

Community-­led Advocacy and Activism The CCA places the theorizing of the processes underlying communicative inequalities amid the embodied community-­led advocacy and activism for structural transformation. Community advisory groups build the frameworks for activism to transform structures, co-­created around the problems they articulate within the context of their everyday experiences of health and wellbeing (Dillard et al. 2018). The questions, “What does health mean to you?” “What are your challenges in securing health?” guide advisory groups toward the problems that shape their negotiations of health. Through ongoing and iterative dialogues, advisory group members narrow down on the problem, and co-­create strategies for addressing the problem. The strategies identify and draw upon existing resources, co-­construct ways to disrupt the hegemonic structures, and seek out connections that offer solidarity. The anchoring of decision-­making in community democracy turns to various methods of communities to vote on the strategies for organizing social change. Grassroots-­driven, community-­led and community-­owned campaigns invert the dominant constructions of communication campaigns, constituted within the logics of power. Advisory groups create communication frameworks that talk back to the dominant structures, interrupting the hegemonic cultural logics through the presence of community voice. Consider for instance the organizing work of advisory groups in Highbury, a community in Aotearoa New Zealand negotiating intersecting forms of disenfranchisement, in growing kai (food in the form of vegetable gardens) as spaces for intergenerational healing (www.facebook. com/ichoosehighbury). The community-­led, community-­designed, and community-­owned campaign, co-­created with support of academic and production teams at CARE, builds discursive registers that disrupt the hegemonic colonial narratives about Highbury. The narratives constructed through storyboards and photos taken by advisory group members reflect Highbury as a community anchored in aroha (love) and in intergenerational community support. The voices of communities at the margins building campaigns from the margins resist the hegemonic narratives crafted by the powerful, placing the power of storytelling in the hands of communities at the margins. The voice infrastructures co-­created in the form of community advisory groups serve as the basis for building diverse registers for voice that result in advocacy interventions and activist strategies for structural transformations. The presences of the voices of the subaltern margins disrupt and dismantle the hegemonic structures of whiteness and the elite structures of power and control within cultures that deploy silencing strategies.

Methodological Innovations Ongoing experiments with the CCA in diverse contexts of marginalization across the globe attend to the role of voice infrastructures at the margins as the bases of structural transformations (Sastry et  al.  2021). Vital to the experiments with method are questions around the

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processes of erasure and the communicative processes through which these erasures can be challenged. The focus of the CCA on resisting hegemonic structures attends to the frameworks for building and sustaining the infrastructures for voice amid the targeted attacks by powerful political and economic interests. The global turn toward authoritarianism across diverse contexts renders precarious the diverse voice infrastructures built at the margins. The methodological innovations with the CCA outlined here attend to ways of resisting the intertwined forces of state authoritarianism and capitalist power.

Margins of the Margins The theoretical concept “margins of the margins” in the CCA attends to the inequalities that constitute communities. The ongoing processes of erasure within communities are organized along the constitutive structures of gender, social class, caste, race, migration status, and forms of colonization. The guiding questions, “Which voices are missing from the discursive space?” “Which voices are being placed at the peripheries?” and “How can we invite these voices in?” serve as the anchors to building spaces for radical democracy that are attentive to the multiple layers of erasure. Co-­creating habits of listening within advisory groups through pedagogies of democracy drive the building of invitational spaces for dialogue that are rooted in dialogues with the erasures. Whereas on one hand, the anchors for organizing to build registers for transformative social change craft identities that are strategically essentialist, the sustained attention to the voices that are erased by the strategic identities foster openings for challenging the power inequalities within advisory groups. The co-­creation of norms for participation within advisory groups is guided by the attention to the processes of erasure of diverse voices at the margins. Salient here is the interrogation of inequalities tied to socioeconomic status, disrupting the forms of identity-­based organizing that erase class. That culture and capitalism are intertwined shapes the methodological turn that attends to class, situating it in dialogue with gendered, raced, colonized, migrant identities.

Body on the Line The CCA critically interrogates and resists the extractive practices of knowledge generation that treat subaltern contexts and communities as sources of data, to be encoded and then reported in the form of research articles far removed from the lived struggles of subaltern communities (see Dutta 2022). Habits of colonization mired in whiteness are reproduced in studies claiming postcolonial and decolonizing positions, extracting from the margins to reproduce casteist, classed, gendered claims to knowledge while reproducing marginalization (Dutta 2020a, b). The colonizing ideology of theory work as extraction from subaltern communities is resisted through the concept of the “body on the line,” placing the body of the academic in friendships with the margins. These friendships are long-­term, sustained, and built on the everyday support that is mutually constituted in the struggles against the structures. Theories of health and communication emerge from within the embodied struggles in solidarity. For instance, the placing of the body on the line amid Indigenous land occupations decenter the whiteness of health communication, placing health amid land and sovereignty over land. The “What we say matters” campaign, emergent from the organizing of an advisory group of community members from the iwi of Ngati Kauwhata resisting colonial land grab, situates the academic body in resistance against the actual everyday practices of colonial expansion (www. facebook.com/whatwesaymatters). The claims to health are rooted in the claims to sovereignty, expressed in the occupation of land. Indigenous resistance against the extractive forces of neocolonial capitalism offer conceptual foundations for theorizing the body on the line.



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Figure 28.1  Community-­led vegetable garden in Highbury, Aotearoa New Zealand, led by Māori, Pasifika, and migrant communities.

The claims to land as the basis of growing food turn to ways of growing food, built upon knowledge held by local and Indigenous communities (see Figure 28.1). Similarly, the body on the line organized on the conceptual framework of social justice resists the structure of the authoritarian state. Consider for instance the culture-­centered solidarities crafted by academics, activists, and transgender sex workers in Singapore under the umbrella of CARE (see www.facebook.com/thestilettoalliancesg, Dutta and Mahtani 2020). The repressive violence deployed by the authoritarian regime, replete with the rhetoric of Asian values and elite discourses upholding the oppressive practices deployed by the state, are resisted and dismantled through the presence of the voices of transgender sex workers in the discursive space (see Figure  28.2). The everyday enactments of agency as resistance to the hegemonic structure co-­create infrastructures for voices of transgender women through solidarities. The theorizing of the agency of transgender sex workers in Singapore emerges from within the enactments of agency by transgender sex workers and their participation in processes of structural transformation. These processes of participation dismantle the culturally essentialist articulations of the “Asian turn,” claiming universal human rights as the basis of laying claims to culture.

Preparing Against Repression When voice infrastructures at the margins speak, the hegemonic forms of power deploy various strategies of silencing. From communicative inversions and stigmatizing campaigns to threats of violence to the direct deployment of violence as silencing strategy, power reproduces itself and maintains its hold through the ongoing work of erasure. Simultaneously, structures deploy various strategies of co-­option, seeking to neutralize the radical politics of transformation emergent from the margins. Crafting engagement strategies that serve the extractive interests of capital is one example of the colonizing responses of the structure (Dutta and Elers 2020). In other instances, challenging the legitimacy of the voices from the margins makes up the strategy of repression. The articulation of the everyday challenges with limited resources voiced by those experiencing poverty is denied by the questioning of the authenticity of the narrative.

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Figure 28.2  An image from the Stiletto Alliance campaign “Accept. Adapt. Respect.”

Across the globe, extreme neoliberal capitalism has turned to techniques of violence to silence resistance voiced from the margins (Dutta 2020b). When migrant workers foreground their everyday experiences of hunger (see Figure 28.3), the authoritarian regime in Singapore deploys a wide array of tactics of surveillance and repression. Workers discuss being monitored by security and police. Documenting these strategies of surveillance shape the preparations of communicative strategies for being heard. For instance, amid the COVID-­19 outbreaks in dormitories housing low-­wage migrant workers in Singapore, documenting the violence of the poor housing structures is negotiated amid the techniques of state surveillance (Dutta 2020b). The academic team collaborates with migrant workers in developing processes for going underground, anonymizing images, erasing identifiers from videos, and speaking with journalists to highlight the poor living conditions. Strategies build rhythms of visibility and invisibility so issues can be foregrounded, followed by periods of invisibility from the discursive registers. constructing in-­ depth interviews and surveys, and co-­ writing white papers voice the Co-­ ­everyday struggles amid COVID-­19, brought about by the crowded living conditions for hyper-­precarious migrant workers in Singapore. Academics working on and with the CCA must prepare themselves for various forms of repression targeting them, from harassment carried out by managers in universities, to harassment by fascist hate groups, to threats of violence and incarceration carried out by authoritarian states (Dutta 2021; Dutta et al. 2019). In Turkey, the articulation of resistance to the state has resulted in the incarceration of academics. In Brazil, the inauguration of neoliberal reforms in the 1970s witnessed the incarceration and murders of academics resisting the right-­wing forces. In Indonesia, an US-­sponsored coup resulted in large-­scale violence, including sexual violence, resulting in genocide (Pitaloka and Dutta 2019). In India, the organizing structures of the hate-­driven regime has targeted academics and activists, incarcerating them. In the United States, the attack on critical race theory by white supremacist political and capital interests by framing anti-­racist academics and activists as communist is a reminder of the techniques



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Figure 28.3  Visual advertisements documenting hunger placed on buses and public transport systems.

of Cold War repression. The attacks by white supremacists targeting culture-­centered scholarship communicatively inverts the anti-­racist scholarship of the CCA, labeling it as reverse racist. Official information act requests and email campaigns are organized targeting CARE. In authoritarian regimes, carrying out the work of the CCA has resulted in audits, bogus accusations of financial irregularity, the targeting of early career researchers, and the systematic harassment directed at early career researchers working with the CCA (Dutta et al. 2019). What is vital in these processes of repression is the co-­option of radical performing academics claiming to do cultural studies work or postcolonial studies work to circulate the lies through the offering of rewards (Dutta 2020a; Dutta et al. 2019). When the language of activism is framed within academia as a seduction for radical posturing to lay claim to institutional structures and funding mechanisms (see for instance Morris and Hjort 2012), it is complicit in the reproduction of power, mobilizing the structures of colonialism, neoliberal capitalism, and whiteness. Culture is deployed as a category that marks difference, organized to serve the interpenetrating interests of colonialism and capitalism. Worse, culture is worked into opportunist and competitive games for securing institutional power, mistaking institutional power as counter-­hegemony. Academic activism as a register for transformative politics in the CCA resists the organizing logics of culture that reproduce power. Maintaining critical suspicion

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toward the politics of radical posturing and its relationship with institutional rules, often through the performance of extractive high theory that props up authoritarian repression as difference, is an essential element in building safeguards. To resist the various forms of targeted attacks calls for building broad networks of solidarities with activists, community organizers, community researchers, advocates, and communities at the margins. These solidarities both offer safeguards as well as distribute the labor of the resistance. For instance, when the organizing work of CARE was targeted by the university-­state instruments of an authoritarian regime, the already existing solidarities with activists, advocates, and opposition politicians offered the much-­needed safeguards. When a senior legal counsel offered their support pro-­ bono, the structures retreated. More recently, collaborations with activist groups such as the Aotearoa Alliance of Progressive Indians and The Humanism Project strengthened the capacity of CARE to raise complaints to the New Zealand Media Council against disinformation and hate circulated by a Hindutva platform in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Creating and Sustaining Connections Connections form the foundations of culture-­centered processes organized to bring about structural transformations. These connections are sustained through a commitment to authenticity, recognizing the contingent and often fractured nature of friendships amid struggles, and yet seeking to co-­create spaces for mutual trust. One of the key elements in creating connections is to explore points of mutual support in struggles. For instance, in the struggles of communities experiencing poverty in Singapore, seeking connections with hyper-­ precarious low-­ wage migrant workers builds a broader register for resistance. Similarly, connections between struggles of African Americans in the United States and struggles of indigenous communities build registers for dismantling the combined forces of capitalism and slavery. In the resistance work of culture-­centered organizing against the hate politics targeting Muslims carried out by Hindutva in India and in the diaspora, connections across spaces strengthen the capacities for resistance. Similarly, the capacity of the CARE team to carry on the anti-­racist work challenging Hindutva is sustained through networks with activists and movements globally challenging Hindutva. Connecting across spaces builds the space for mutual learning, drawing on strategies, comparing strategies, and organizing strategies toward processes of social change. That the processes of marginalization across contexts are interconnected shapes the pedagogy of connection, looking for common threads that point toward universals in theorizing power and control. Recognizing that the overarching forces of extraction and exploitation are connected across spaces shapes the methodological work of forging connections, rooted in place.

Discussion In conclusion, this chapter offers an overview of the key methodological tenets of the CCA. The CCA, emergent from within the context of socialist struggles in settler colonial, postcolonial societies reworked through the organizing logics of neoliberal capitalism, attends to the question, “How do we co-­create voice infrastructures at the margins?” Driven by the conceptual framework that connects communicative inequalities to material inequalities, the CCA seeks to listen to the voices of the unheard. The participation of the subaltern in co-­creating spaces for pedagogy in the everyday habits of democracy (Spivak  2005) mobilizes toward structural transformation. Co-­creating advisory groups that are iteratively embedded within engaged public ethnography exploring the processes and sites of erasure shapes the research design. The emergent, dynamic, and contingent research design is tied to the articulation of problems as seen by those at the margins in communities.



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The participation of the margins in co-­creating the research design, the gathering of information, and making sense of information shapes the organizing for social change. The knowledge of the organizing structures, the challenges to health, and the strategies for securing health shape community participation in decision-­making to create campaigns, images, and narratives that drive social change. That the broader structures of colonialism, capitalism, and whiteness that threaten health and wellbeing at the margins need to be resisted shapes the activism of culture-­centered interventions emergent from the margins. Listening to the “margins of the margins” attends to the unequal structures of communities, turning toward inviting in voices that are continually erased. Habits of reflexivity and collective accountability explore collectively the spaces and processes of erasure. The decolonizing basis of the CCA is as much an intervention into the extractive logics of the academe as it is a register for organizing in communities to enact sovereignty. Agitating toward disrupting the erasures scripted into the academe transforms the contours of knowledge, creating decolonizing registers for putting forth knowledge claims rooted in struggles for sovereignty, connected to the earth and the ecosystem (Na’puti  2019; Na’puti and Cruz  2022). The concept “body on the line” guides culture-­centered scholarship toward building authentic relationships with communities, placed amid struggles, and facing structures in resistance. The stitching together of strategies of resistance generates the theories of resistance against the structures of colonialism, capitalism, and whiteness. Body on the line disrupts health communication as individualized reductionism that turns to messages of behavior modification, instead connecting organizing for health at the margins to organizing for land rights, organizing to safeguard water and ecosystems, organizing against capitalism, organizing to grow quality food, organizing to challenge racism, and organizing to secure access to the fundamental resources of preventive and health services. Culture-­centered method turns to creating safeguards based on the recognition that power structures will deploy a plethora of strategies to silence the voice infrastructures that are co-­created at the margins. Creating safeguarding strategies sustains the structures of resistance. These safeguarding strategies co-­create through community dialogues the interplays of voicing and remaining invisible, attending to timing, spaces of articulation, and registers for solidarities across different struggles and across spaces. Building connections with advocates, activists, and diverse struggles broadens the infrastructure of resistance. Legal resources are necessary for both sustaining the voice infrastructures as well as for safeguarding the communities, community organizers, activists, and academics participating in the struggle. Amid the ongoing and accelerated onslaught of extractive capitalism, platform capitalism, and data colonialism on life forms and sovereignty across Indigenous and local communities globally, the future of culture-­centered scholarship lies in crafting methods of struggles for radical democracy rooted in anti-­colonial theoretical registers as the basis of decolonization.

References Basu, A. (2010). Communicating health as an impossibility: sex work, HIV/AIDS, and the dance of hope and hopelessness. Southern Communication Journal 75 (4): 413–432. Dillard, S., Anaele, A., Kumar, R., and Jamil, R. (2018). Bridging theory to practice: utilizing the culture-­ centered approach (CCA) to address gaps in community based participatory research (CBPR) processes. Athens Journal of Health 5 (3): 175. Dutta, M.J. (2004). The unheard voices of Santalis: communicating about health from the margins of India. Communication Theory 14 (3): 237–263. Dutta, M.J. (2005). Theory and practice in health communication campaigns: a critical interrogation. Health Communication 18 (2): 103–122.

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Dutta, M.J. (2008). Communicating Health: A Culture-­Centered Approach. Polity. Dutta, M.J. (2018). Culture-­centered approach in addressing health disparities: communication infrastructures for subaltern voices. Communication Methods and Measures 12 (4): 239–259. Dutta, M.J. (2019). What is alternative modernity? Decolonizing culture as hybridity in the Asian turn. Asia Pacific Media Educator 29 (2): 178–194. Dutta, M. (2020a). Social change communication as academic-­activist-­community partnerships. In: Communication, Culture and Social Change (ed. M.J. Dutta), 327–376. Palgrave Macmillan. Dutta, M.J. (2020b). COVID-­19, authoritarian neoliberalism, and precarious migrant work in Singapore: structural violence and communicative inequality. Frontiers in Communication 5: 58. Dutta, M.J. (2021). Surveillance Capital and Resistance. Civility, Free Speech, and Academic Freedom in Higher Education: Faculty on the Margins. Taylor and Francis. Dutta, M.J. (2022). Activist labour and academia as extraction. http://culture-­ centered.blogspot. com/2022/02/activist-­labour-­and-­academia-­as.html (accessed 11 February 2022). Dutta, M.J. and Elers, S. (2020). Public relations, indigeneity and colonization: indigenous resistance as dialogic anchor. Public Relations Review 46 (1): 101852. Dutta, M.J. and Mahtani, R. (2020). Locating the health of transgender sexworkers in Singapore from the margins: a culture-­ centered approach. https://sites.massey.ac.nz/wp-­ content/uploads/ sites/68/2020/07/CARE-­White-­Paper-­Issue-­9-­July-­2020.pdf (accessed 1 January 2022). Dutta, M.J., Anaele, A., and Jones, C. (2013). Voices of hunger: addressing health disparities through the culture-­centered approach. Journal of Communication 63 (1): 159–180. Dutta, M., Sastry, S., Dillard, S. et al. (2017). Narratives of stress in health meanings of African Americans in Lake County, Indiana. Health Communication 32 (10): 1241–1251. Dutta, M., Pandi, A.R., Zapata, D. et al. (2019). Critical health communication method as embodied practice of resistance: culturally centering structural transformation through struggle for voice. Frontiers in Communication 67. Dutta, M.J., Moana-­Johnson, G., and Elers, C. (2020). COVID-­19 and the pedagogy of culture-­ centered community radical democracy: a response from Aotearoa New Zealand. Journal of Communication Pedagogy 3: 11–19. Elers, P., Elers, S., Dutta, M.J., and Torres, R. (2021). Applying the culture-­centered approach to visual storytelling methods. Review of Communication 21 (1): 33–43. Falnikar, A. (2018). Voices of the farmers in agrarian distress: grounded theorizing for communication for social change. Doctoral dissertation. National University of Singapore. Falnikar, A. and Dutta, M.J. (2019). Voices of farmer-­widows amid the agrarian crisis in India. Women’s Studies in Communication 42 (4): 432–451. Morris, M. and Hjort, M. (eds.) (2012). Creativity and Academic Activism: Instituting Cultural Studies, vol. 1. Hong Kong University Press. Na’puti, T.R. (2019). Speaking of indigeneity: navigating genealogies against erasure and# RhetoricSoWhite. Quarterly Journal of Speech 105 (4): 495–501. Na’puti, T.R. and Cruz, J.M. (2022). Mapping interventions: toward a decolonial and indigenous praxis across communication subfields. Communication, Culture and Critique 15 (1): 1–20. Pitaloka, D. and Dutta, M.J. (2019). Embodied memories and spaces of healing: culturally-­centering voices of the survivors of 1965  Indonesian mass killings. In: Communicating for Social Change (eds. M.J. Dutta and D. Zapata), 333–357. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan. Sastry, S., Stephenson, M., Dillon, P., and Carter, A. (2021). A meta-­theoretical systematic review of the culture-­ centered approach to health communication: toward a refined, “nested” model. Communication Theory 31 (3): 380–421. Smith, L.T. (2021). Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. Bloomsbury Publishing. Spivak, G.C. (2005). Scattered speculations on the subaltern and the popular. Postcolonial Studies 8 (4): 475–486. Tan, E.L. (2017). Benzene poisoning of migrant workers in China: The challenges and the fight. Doctoral dissertation. National University of Singapore.

Part IV

Critical Topics in Critical Intercultural Communication Studies

Introduction to Part IV The world of critical intercultural communication studies is vast and wondrous, filled with works and projects that pursue personal, moving, and consequential topics and specific urgencies with stakes to people and the world. This section gifts us with many views and angles into this world. These views and ventures into certain trajectories and pathways are proffered by scholars Godfried Asante, Kristin L. Drogos and Vincent N. Pham, Yea-Wen Chen and Brandi Lawless, Santhosh Chandrashekar, Richie Neil Hao, Tina M. Harris and Meghan S. Sanders, Tiara R. Na’puti and Riley I. Taitingfong, Etsuko Kinefuchi, Josue David Cisneros and Ana Lisa Eberline, Isra Ali, LeiLani Nishime and Elizabeth S. Parks, Priya Raman and Deanna Fassett, Sachi Sekimoto, and Melissa Steyn and Cuthbeth Tagwirei. Together, these chapters reflect the world-­making and future-­building – within and beyond the academy – of critical intercultural communication studies. We invite you to engage the following questions that emerge from this section’s chapters: • From a larger view, what problematics of culture and power are engaged in critical intercultural communication studies? To what degree and from which vantage points and positionalities? Which problematics still need to be touched upon and pursued? • What aspects of power and agency have been uncovered and in terms of which problematics? Which have not and why not? • Which threads connect (even loosely) our critical intercultural communication projects? Which ones distinguish these projects so as to not lose the power of knowledge construction around situated projects? • What threads and distinguishing markers help to inform a set of dynamic commitments for critical intercultural communication studies? Or is such a set of dynamic commitments even needed for our work? Is the ever-­growing world of critical intercultural communication studies meant to be a collection of projects that are in connection and disconnection as well as conversation and confrontation?

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Homophobic Ghana? A Critical Intercultural Communication Intervention Godfried Asante San Diego State University

Introduction Western media discourses have resolutely portrayed “sub-­Saharan Africa” as the place of excessive homophobia without critical attention to macro, meso, and micro contexts that incubate homophobic onslaughts in different parts of the continent (Asante  2020; Chávez  2013; Ndashe 2013; Tettey 2016). In 2011, Scott Mills, a British TV presenter and Radio 1 DJ host traveled to Uganda as a presenter for the BBC produced program: The World’s Worst Place to be Gay? (BBC 2011). In the documentary, several interviews were conducted, supposedly to harness the views of lay people in Uganda. For instance, Mills interviewed Ugandan school children who expressed the Judeo-­Christian view that homosexuality is an abomination to God. Additionally, he interviewed a newspaper editor who insisted that homosexuality reduces the human lifespan by 24 years. Finally, Mills interviewed a young lesbian who mentioned that she was raped in an attempt to cure her of her lesbianism. After the show, Uganda (and by extension, “Africa”) facetiously became the poster child of homophobia in the world. Before Uganda, Egypt was the center of international outrage when in 2001 the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) reported that 52  men had been arrested aboard a floating gay nightclub called the Queen Boat. What became known as the “Cairo 52” was later featured in a documentary by Stonewall Productions, narrated by Jeneane Garofalo, entitled Dangerous Living: Coming Out in the Developing World. Besides documentaries, newspaper articles consistently portray a monolithic picture of anti-­LGBT violence in sub-­Saharan Africa. In an article in the New  York Times with the title, “The Brutality of Corrective Rape,” Carter (2013) explained in explicit detail the horrific practice of corrective rape in South Africa, where both gay men and lesbians are raped supposedly to “cure” them. In a continent that is still grappling with its postcolonial national identities and the concomitant fragility of national sovereignty in the current neocolonial and neoliberal era, these mediated narratives of human rights abuses unwittingly perpetuate colonial evolutionary tropes that represent “Africa” and “Africans” as primitive, evolving, and pre modern (Hoad 2000; Mbembe  2001). Such representational frames constitute glocal biopolitical dynamics that influence how social hierarchies are inscribed during intra/intercultural encounters around contentious issues such as LGBT rights in formerly colonized nations. As a critical intercultural communication scholar, not only have I remained skeptical about the mis/representations of queer “Africans” in such documentaries and news stories, I also The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication, Second Edition. Edited by Thomas K. Nakayama and Rona Tamiko Halualani. © 2024 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2024 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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embody its concomitant primordial meanings that suggests an ever-­evolving humanity as Black/African, and queer (Fanon 1967; Mbembe 2001). Instead of igniting a deeper reflection on the impact of colonialism, globalization, and neocolonialism on local cultural norms and the reactions to same-­sex sexuality, predominant Western media coverage frames anti-­ LGBT violence particularly across the African continent through what Mbembe (2001) notes as a “negative interpretation.” He asserts that by viewing the continent through “negative interpretation,” “Africa is never seen as possessing things or attributes properly part of human nature . . . it is this primitiveness that makes Africa the world par excellence of all that is incomplete, mutilated and unfinished, its history reduced to a series of setbacks of nature in its quest for humankind” (p. 1). That “Africa,” already a colonial construction of darker-­skinned people, always appears as negation and thus at the periphery of European intimate modernity means a critical approach to intercultural communication is best suited for examining anti-­ LGBT violence in Ghana. In the introduction to the premier critical intercultural communication handbook, Nakayama and Halualani (2012) asserted that a critical perspective allows for the outlining of historical specificity and globalized economic conditions that surround and constitute intercultural contexts because “history, economics and power have always positioned cultural groups members and their identities disproportionally to one another within and across contexts” (p. 25). In this vein, my scholarly approach to critical intercultural communication centers on the role of power/knowledge in constructing subject positions and subjectivities in media representations, institutional policies, laws and documents that are locally produced but globally influenced – what I have theorized elsewhere as processes of “glocalization” (Asante 2016). Here, discourses are neither overdetermined by globalization forces nor do they exist outside of them. Through critical discourse analysis as method and theory (Fairclough 2003), I examine how particular subject positions are constructed and how they in turn influence individual subjectivities. It is on this theoretical background that I draw on critical intercultural communication scholarship to interrogate the glocal inflections in the journalistic reporting of anti-­LGBT violence in Ghana (Asante  2020). Taking a critical perspective reveals illuminating insights into the larger taken for granted aspects of the intersections between heteronormativity, patriarchy, and neoliberal economic policies. My goal is to understand how macro conditions and structures of power (i.e. history, economic, and market forces) play into and share aspects of anti-­LGBT violence. Because simply labeling anti-­LGBT violence as “homophobic” is not only unproductive, it reduces a complex issue to an irrational fear of sexual orientation. Awondo et  al. (2012) contend that there might be different trajectories in the formation of views on “homosexuality” across the African continent. They conclude that more studies are needed to shed light on the “variations that are loosely labeled homophobia in Africa because the homosexual figure can take on such different contours” (p. 160). To further explore such variations is to examine anti-­LGBT violence through intersectionality (Eguchi and Calafell 2019; Yep 2010). My approach to intersectionality implicates what Yep (2010) asserts as thick intersectionalities – “unpacking the lived experiences of and biographies of the persons inhabiting a particular intersection” across time and space. Importantly, intersectionality politicizes, historicizes, and contextualizes the intersections of race, gender, class, sexuality, and the body in robustly descriptive manner. In doing so, scholars can reveal structural and systemic forces, meso-­ level contexts the complex tensions between macro-­ including attitudes and relations within and between cultural communities and micro acts such as interpersonal interactions within and between cultural groups (Collier 2009; Nakayama and Halualani 2012).



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Case Study: Analysis of Anti-­LGBT Violence Through Intersectionality Since, the early 2000s, violence against gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) individuals has been increasing in Ghana. This is partially due to the widespread demonization of LGBT rights by Ghanaian Pentecostalist Charismatic Church leaders (Asante 2020). Largely targeting effeminate men and masculine-­looking women, anti-­LGBT violence entails the luring of gay men through hook-­up apps such as Grindr and then robbing them of their phones and money (Isaac 2018). While self-­identification as gay or lesbian is not a crime under the current laws criminalizing same-­sex relations in Ghana, there are no legal protections for people who identify as LGBT. As such, LGBT people remain vulnerable to various forms of both state-­sanctioned and interpersonal violence. Here, I argue that anti-­ LGBT violence in the context of Ghana is not simply a “cultural” issue but the outcome of complex historical and material processes that are both locally situated and globally influenced. Drawing attention to macro contexts in which homophobic violence occurs, Rahul Rao argues that “viewing homophobia as merely ‘cultural’ enables international financial institutions to obscure the material conditions that incubate homophobic moral panics, and their own culpabilities in co-­producing those conditions.” The incorporation of material conditions and especially including the role of class while exploring anti-­LGBT violence in Ghana is crucial to resisting the single narrative that punctuates Western media coverage of anti-­LGBT violence in Africa. On 19 February 2015, the bloody images of Albert Appiah, a well-­known music producer and event organizer in Ghana, surfaced on YouTube and were shared on WhatsApp (a free app which allows for large video sharing often used by those in the diaspora to keep in contact with their families). The YouTube video depicted the beating of Albert Appiah by a group of men accusing him of engaging in intimate same-­sex elations with a friend in his car. The violence sparked both national and international public outcry. Famous Ghanaian musicians and politicians such as Nana Oye Lithur, and Officials from the Ghana Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) openly condemned the physical assault of Albert Appiah as inhumane. Although mob violence against suspected effeminate men and masculine-­looking women are increasing, this was the first time the violence was recorded and uploaded to YouTube for public viewing. The recording of the ruthless violence against a middle-­class Ghanaian man challenged the public imagination about LGBT rights and shattered the normalcy of such interpersonal violence. Surprisingly, the Ghana police, forced by the damaging international publicity garnered by the incident, arrested the assailants in this case, thus prompting a national reckoning with violence against LGBT people in general. However, a critical discourse analysis of Ghanaian private and public news media reports showed a different kind of national reckoning: one where state violence against LGBT people remained unquestioned while simultaneLGBT violence a problem from “poor” Muslims. Importantly, the ously projecting anti-­ Ghanaian media reports drew on both post 9/11 global discourses of the dangerous and violent Muslim and histories of inter-­ethnic conflict to frame the assault as robbery while disavowing the role of state violence against LGBT people in general. To begin this analysis, I place the violence within macro-­structural contexts, which constitutes the larger circumstances that microcontexts and mesocontexts occur and in relation to each other (Yep, Lescure & Russo 2019). While this incident is about anti-­LGBT violence in a specific location in Accra, the online news media discourse overall shows how class relations intersect with patriarchy and heteronormativity to produce the subject positions of those involved. The physical assault occurred in New Town, a suburb of Nima, a suburb in Accra,

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Ghana. Nima is popular for its vibrant market. Traders from all over the country and outside the country visit the market. Nima is also known as one of the economically disenfranchised and unsafe places in Accra. Largely populated by a Muslim minority in Ghana, armed robbers, blackmailers, murderers, and petty thieves are often associated with the area. Due to the increase in crime rates, the local leaders created the Nima Watch Committee to oversee the reduction of criminal activities in the area. In a newspaper report by the Ghana News Agency, the Nima Watchdog secretary, Armasaba Abdul-­Yakeen Aluizah, announced that Ghanaians should desist from associating Nima with crime and criminals. He noted, “It’s about time that Ghanaians disabused their minds about the widely-­held perception that Nima is a den of criminals and crimes” (Ghana News Agency, 23 August 2011). Marginalizing Muslims in particular discourses of intolerance and criminality has both global and local historical imprints. While anti-­Muslim sentiments in the West are largely influenced by the US war on terror beginning with the 9/11 attacks, the discourse of the Muslim other is also locally situated in precolonial ethnic rivalries between the Ashanti/Akan people and ethnic groups in northern Ghana. In this vein, discourses of the dangerous Muslim and violent Northerner are conflated with discourses of poverty and criminality to constitute criminals who are from Nima. Thus, the violent assault of Albert Appiah in Nima raises questions about his queerness; because of his class status, he is not regarded as a resident of Nima but an outsider who was suspected to be gay. In the online media texts, words such as “accused” and “suspected” set the tone throughout the reports to treat anti-­LGBT violence as a robbery and not constitutive of the frequent violence experienced by LGBT people in Ghana. A passage from the Daily Graphic, a state-­ owned newspaper exemplifies this: “Initial investigations seem to suggest that the gay allegations are a complete cooked-­up story against the victim, Albert Appiah, also called Kinto” (Daily Graphic, 12 February 2015). Another statement from http://Citifmonline. com, a privately-­owned radio station with an online presence where news is shared, alluded to similar notions: “The video showed the victim, Albert Appiah popularly known as Kinto, being attacked by a group of young men who accused him of being a homosexual” (http://Citifmonline.com, 11 February 2015). The Ghanaian Times also reported this ­incident as: “A man suspected to be gay has been assaulted by a group of people at Accra New Town” (Ghanaian Times, 12 February 2015). What is problematic in the above reports is that this incident was characterized as a unique occurrence involving a celebrity, and therefore newsworthy, while ongoing violence faced by LGBT people and effeminate men in Ghana is not mentioned by either state-­owned or privately-­owned news media. By positioning the victim as “accused” of being gay by armed robbers, these news reports erase the experiences of LGBT people in general as ongoing victims of the state, community and individual violence. In line with the wider circulating global discourses about the prevalence of homophobia in several African nations, discourses from online news reports also positioned the assailants as poor, therefore, violent and perhaps homophobic. The naturalization of these categories ­produces a criminal body that is at once Muslim, violent, poor and homophobic in relation to Albert Appiah who is just a victim. Since Nima is conceptualized as a place where crimes and homophobic violence are rampant, poverty is linked to homophobia while what causes the poverty are hardly interrogated. Furthermore, transnational discourses related to Africa’s homophobia are activated here. For instance, in the BBC report about the gay bashing of Albert Appiah, Ghanaian musicians are interviewed to speak about the “homophobia” of Ghanaians. Wanluv Kubolo, a Ghanaian musician who is known for his use of homo/ heteronormative promiscuous language in his songs and also wears skirts in his music videos, stated that Ghanaians are too homophobic and he does not think same-­sex relations will be decriminalized in his lifetime. What is left out of the discourse of Ghanaians’ innate homophobia is how poverty (and being Muslim) are linked to homophobia. In the context of transnational LGBT rights advocacy and its articulation with US or European empire building, LGBT people



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in Ghana are regarded as needing saving from the Muslim Other. This context is reproduced by online news media reports that point to Nima to highlight the homophobia of poor Muslims criminals. By centering thick intersectionality, it is revealed that while LGBT Ghanaians are subjugated by heteronormative institutions and cultural norms, the criminals are positioned as poor and also subjugated by transnational capitalism and neoliberal economic policies. Albert Appiah’s body is read in these media reports as working within the normalizing structures of heteronormativity and neoliberal capital against the backdrop of the “poor” coded as the robbers from Nima. In fact, Albert Appiah’s economic status and wealth works discursively with Pentecostalist Church leaders’ discourses as they disseminate views of queer men as people who use sex with men as juju (voodoo) for money. Gay men in particular are also positioned as luring and seducing their “victims” with money. These local beliefs clash with globalized media representations of white gay men as financially stable and rich. The intersection of the transnational mediations of white gay culture with localized Pentecostalist Church beliefs produces a particular Ghanaian queer subject in relation to a “poor” Muslim Other. While Appiah is not identified as white, he is identified as successful and a celebrity in relation to “poor” people in Nima – an ideological maneuver that allows the state to redirect anti-­LGBT violence as a problem of poor people and not perpetuated by the state. Finally, media reports about the gay bashing incident of Albert Appiah showed that ­citizenship is tied to exclusive heterosexuality. It became evident that when facing violence state protection is most often guaranteed when one’s heterosexuality is confirmed by the police, a patriarchal and heteronormative institution of the Ghanaian state. A report in http://Myjoyonline.com depicts how heterosexual citizens are positioned in relation to those who embody nonnormative gender and sexuality within the context of anti-­LGBT violence. http://Myjoyonline.com is a privately-­owned radio station with an online presence. Acting Superintendent of Police, Mr. Jango said: “but for your information now we are not aware that this Kinto guy was involved in any acts of ’gaism.’” He insisted that the police were “just getting this new information [text messages between Kinto and the Salim showing that they are lovers] that perhaps the assault was on account of his ’gaism,’” and that his outfit would look into the matter. ASP Jango added that the victim will be called in to assist in investigations when necessary but stressed that until the veracity of accusations of homosexuality are confirmed, “for now, what we have is assault on Kinto and causing harm” (http://Myjoyonline.com, 15 February 2015).

The statement “until the veracity of accusations of homosexuality are confirmed” shows how the police would have treated this case if his “homosexuality” was confirmed. Although Albert Appiah’s conversations with his friend, whom he went to visit when this incident happened, are part of the YouTube video to “prove” that they may be lovers, the final police report insisted that Albert Appiah is indeed heterosexual. Although contentions around Appiah’s sexual identity is irrelevant, positioning him a successful heterosexual neoliberal citizen points to an intersection of cisgender privilege, class, and celebrity status privilege; these enable the police to confirm that he is heterosexual without public contestation. Using the incarceration of CeCe McDonald as an example, Johnson (2013) contended that racialization, social class, and gender expression are just some of the intersecting identities that impact how oppression and privilege are experienced. Similarly, Albert Appiah’s cisgender masculine performance and class privilege provided the “evidence” that the police used to prove his heterosexuality. Yet, in relation to the assailants, an intersection of his cisgender masculine performance and class privileges is also what might have contributed to the assumption that he might be gay and therefore, an outsider to the Nima neighborhood. In fact, Albert Appiah’s incident was the first time online news media reports provided any background about a victim of anti-­LGBT violence. Daily Graphic reported the following: “Mr. Appiah, popularly known as Kinto Rothmans, is the organizer of the popular Friday Friends event for tertiary and

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senior high school students, a weekly party at the Silver Lounge at the Accra Mall” (Daily ­ ender Graphic, 12 February 2015). This shows the intersectional interplay of patriarchy, class, g conformity, and heteronormativity. This process also positions effeminate gay men as perpetually queer, and that their safety cannot be guaranteed by the state. For instance, a month after the gay bashing of Albert Appiah, there was another gay bashing incident of Robert Gansah. While both cases are similar, Robert did not receive any media coverage because he is effeminate, he is from Nima, and his heterosexuality could not be confirmed by the police. While Albert Appiah’s queerness emerged from his class positioning and outsider status in Nima, Robert Gansah was too queer for the state for protection. As such, intersectional subject ­positioning influences how anti-­LGBT violence is framed, how LGBT people who are attacked are ­positioned, and the outcomes of such violence.

Concluding Thoughts LGBT rights and its ontological opposite  – homophobia  – circulate across the world as an unrestrained site of categorization against which most “Third World” countries are estimated as underdeveloped and backward, thus, paving the way for foreign intervention (Puar 2007). However, such seemingly stable categorizations overshadow the cultural nuances, complex relationships, and situated knowledges that influence such violence. For instance, was Albert Appiah a target because he was gay? Or perhaps, the politicization of homosexuality in Ghana provided an opening for the assailants to express their dissatisfaction with Albert Appiah who embodies the promise of neoliberal citizenship and class privilege unavailable to many Ghanaians? Either way, to position the assailants as simply homophobic occludes the complex interplay between macro historical forces and material conditions, meso and micro contexts that inform anti-­LGBT violence in Ghana. In his essay, “Queerying, Quareing, Kuaring, Cripping/Transing “Other bodies” in Intercultural Communication,” Gust Yep (2013) called to attention the potential misreading of Other bodies when researchers ignore the multiple contexts that produces particular meaning in other places. As an example, using Donham’s (1998) case study of Linda, a gender and sexual nonnormative Black man who lived in post-­ apartheid South Africa, Yep (2013) critiques Donham’s characterization of Linda as a gay man by noting that Linda was not always gay. In response, he opines that what Donham needed to do was examine “how the larger political, cultural and historical forces, attitudes and relationships between social and cultural groups, and interactions between individuals in various communities operated simultaneously in and through Linda’s body to produce an international and Westernized conception of gay identity” (p. 121). Yep’s insights are very relevant to the examination of anti-­LGBT violence in Ghana because he prompts us to interrogate the uncritical acceptance of the “culture as nation” thesis that still pervades the field (Ono 2010). By analyzing media representation of anti-­LGBT violence in Ghana, it becomes obvious that culture is indeed “a site of ideological struggle where various communication meanings are constructed and negotiated” (Martin and Nakayama 1999, p. 8). However, the ideological struggle over cultural meanings becomes fully realized when bodies are analyzed through an intersectional lens in concrete time and space.

References Asante, G. (2016). Glocalized whiteness: sustaining and reproducing whiteness through “skin toning” in post-­colonial Ghana. Journal of Intercultural and International Communication 9 (2): 87–103. Asante, G.A. (2020). Anti-­ LGBT violence and the ambivalent (colonial) discourses of Ghanaian Pentecostalist-­charismatic church leaders. Howard Journal of Communications 31 (1): 20–34.



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Awondo, P., Geschiere, P., and Reid, G. (2012). Homophobic Africa? Toward a more nuanced view. African Studies Review 55 (3): 145–168. BBC.co.uk (2011). The World’s Worst Place to be Gay? Directed by Scott Mills. www.bbc.co.uk/­ programmes/b00yrt1c (accessed 28 June 2028). Carter, C. (2013). The Brutality of Corrective Rape. New  York Times. http://archive.nytimes. com/http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/07/26/opinion/26corrective-­r ape.html (accessed 20 February 2021). Chávez, K.R. (2013). Pushing boundaries: queer intercultural communication. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 6 (2): 83–95. Collier, M.J. (2009). Contextual negotiation of cultural identifications and relationships: interview ­discourse with Palestinian, Israeli, and Palestinian/Israeli young women in a U.S. peace-­building program. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 2 (4): 344–368. https://doi. org/10.1080/17513050903177292. Donham, D.L. (1998). Freeing South Africa: The “modernization” of male-­male sexuality in Soweto. Cultural Anthropology 13 (1): 3–21. Eguchi, S. and Calafell, B. (eds.) (2019). Queer Intercultural Communication: The Intersectional Politics of Belonging in and Across Differences. Rowman & Littlefield. Fairclough, N. (2003). Analysing Discourse : Textual Analysis for Social Research. Routledge. Fanon, F. (1967). Black Skin, White Masks. New York: Grove. Hoad, N. (2000). Arrested development or the queerness of savages: resisting evolutionary narratives of difference. Postcolonial Studies: Culture, Politics, Economy 3 (2): 133–158. Isaac, W. (2018). No choice but to deny who I am: Violence and Discrimination against LGBT People in Ghana. www.hrw.org/report/2018/01/08/no-­choice-­deny-­who-­i-­am/violence-­and-­discrimination-­ against-­lgbt-­people-­ghana# (accessed 28 June 2023). Johnson, J.R. (2013). Cisgender privilege, intersectionality, and the criminalization of CeCe McDonald: why intercultural communication needs transgender studies. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 6 (2): 135–144. Martin, J.N. and Nakayama, T.K. (1999). Thinking dialectically about culture and communication. Communication Theory 9 (1): 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-­2885.1999.tb00160.x. Mbembe, A. (2001). On the Postcolony. University of California Press. Nakayama, T.K. and Halualani, R.T. (eds.) (2012). The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication. Wiley. Ndashe, S. (2013). The single story of “African homophobia” is dangerous for LGBTI activism. In: Queer African Reader (ed. S. Tamale), 155–164. Nairobi: Pambazuka Press. Ono, K.A. (2010). Reflections on “problematizing ‘nation’ in intercultural communication research”. In: The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication (eds. T. Nayakama and R.T. Nayakama), 84–97. Puar, J.K. (2007). Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times. Durham: Duke University Press. Tettey, W.J. (2016). Homosexuality, moral panic, and politicized homophobia in Ghana: interrogating discourses of moral entrepreneurship in Ghanaian media. Communication, Culture & Critique 9: 86–106. https://doi.org/10.1111/cccr.12132. Yep, G.A. (2010). Toward the de-­subjugation of racially marked knowledges in communication. Southern Communication Journal 75 (2): 171–175. Yep, G.A. (2013). Queering/quaring/kauering/crippin’/transing “other bodies” in intercultural ­communication. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 6 (2): 118–126. Yep, G.A., Lescure, R.M., and Russo, S.E. (2019). Queer intercultural communication. In: Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Discussions of Race and Racism in Asian North American Pacific Islander’s YouTube Videos: A Content Analysis Kristin L. Drogos1 and Vincent N. Pham2 1 2

University of Michigan Willamette University

Introduction The late 2010s and early 2020s marked a point when Asian American representation in media seemed, as least superficially, present throughout media. Streaming platforms like Netflix and HBOMax prominently featured Asian Americans in programs like Ali Wong comedy specials, reality shows like Bling Empire and House of Ho, and action dramas like The Warrior. Hollywood released franchise hits that center Asian Americans like the Fast and Furious, Crazy Rich Asian book adaptations, and Marvel’s Asian American superhero Shang-­Chi. Despite such representations, it would be naive to assume that mainstream media undertook an immediate change in attitude toward Asian American representation and was ready to accept and produce a different image of Asian Americans, circumventing the decades-­long structurally embedded stereotypes to now allow for their stories and their visual presence to reach those outside a “niche” (i.e. Asian American) audience. Instead, mainstream media was dealing with the changing habits of viewers, the decline of viewership, and the rise and domination of YouTube that marked the late 2000s and early 2010s. During this time, YouTube became the site for groups historically excluded from mainstream media production, distribution, and representation to create content, cultivate their own audiences, connect with other influencers, and share their stories outside the constraints of mainstream media (see Christian 2018). Asian Americans were among those historically excluded groups that turned to YouTube as a means of production. They became both the pioneers and a stabilizing force for YouTube, drawing millions of views and subscribers (Considine  2011). Asian American YouTubers started to “crossover” to the mainstream, evidenced by such instances as KevJumba and his father’s participation on the Amazing Race (Pham and Ono 2016), the Fung Brothers hosting a food show on A&Es (Arts & Entertainment) networks in 2015 (Ono and Cheung 2018), and Dr. Pepper airing a 2014 Superbowl commercial starring make-­up guru Michelle Phan. YouTube became the place where Asian Americans could be discovered by mainstream media while maintaining their creative control beyond mainstream media’s constraints. The rise of Asian North American Pacific Islander (ANAPI) YouTubers provides an opportunity to examine what content they produce for audiences in their videos. For ANAPI The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication, Second Edition. Edited by Thomas K. Nakayama and Rona Tamiko Halualani. © 2024 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2024 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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audiences, they may see someone who looks like them on screen and in the media where ANAPIs have been historically marginalized. For non-­ANAPI audiences, they may learn about ANAPI culture and identity through their interaction with visibly and self-­identified ANAPI bodies. This project combines a critical intercultural approach and critical media effects to examine how ANAPI YouTubers discuss topics of race, and gender.1 This work situates contemporary Asian American media representation by examining the discourse and talk emerging from popular ANAPI YouTubers from the early aughts through current times. In this project, we examine ANAPI YouTubers and their communication about their own race, ethnic heritage, and gender. In doing so, we discuss what it reveals about the potential and limitations for opening such discussions on YouTube. In doing so, we attend to the intersectionality of these messages and their implications on understanding multiplicity, heterogeneity, and hybridity of ANAPI identity and the limits and constraints of the medium/platform upon intercultural communication (Lowe 1996). We begin by arguing that YouTube is an ideal platform to consider questions of critical intercultural communication and critical media effects. First, YouTube is wildly popular among the masses, allowing for arguments about the ways the site may be defining issues of identity for a diverse set of viewers. Young people are highly attracted to YouTubers, developing meaningful parasocial relationships with them (Tolbert and Drogos 2018). Such relationships have been shown to influence both attitudes and behaviors of fans (e.g. Bond and Drogos 2014). Much like other media celebrities, YouTubers can facilitate viewers’ learning about themselves and others, becoming an important site of exposure to new content and different models of being and communicating in the world. Second, YouTube complicates the ideas of private and public by allowing an individual to publicly circulate what feels like “private” interpersonal conversations. Indeed, the content of these “private” conversations are dictated from personal positions in their specific genre (e.g. vlog, make-­up tutorial, food video.) Finally, YouTube relies on content creators from historically excluded from mainstream media, which is incredibly important for ANAPI content creators, who have not had the access to nor the success of an ethnic or race-­specific network like Univision or Black Entertainment Television (BET) (Christian 2018). Thus, YouTube became the site where Asian American creators could easily engage with a community without structural barriers and do so in a way that deploys “affective” and emotional work that is now common to YouTube videos (Balance 2012). The current chapter proceeds by reviewing the literature on critical intercultural and critical media effects, our own positionality and approach to the research questions and the methodology to examine them, and results of such study.

Critical Intercultural Meets Critical Media Effects As communication subfields, intercultural communication and media effects are often ­distinctly separated; yet the shared interest in social media technologies allows for a productive approach to their overlapping concerns. Intercultural communication is often seen as a privatized, interpersonal, and neutral affair between communicators (Halualani and Nakayama  2010). Meanwhile, media effects scholarship is more likely to attend to the widespread public effects given the public nature of mass media, deploying “quantitative methods to investigate the nature of media content and its impact on individual attitudes and behaviors as well as intergroup relationships” (Ramasubramanian and Banjo  2020, p.  380). A critical approach to intercultural communication studies uses a power-­based lens to intercultural communication, situating historical contexts and the social and political forces within institutions that constrain and enable intercultural relations; thus, critical intercultural takes seriously power-­differentials and the effect of history and context on intercultural communication. Recently some media



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effects research has taken a critical turn. In reviewing concepts and frameworks of media effects and critical cultural subfields, Ramasubramanian and Banjo (2020) state that “while media effects scholarship emphasizes issues such as objectivity, categorization, and generalizability, critical cultural communication focuses more on issues of power, positionality, and systemic inequalities” (p. 380). Ramasubramanian and Banjo (2020) forward a framework for critical media effects that merges media effects methods and questions with critical and cultural perspectives that account for power, intersectionality, context, and agency. We take this opportunity to situate our approach to this project as a collaboration between scholars who are often seen at epistemological odds or in conflict (i.e. quantitative media effects and critical cultural media scholars). This project allows us to reflect upon our own scholarly training and intellectual gaps by attending to a shared interest in the media’s role in reifying hegemony. Thus, in a spirit of being epistemologically open, intellectually curious, and politically committed to revealing the role of media in constructing notions of race, gender, and the inherent power structures within, we expand the notion of methodological rigor to answer the call for work that utilizes the strengths of critical theory and social science together in the same space. In practice, the rest of this chapter will blend writing approaches that will be familiar to some readers and peculiar to others. For instance, there will be quantitative data presented in the results section and the discussion section will be in conjunction with a critical analysis of said data. We invite the reader to engage in the same spirit of the authors: be patient and impartial with the unfamiliar while thoughtfully engaging with the familiar. To begin, we use critical intercultural and critical media effects approaches to consider where media audiences get exposed to communication patterns that challenge or even reproduce power inequities, stereotypes, and discourses about race and gender. It is well established that mainstream media underrepresents, misrepresents, and stereotypes BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) and women (see Mastro 2017; Dixon et al. 2019 for review). There is evidence that YouTube may be replicating some of these troubling patterns of race and gender representation (Rollins et al. 2022). And yet other work suggests that YouTube is a space for content creators to present and document identities typically symbolically annihilated from the small screen (Christian 2018). In the current work, we analyze the discourses of race and gender presented in the videos produced by ANAPI YouTubers. Specifically, we are curious how ANAPI YTers use their channels to discuss their race, ethnicity, and experiences with racism. Additionally we question if and how ANAPI YTers use their channels to portray Asian stereotypes. Given gendered ­patterns of communication, including expression of emotion (see Carli 2014 for review), we also question if the communication patterns about race, racism, and stereotypes are different for male and female ANAPI YTers. As such, we ask the following research questions: RQ1: How do ANAPI YouTubers discuss race and/or ethnicity in their YouTube videos? And, does this vary by gender of the YTer? RQ2: How are Asian stereotypes portrayed in ANAPI YTers’ videos? And, does this vary by gender of the YTer? RQ3: What is the nature of the emotions present in ANAPI YTers videos? And does this vary by gender? RQ4: How do ANAPI YTers respond emotionally in videos that feature discussions of racism or stereotypes?

Method The goal of this section is to detail the methods of the current study while communicating how a critical framework informed study design choices.

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Kristin L. Drogos and Vincent N. Pham

The Sample We included YouTube videos produced by self-­identified ANAPIs. We intentionally gave the YouTubers agency in defining their race and ethnic heritage. From there, the video sample was narrowed using several criteria. First, several popular press articles were used to create a list of the most popular ANAPI YTers. Musicians and sketch comedy groups were removed from this list because their channels featured orchestrated performances, which were not aligned with typical impromptu YouTuber vlogging practices. Doing so produced a final total of 17 YTers to include in the sample. There was roughly equal gender representation across these 17 YTers. Next, specific videos had to be chosen. To do so, we searched the term “Asian” on each YTer’s channel. Again, we gave agency to the YTers to decide whether their videos featured “Asian” content. Finally, the video could only contain one or two main YTers. Over 2500 videos met these criteria (n = 2609). From there 10% of each YTers’ lists was randomly selected to be included in the final sample. The final sample included 263 videos from 17 YTers.

The Coders Three undergraduate students from a class on “Asian Americans and the Media” served as coders. We wanted the critical media education of the coders to give them the appropriate historical context and awareness of Asian American media stereotypes and the power imbalance in production of such tropes. When asked to describe themselves, the coders reported diverse identities: “White, LatinX and non-­binary and/or queer,” “White cismale,” and “East Asian and LatinX female.” We hoped the differing lived experiences of the individuals would encourage the group to see multiple perspectives when training and coding. In a similar vein, we worked hard to reduce a hierarchy in coding meetings. For example, coders’ feedback and perspectives were signaled as important and incorporated into the coding scheme, and we encouraged coders to disagree with us and one another in order to make the project better. Doing so made for a long training period, which lasted three months, after which the coders reached sufficient statistical reliability. They then coded the sample.

The Variables We remained conscious of the lack of voice and nuance experienced by many research participants, which can happen when social scientists assign categories to participants, rather than letting participants identify the complexities of their own lived experiences and identities. In line with the Critical Media Effects Framework (Ramasubramanian and Banjo 2020) we argue that social science can be mindful of historical contexts of identity, and use that awareness to empower the people being studied rather than to emphasize the scholar doing the work and their preconceived ideas of these topics. Rather than imposing rigid categories on the YTers, we allowed them to express themselves fully, taking note of whether certain topics about race and gender were covered in each video. Coders assessed whether a YTer disclosed their race or ethnicity, multilingual status, ESL status, described their generational lineage, mentioned a migration story, or discussed race-­ based community involvement. Coders also analyzed how the YTers spoke about racism. For instance, they assessed if a YTer talked about experiences with racism or engaged in racist communication, or spoke in an exaggerated, mocking ANAPI accent. Coders also analyzed the presence of six emotional states manifested by the YTer: anger, sadness, disgust, joy, surprise, and fear. Finally, several intersectional ANAPI stereotypes were coded. Here coders assessed



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both the presence of the stereotype and whether there was any resistance against the stereotype. Resistance occurred when the video somehow rebuked the stereotype by questioning it, mocking it, or refusing to comply with its existence. The stereotypes analyzed were: Dragon Lady, Lotus Girl, Madame Butterfly, Fu Manchu, Geek, Charlie Chan, Perpetual Foreigner, and Model Minority. For a review of these stereotypes, see Ono and Pham 2009. All variables were coded for each main YTer. The coders also reported on video characteristics including the length of the video, the year it was produced, the number of views it has received, and the number of people in the video. They also assessed feedback on the video in terms of the number of “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” accrued, as well as how many comments were left for each video. Two YTer demographics, including their birth year and gender identity were coded using YTer disclosed information found on the Internet.

Results The first research question asked about the ways in which the YTers communicated about their race and ethnicity and whether this varied by gender of the YTer. There are several variables coded that can help answer this question. First, a little over one-­quarter (26%) identified their own race or ethnicity within the video, and very few (2%) identified the race or ethnicity of others in the video with them. In other words, a majority (72%) of these YTers did not discuss their racial or ethnic heritage. Male YTers were more likely to discuss their own race and the race of others compared to female YTers (p