This paper discusses about the paradigm of intercultural thought from the standpoint of philosophy of education, investigating its theoretical, epistemological and conceptual premises. In doing so, the broader purpose of this study is to re-think and to re-conceptualize intercultural education, starting from the analysis of its language.             According to the educational literature, from the second half of 90s, the discourse about intercultural issue has been reconfigured in relation with the event of globalization, considering its possible dangers for cultural diversity (Chen & Starosta, 1998; Portera, 2006, 2012; Kim & Bhawuk, 2008). Although globalization can represent the increasing of mobility and the growing of interactions with foreign cultures, authors such as Zygmunt Bauman denounced the developing of a global extraterritorial power that shapes the local policies, normalizing people ways of life (Bauman, 1998, 1999; Sayer, 2000). Hence many scholars presented intercultural education has as a possible answer to globalization, in order to contrast its homogenizing effects (Pasqualotto, 2008; Ghilardi, 2015; Padoan, 2012).  Nevertheless, questioning intercultural education, this paper suggests expanding the investigation into the dominant intercultural thought, exploring the broader context in which it has been developed. Indeed, the intercultural discourse has been supported and reinforced by international institutions, as UNESCO and Council of Europe, being part of a specific and contingent political strategy. One of the most important documents about intercultural issue is the White Paper on Intercultural Dialogue (Council of Europa, 2008), which underlines the need to share democratic values to foster the safeguarding of freedom and well-being of everyone living in Europe. Furthermore, the concept of intercultural is frequently connected with the transmission of certain political values that are considered as universal values by the European institution.

Considering what has been highlighted, this paper addresses intercultural education with the following questions: what is the dominant way to conceive intercultural paradigm? What are its power effects? And what kind of forma mentis, of subjectivity, is it shaping? To answer these questions, we propose to consider some key-concepts of the intercultural paradigm, such as Otherness, Identity, Integration and Recognition, focusing on the processes of meaning-making of each one. Therefore the attempt of this paper is to adopt some critical lenses, drawing on the work of thinkers as Ronald Barthes, Jacques Baudrillard and the Frankfurt Scholars, considering their analysis of the relation between language and power. Following these authors, the contemporary world tends to use a language that seem to be the instrument to spread  “neo-liberal” values, making use of words that indeed became “myth words” (Barthes, 1957). Furthermore, this language is characterised by the attempt to reconcile all the antagonistic forms in pursuit of false conviviality, producing a plurality of differences which make impossible to think the radical Otherness (Baudrillard, 1995). Moreover, as Adorno and Horkheimer wrote in Dialectic of Enlightenment, cultural industry supports the creation of differences and makes use of them as instrument of classification and control.

Investigating the intercultural discourse according to these hypothesis, the present research tries to recognize the presence of possible “myth words” and to enlighten their relation with the neo-liberal rationality. In doing so, a specific attention is directed towards the proliferation of categories by which alterity is conceptualized.

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