Racism without races is a phrase which was proposed, amongst others, by French thinker Etienne Balibar (1991) to talk about new forms of racism, distinct from models which relied on biological difference. He argues that e.g. the concept of culture can be used, misused and abused to talk about the ‘Other’ and establish multidimensional hierarchies between the minority and the majority, the self and the other. It can in fact serve “as a euphemism for ethnicity and race both by majority groups in multiethnic societies as well as some minority groups” (Piller, 2011: 25). This has been noted e.g. in researchers’ discourses but also in educational contexts (Holliday, 2011).

In the use the concept, one can also identify the bias of excessive differentialism: people from different “cultures” are often presented as being distinctive, rarely alike. Finally, there is a strong belief in the “absurd idea” that people adhere fully to their ‘cultural’ world without questioning it (Bensa, 2010: 36-37). In societies where “seeing culture everywhere” (Breidenbach & Nyíri, 2009) is so engrained, can educators go beyond this phenomenon in their practice?

This is the challenge that the idea of “renewed interculturality” (or “interculturality without culture”, Dervin, 2011) is attempting to confront. It proposes to educators to review the sort of questions they ask themselves in front of their students. As such instead of asking what is student X’s culture? or How can I learn to work with culture A? the following questions, derived from a sociocontructivist and critical approach to education for diversities, could be asked: How do students negotiate and ‘do’ identity in relation to the ‘intercultural’? What cultural/identity markers do they use to define themselves, communicate, argue, convince and even manipulate (Abdallah-Pretceille, 2003)? Who is allowed to define “their” and “our” culture?  For the anthropologist Alban Bensa (2010: 21) it corresponds to examining the “political” in intercultural education rather than the structural.

Abdallah-Pretceille, M. (2003). Former et éduquer en contexte hétérogène. Pour un humanisme du divers. Paris: Economica. Balibar, E. (1991). “Is there a neo-racism?”. In Balibar, E. & Wallerstein, I. (eds.). Race, Nation, Class. London: Verso. Bensa, A. (2010). Après Levi-Strauss. Paris: Textuel. Breidenbach, J. & P. Nyíri (2009). Seeing culture everywhere. Washington: University of Washington Press. Dervin, F. (2011). Impostures interculturelles. Paris: L’Harmattan. Holliday, A. (2010). Intercultural Communication and Ideology. London: Sage. Piller, I. (2011). Intercultural Communication. A Critical Introduction. Edinburgh: EUP.