Interculturality – Space of Absence, Space of Difference. Thinking Universality after the Cultural Turn

After the cultural turn, universality has become a suspicious concept. In view of the particularity of cultures and their epistemological relevance, universal claims are accused of violently suppressing differences, of propagating one particular, contingent discourse at the cost of other, equally contingent and valid but less powerful frames of reference. A turn towards cultures thus seems to imply a call for abandoning the concept of universality. However, for a theological approach to Christianity, a universal claim raised for the Christ event is a conditio sine qua non. It is a challenge for theology after the cultural turn to develop a concept of universality that neither abstracts from the particularity of the contexts in which it is formulated nor suppresses the differences among these contexts. The paper draws on Homi Bhabha's 'Third Space' as a space of absence in the in-between of cultures to outline a concept of 'universality in withdrawal'.

Jaar van publicatie:2011