Encountering Other Cultural Universes on the Brink of Chaos

Abstract

It is hard to imagine that we share the journey with someone coming in the opposite direction. Nevertheless, I think that this strange sharing is perhaps what best characterizes our time. Coming from very different trajectories and histories, from the accumulation of multi-secular defeats or victories, different cultural universes (philosophical, aesthetic, political, ontological, epistemological, ethical) seem today more exposed than ever to the presence of and competition with rival universes in conditions that do not allow unilateral movements, be they of assimilation or of conquest. The inequalities of power among them exist and are historically sedimented, but they are increasingly relative and unequally distributed among the different areas of collective life or the different regions of the world. The opposite trajectories converge in a field of maximum uncertainty that produces restlessness and instability. The sharing of uncertainty is bound to result in the uncertainty of sharing. The Eurocentric Western cultural universe comes from a long trajectory of historical victories that seems to have come to an end. Europe spent five centuries dominating and teaching the non-European world and finds itself today increasingly in the condition of no longer being able to dominate nor having anything to teach (Santos 2020: 31–53). The drama of the cultural universe that considers itself historically victorious is that it does not want to learn from the cultural universes it has become accustomed to defeat and to teach. In turn, the non-Western cultural universes, be they Eastern (Chinese or Indian), Islamic, African, ISSN: 1076-156X | Vol. 28 Issue 2 | DOI 10.5195/JWSR.2022.1141 | jwsr.pitt.edu