ABSTRACT
An interdisciplinary approach that combines insights from both postcolonial theory and from studies on inter-or transcultural communication could help to correct these shortcomings in the contemporary critical debate. That is where this critical collection Communicating in the Third Space comes in. It takes postcolonial scholar Homi K. Bhabha’s thoughts as a starting point because he has fore-grounded the concept of Third Space in his book The Location of Culture. Largely, Bhabha conceives the encounter of two social groups with different cultural traditions and potentials of power as a special kind of negotiation or translation that takes place in a Third Space of enunciation. This negotiation is not only expected to produce a dissemination of both cultural traditions that leads to a displacement of the members of both groups from their origins. It is also supposed to bring about a common identity, one that is new in its hybridity; it is thus neither the one nor the other. Bhabha’s critical refl ections on power relations in negotiations enable us to take into account the displacement and/or replacement of powerfully ascribed identities.
