ABSTRACT
Although liberal conceptualisations of interculturality force us to believe that we can prepare for meeting interculturally, the authors agree that preparing and/or being prepared for it is impossible and attempts to do so must be rejected. Models of intercultural competence from the West create this simulacrum and fool people into believing that they can reach better levels of interculturality with the Other. Yet, since interculturality is always in the making, it cannot be ‘controlled’, even if people are ‘ordered’ to do so (“tolerate!”, “respect!”). The authors thus suggest examining how and why interculturalists have constructed the idea that we can be prepared for interculturality. Whose voice(s) dominate in this doxa? And whose voice(s) are marginalised?
