SHARED VALUES IN A WORLD OF CULTURAL PLURALISM
November 2014
Muscat – Sultanate of Oman
The XXVIII Conference of the Academy of Latinity aims to give an answer to the questions gathered during the entire course of our meetings, questions relating to what it means, in these post-modern times, to truly acknowledge our collective identity and the dialectics derived from it. The cardinal points confront globalization and its new non-hegemonic dimensions; the impact of terrorism; the struggle for difference within multiculturalism; the advance of citizenship and human rights; and the new challenges for democracy faced with representation and the emergence of direct forms of revindication and collective protest. Another motion to debate entails the universe of virtual communication: the significance of the new dynamics of consensus and the course taken by mobilization born of post-modernity.
In the wake of almost fifteen years of work, the Academy contemplates the awareness of multiculturalism vindicating more and more – beyond the various rhetorics of dialogue – bolder endeavors to truly understand otherness, beyond its reductionisms and simulacra.
At the same time, assimilation is widely recognized not to be a solution: we need to move beyond mere tolerance. However, it remains a challenge to accept the fact that diversity, rather than a hindrance to cohesion, undeniably enriches humanity.
Such a new scenario arises together with the wane of meta-polarities, as set forth by the center-periphery relations characteristic of colonial dependence. One may speak of a new matrix of differentiation, as opposed to the formerly hegemonic profile of globalization. Pluralism is no longer a simple rule of coexistence but a real praxis, moved by the sense of otherness and the rise of a genuine ecumene of recognized collective subjectivities.
