In my experience of something which might be called intercultural dialogue (regarding the relationship between human rights law and Islamic law), I found it useful in the first place to agree to set aside areas of fundamental disagreement (an example in this case was whether capital punishment can ever be supported) and either agree to disagree or agree to reserve such discussion for later when some exchange of ideas had already taken place. This doesn’t necessarily make the substance of fundamental disagreements easier to deal with, nor does it resolve the eventual tension between the respect-for-minorities principle and unwillingness to compromise on certain other principles, but more progress may be made than would otherwise be possible. This of course presupposes that ‘progress’ or synthesis are the aim of intercultural dialogue, which brings us back to the lack of a definition…

“Le Mythe de l’identité – Eloge de la dissociation”
Patrick Boumard, Georges Lapassade, Michel Lobrot, Remi Hess
Sept 2006, Economica. ISBN: 2717852484

“Non seulement les humains sont différents entre eux, mais ils sont différents à l’intérieur d’eux-mêmes, intrinsèquement. Ils sont soumis à des variations incessantes. Ils sont pétris d’oppositions et de contradictions internes. Telle est la thèse de ce livre, développée par trois chercheurs en sciences humaines. L’un analyse les séparations et ruptures opérées par les jeunes pour survivre dans un monde aliénant. L’autre étudie les phénomènes de chamanisme où l’aspect de dissociation est saillant et joue un rôle social essentiel. Le troisième approfondit les bases psychologiques et sociologiques de la thèse sur la dissociation. Autant dire qu’ils réfutent les tentatives, courantes aujourd’hui, pour enfermer les gens dans des formules identitaires trompeuses, avec accusations de communautarisme par exemple, qui permettent de les rejeter. Une thèse comme celle-ci pourrait paraître pessimiste, en fragmentant et faisant éclater le psychisme. Il n’en est rien. Le phénomène de dissociation oblige le psychisme à se construire lui-même dans des formules qu’il doit inventer, à partir de données disparates et multiples. Cette conclusion s’inscrit dans la ligne des conceptions constructivistes, très vivantes aujourd’hui dans différents domaines de la pensée.”

Take David Bohm’s understanding, for instance:

Dialogue, as we are choosing to use the word, is a way of exploring the roots of the many crises that face humanity today. It enables inquiry into, and understanding of, the sorts of processes that fragment and interfere with real communication between individuals, nations and even different parts of the same organization. In our modern culture men and women are able to interact with one another in many ways: they can sing dance or play together with little difficulty but their ability to talk together about subjects that matter deeply to them seems invariable to lead to dispute, division and often to violence. In our view this condition points to a deep and pervasive defect in the process of human thought.

Or, as a contrast, Paolo Freire:

Dialogue is the encounter between men, mediated by the world, in order to name the world. Dialogue involves respect. It should not involve one person acting on another, but rather people working with each other.

Or take Martin Buber:

There is genuine dialogue – no matter whether spoken or silent – where each of the participants really has in mind the other or others in their present and particular being and turns to them with the intention of establishing a living mutual relation between himself and them. There is technical dialogue, which is prompted solely by the need of objective understanding. And there is monologue disguised as dialogue, in which two or men, meeting in space, speak each with himself in strangely tortuous and circuitous ways and yet imagine they have escaped the torment of being thrown back on their own resources.

To you.

From the declaration cited above:

The term “Intercultural Dialogue” defines tools used to promote and protect the concept of cultural democracy, and encompasses the tangible and intangible elements likely to foster all forms of cultural diversity, manifesting themselves in multiple identities whether individual or collective, in transformations and in new forms of cultural expression. Intercultural dialogue must extend to every possible component of culture, without exception, whether these be cultural in the strict sense or political, economic, social, philosophical, or religious. In this context, for instance, inter-faith and interreligious dialogue must be viewed in terms of its cultural and social implications versus the public sphere.

Wikipedia has no entry on the term. Same for Encyclopædia Britannica.

And while it is expected that the European Commission declares 2008 to be the «European Year of Intercultural Dialogue», they don’t really say what it is exactly either.

We are in prominent company. At least…