Call no. 4

Being on both sides of a mirror.

Models and practices of recognising Otherness.

Referring to the lesson of Fernando Ortiz, Georges Devereux, Alain Goussot, and Lidia Curti, this issue of the Review intends to gather the contributions of scholars on theoretical and methodological orientations, on discursive and relational inclusion practices that allow to create new and shared social spaces. In a historical time marked by wars and conflicts, by diasporas and dispersions, by the countless forms of existential and social fragility, the crucial step to take in inclusion practices is to understand the substantial transcultural and mestizo construction of our identities.

The transcultural analysis of human conditions has its origins in Fernando Ortiz's research, who first coined the term transculturacion in 1940s Cuba to indicate that the crossings of different cultures such as Spanish, Creole, Caribbean and others constituted an enrichment for reciprocal influence, without prevarication of one over the other, contributing at the same time to the process of identity and personality construction, during which each subject gives and takes (toma y daca) something from the Other.

Within this research background, a few decades later transcultural psychotherapy was born, which originated from the thought of Georges Devereux.

In his extensive psycho-anthropological research, he brings out clearly the complexity of the links between culture and the individual, and the implications they have for understanding and treating psychic suffering. At the same time, different cultural (or disciplinary) visions of the same experience necessitate a 'complementarist' approach, establishing a double discourse in which the individual's reading of suffering can make use of different explanations that cannot be integrated but may contribute to a richer vision of the situation under examination.

Alain Goussot, a pedagogue and trainer, transferred Devereux's lesson into the educational and pedagogical field: in schools and university classrooms, it is necessary to activate didactic workshops on the journey, on the history of emigration, through tales, stories, experiences, testimonies and writers. Tales, in the infinite forms of representation of the Self and Others, of the relations between the Self and Others (from literature to music, to cinema), can offer the possibility to better understand the cultural crossings that create the existential plots of all individualities and define our practices of inclusion.

No less important was the contribution of Lidia Curti: in her teaching and scholarly commitment, she has renewed the languages of women's writing, crossing the boundaries between disciplines, moving between different languages and cultures, giving voice to the body according to an aesthetics of the discontinuous and asymmetrical, overturning the canons of the beautiful and the ugly, courting excess and monstrosity, between grafts, metamorphoses and contaminations, bringing to teaching a civil passion that has made her a charismatic figure for many generations of students and scholars.

Instead of a more traditional approach, she preferred a mixture of heterogeneous languages and expressions, equating 'cultured' literature with the visual arts, theatre, cinema and media, and laid the foundations for the practice that today is more commonly identified as intersection.

The mirror metaphor is useful then: "Being on both sides of a mirror": this is the metaphor adopted in 1924 by T.S Eliot, with which the English writer explains to the critic J.A. Richards the experience of reading texts remote in time and space, such as those in Sanskrit.

A metaphor later taken up in comparatistics on East-West relations and again in the human imagination, cinema and psychoanalysis. The mirror becomes a powerful metaphor for evoking otherness: seeing oneself as another, as an asymmetrical double and thus creating one's identity through confrontation, including all the connotations of elusiveness that the object entails.

Being on both sides of a mirror basically means valorising an element that underlies comparison, as well as being fundamental in every human relationship: empathy. Comparing different literatures, genres, languages, knowledge implies fully identifying with otherness in all its multiple forms, without following pre-established hierarchies.

The Call is addressed to scholars and professionals working in the field of health, education, adult education, and aid, to counter all types of exclusion. Talking about a transcultural perspective therefore means placing it in an anthropological, pedagogical, ethnographic, historical, literary, psychological and research dimension aimed at the interdisciplinary crossings that the journal favours and encourages.

References:

Curti L. (2006), La voce dell’altra, Meltemi, Milano, 2006.

Devereux G. (1972), Ethnopsychanalyse complémentariste, Flammarion, Paris (tr. it., Saggi di etnopsicoanalisi complementarista, FrancoAngeli, Milano 2014).

Eliot T. S. (1922), Waste Land, Horace Liveright, New York, (tr. it, La terra desolata - Quattro quartetti, Edizioni Ponte alle Grazie, Firenze, 2022).

Goussot A. (2012), L’approccio transculturale in educazione, «Educazione Democratica», Essere Rom in Italia e in Europa, numero monografico, 4 giugno.

Goussot A. (2014), L'approccio transculturale nelle relazioni educative. Il contributo di Georges Devereux tra psicoterapia e educazione, Aras, Fano, 2014.

Ortiz F. (1940), Contrapuento cubano del tabaco y el azúcar, J. Montero, Habana, 1949 (tr. it., Contrappunto del tabacco e dello zucchero, Rizzoli, Milano, 1985; poi Città Aperta, Enna, 2007; poi Borla, Roma, 2024).

Note to Authors / Co-Authors

The deadline for the delivery of the article is set for March 10, 2024

The address to which contributions should be sent is as follows:

transculturale.mimesis@gmail.com

The Authors / Co-Authors of the article must comply with the editorial rules that you will find in the attachment, in addition to the Ethics Code of the Journal. Important is the free registration of the Author/Authors to the Journal which you will find in:

www.mimesisedizioni.it

www.https://mimesisjournals.com/ojs/index.php/transculturale

Failure to comply with the editorial rules may lead the Author to have to make the necessary modifications to the reviewers' report, or even to reject the article.

Each contribution, immediately after the opinion of the referees, will be provided with a DOI code and can be used in open-access.

The article, based on the inclinations and interests of the Author / Co-authors, can only be placed in one of the three sections of the magazine:

1) Passages between sciences: max 40.000 characters (spaces included); including long-abstract (in English: 300 characters, including spaces), keywords, bibliography.

2) Transformation practices: max 35.000 characters (including spaces); including long-abstract (in English: 300 characters, including spaces ) keywords, bibliography, any graphs / tables).

3) Transcultural memories in contemporary and curatorial artistic practices: max 30.000 characters (including spaces); including long-abstract (in English: 300 characters, including spaces) keywords, bibliography, any graphs / tables.

Other following sections of the magazine:

20. a) Impossible conversations. Imaginary or real interviews with the "classics": max 20.000 characters (including spaces), including abstract (200 characters), keywords, bibliography. The article must always be preceded by a long-abstract in English and the text in the native language of the Author / Co-authors.

10. b) The shelf of Zenodotus of Ephesus. One book and one film per month: max 10.000 characters (including spaces).

1. c) Moving pictures. Photo album in composition. Between 8 and 10 photographs, in jpg, black and white or colour, preceded by a biographical note of the author/s and accompanied by a comment.

The article may be written in the native language of the Author or Co-authors, but must always be preceded by an abstract in English (max 300 characters).

Each article will be reviewed anonymous experts whose outcome will be communicated via email by March 24, 2024. In case of acceptance of the article, but with any corrections for the changes that the reviewers will illustrate, the Author / Co-authors they will have 15 days to submit the final version of the article.