The Educational Experience of Encountering the Other and Its Effects on Cultural Identity

• In Event: 54.080 - Roundtable Session 22
  In Roundtable Session: 54.080-16 - Conversations of the Self, the Other, and the Disciplines

Abstract

The theme of otherness has been widely discussed in relation to identity and difference (e.g. Bernstein 1993, Theunissen 1984, Gadmer 1976). In the discourse of otherness, Jacques Derrida “goes further than any other author” (Egéa-Kuehne 2001, 187) affirming that “identity presupposes alterity” (Derrida in Kearney 1984, 117). Informed by my “biographic situation” (Pinar 2004, 36) in which I had a sense that my cultural identity as Japanese was transformed through encountering the culture of the Other in the U.S. university classroom setting, this study seeks to understand this “educational experience” (Grumet 1990, 326) of encountering the Other and its effects on cultural identity. I will explore this experience through narrative inquiry, using both autobiographical and literary narratives.

Author

• Kaori Shimizu, Franklin & Marshall College