‘Intercultural competence’ as an intersubjective process: a reply to ‘essentialism’

In this paper, we problematise a competence-oriented reflective approach to intercultural education by drawing on four students’ reflective essays about their experiential learning experiences on an ‘Intercultural Competence’ (IC) module. Their reflections sometimes evidence much-vaunted IC attributes such as ‘tolerance’ and ‘empathy’, but often indicate individually-developed, non-teleologically based IC criteria. Furthermore, reflection was often painful and at times led to a ‘falling back on’ essentialist notions of culture. We suggest that rather than reject essentialism as a ‘simplistic’ starting point, it should be recognised as existing symbiotically with non-essentialist notions and could be used critically throughout intercultural learning.