Transnationalizing Critical Intercultural Communication

How and Why Did We Arrive at IC and This Particular Project

In so many ways, this edited book is about arrivals and departures. It is about transnational journeys arriving at intercultural communication (IC), and this book is about departures, departures from IC’s traditions, frameworks, and methodologies. There are also parts of this project that negotiates and renegotiates IC’s history. While, to a degree, we honor IC’s past, regardless of how contentious that past was, we facilitated much-needed departures. These departures are empowering because they are guiding us to our new academic destinations. These are welcome extensions since critical intercultural communication (CIC) scholarship has been facing some stagnation and trying to negotiate its borders and boundaries within communication studies.

Our arrival stories are different. First, we came to the U.S. chasing our dreams of obtaining higher education, and perhaps achieving the “American dream.” We did not really consider ourselves as settler colonials at the time. We were international students trying to adapt, survive, belong, and somehow make it in a system that was not necessarily meant for us (hooks, 1994; Calafell, 2005; Pindi, 2020). We each took different academic journeys and faced different (sometimes similar) issues and obstacles. Our race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, and location (and different intersections) shaped our academic and personal journeys. They were also shaped by the passports we carried and visas we held. Our nationalities uniquely shaped how we were treated in the academia and legal system. Due to the types of passports we carried, our arrival and border control experiences were different. We were asked divergent questions, and our bodies were judged differently. The length of our visas was variant because of these passports. Same passports also provided different opportunities (or lack thereof) in the academic job market. Being an international student and international scholar presents both challenges and rewards. We faced and experienced both, sometimes individually and sometimes together. Our interests in intercultural communication grew because of the personal experiences we had, the situations we witnessed, and the types of questions we asked about ourselves and the world around us. They informed one another, shaping what kind of things we read and wrote as international students.

We also arrived at critical intercultural communication differently because we took different academic routes. We studied at different programs, or in the same program in different time frames (in Gloria and Ahmet’s case) and focused on different sub-areas of our discipline. However, critical intercultural communication has been the invisible connector that linked us during the last two decades. While scholars we studied in our institutions left great and small impacts on our thinking, our experiences and curiosities led us to ask questions about our identities, cultures around us, and transnational, in-between, and hybrid experiences. In some ways, we were trying to make sense of ourselves and our transnational experiences in the literature we were reading, courses we were taking, and essays we were writing. But what kind of question were we asking? What were we after? The answer is simple but a complicated one at the same time. We were inquiring about in-between and hybrid experiences, transnational identity constructions and performance, transnational power structures, and political and cultural forces that were consistently influencing our experiences in the U.S., our home cultures, and other locations we were occupying. The questions we were asking were larger than our own individualized experiences. We were trying to make sense of transnational life-making. Simultaneously, we were also noticing the gaps in CIC scholarship about transnationality.

Our journeys of arriving at CIC, being part of it, experiencing or embodying some of its concepts and theories, and shaping it as transnational scholars reflect CIC’s history over the last 20 years. In so many ways, we are the two-way mirrors reflecting how CIC was shaped but also how we shaped CIC’s recent trajectory.

The seeds of this project were planted years ago. Since the 2000s, we have been individually writing about transnational issues, theorizing cultural identity from transnational perspectives, and articulating a need for CIC to urgently take a transnational approach. Most of our previous research works towards articulating transnational approaches for CIC scholarship. Over the years we presented our work at various national and international conferences. First, our paths crossed at these conferences, and then our research began to intersect, overlap, and mingle. While we presented our work on the same panels, our scholarship began appearing in the same edited books or journal special issues. Along the way, we became friends and confidants who supported each other through the academic hurdles. We talked about our transnational experiences, our intersectional identities, and the challenges that we faced in the discipline and U.S-higher education as transnational scholars. We spent years planting the seeds of this book, both academically and personally. Hence, it is the product of mutual frustrations, support, academic curiosity, and a desire to change the discipline to achieve more inclusivity. We wanted to make transnational scholars’ voices be heard.

Although we work at different institutions in different states, we began using conferences as a place of arrival for our mutual and collaborative academic life-making. We became friends at these conferences. We listened to each other’s presentations and sometimes presented our work on the same panels. We began connecting our mutual interests and weaving our stories to formulate the logics of this book. This book is about carving out an academic space for new arrivals and departures within the critical intercultural communication discipline.

History of IC and CIC

Intercultural communication (IC) has a long and rich history in the United States dating back to Edward T. Hall’s 1959 book, The Silent Language. Our goal in this book is not to revisit this history in great detail. Instead, we provide a brief synopsis to explain why we are departing from conventional IC scholarship. IC as a subfield emerged closely tied to linguistics and allied with interpersonal communication, privileging face-to-face interactions among people from different cultural backgrounds. This is why, outside of U.S. academic circles, IC often falls within the domain of linguistics and communication programs. At the same time, researchers who employ critical theory, cultural studies, and continental philosophical traditions are mostly housed in media and cultural studies departments. In his book, Critical Communication Studies, Hanno Hardt (1992) discussed the different beginning points of communication studies, including “cultural” communication, in the U.S. tradition.

Instead of identifying the Marxist or critical theory tradition as the beginning of the history of IC, IC scholars often point to Hall’s 1959 book as the starting point. In her foundational essay, Leeds-Hurwitz (1990) explains that IC emerged immediately after WW2 “from the occurrences at the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) of the U.S. Department of State (DOS) between 1946 and 1956” (p. 262). At that time, the DOS trained diplomats and military servicepeople destined to serve at foreign posts, helping to acclimatize them to the cultures into which they were stepping. As Leeds-Hurwitz writes, “Because intercultural communication grew out of the need to apply abstract anthropological concepts to the practical world of the foreign service diplomats, this early focus on training American diplomats led to the later, now standard use of intercultural communication training” (p. 8). Hence, training approaches dominated most of the IC research of the 1960s, 1970s, and beyond. According to Leeds-Hurwitz, only with the work of Gudykunst (1983) did IC begin to discuss theoretical approaches. Although IC scholars such as Gudykunst and Yun Kim developed cultural theories, they operated within the social scientific paradigm. Therefore, most of their work was focused on the cultural adaptation of immigrants, U.S. sojourners’ experiences in different countries, or the experiences of international students within U.S. higher education. Even though some of this research employed ethnography of communication methods, most researchers utilized quantitative research methods.

The social scientific foundations of traditional IC research were not particularly concerned with notions of power, oppressive structures, intersectionality of cultural identities, agency, or social justice. While some of these issues were addressed in the contexts of rhetorical texts and speeches, none of this work was based on narrative or performance methods, auto- methodologies, visual or media analysis, or critical ethnographies. During the late 1990s, a group of independent scholars, some trained in rhetorical studies or ethnographic traditions, such as Thomas K. Nakayama, Alberto Gonzalez, Lisa A. Flores, Victoria Chen, and others, advocated for a much-needed paradigm shift in IC. The history of this movement might be traced back to Molefi Asante and his arguments about the notion of culture within communication studies. As Halualani, Mendoza, Drzewiecka (2009) write:

Interestingly, Molefi Kete Asante (then Arthur Smith) was part of an earlier push by U.S. rhetorical scholars in the 1970s and 1980s who examined rhetorical speakers, discourses, and contexts primarily through the lens of cultural and historical context. This movement in rhetorical studies overlapped with and informed the arguments made by Asante (1980) and other intercultural scholars (Gonzalez & Peterson, 1993) to engage the historical contextualization and formation of culture and intercultural communication (p. 20).

Following Asante’s call, several scholars began adopting contextual and historical approaches to study culture within the domain of IC. Some of this work was published in Our Voices: Essays in Culture, Ethnicity, and Communication. An Intercultural Anthology, edited by Alberto Gonzalez, Marsha Houston, and Victoria Chen (1994). In some ways, this collection marks the beginning of the critical turn in IC. Soon after the publication of this book, IC scholars at Arizona State University (ASU), namely Thomas K. Nakayama, Judith N. Martin, and Lisa A Flores, began charting new directions within IC. Besides their collective work, the work of their students generated new discussions and directions. Dreama Moon’s (1996) work on historical contextualization of culture in communication, Lily Mendoza’s (2001, 2002) work on power, history, and diasporic Pilipino experiences, Rona Tamiko Halualani’s (1998, 2000) work on intersections between culture and ethnicity, Jolanta Drzewiecka’s (1999) work on cultural identity formations, and other work emerging from ASU began shaping the direction of critical intercultural communication (CIC). During this time, Readings in Intercultural Communication (1998) was published, edited by Nakayama, Martin, and Flores, which featured the work of several of the abovenamed scholars and others.

The first generation of CIC scholars called attention to the importance of studying history in relation to culture. Specifically, they were interested in interrogating the notion of power within IC. They also studied racial and ethnic minorities, their struggles, and their cultural identities (Alexander, 2006; Harris, 2003). Complementing this important historical perspective, contemporaneous scholars, such as Mary Jane Collier (1998) and Gust Yep (1998), examined cultural identity formations through an IC lens. Halualani, Mendoza, and Drzewiecka’s (2009) words capture the collective work of the first-generation CIC scholars. They postulate:

These works at this critical juncture underscore how historical context constitutes and shapes the very foundation and formation of culture, cultural identity, and the communication practices and expressions situated within cultures. The central and powerful role of history is foregrounded through specific examples set in specific historical and political moments. (p. 23)

While their collective voices shifted the terrain of IC, they also inspired a new generation of scholars. During the 2000s, these young scholars came to CIC with differing interests and ideas.

Throughout the 2000s, a new crop of CIC scholars was connecting IC with other fields not only to build transdisciplinary bridges but also to answer various and deeply layered questions by applying different methodologies. For example, Bernadette Marie Calafell’s (2005, 2007) work on race and Latina/o/x communication drew upon performance methodologies. Similarly, Bryant Keith Alexander (2006, 2010) combined performance studies methodologies, critical ethnography, and autoethnography to examine Black identities. Additionally, Radhika Gajjala’s (2002, 2004, 2006) work on new media, diaspora, and feminism pushed the boundaries of CIC toward media and diaspora studies as she made the case for cyber ethnography. Hence, this new generation of CIC scholars advocated for not only a paradigm shift but also methodological multiplicity and interdisciplinary cross-pollination. In many ways, they were introducing cultural studies, diaspora studies, Latinx studies, Black studies, intersectionality, and other critical frameworks into IC’s discourse while conscious of the perspectives bequeathed to them by the founding generation of CIC scholars.

Although the late 1990s and 2000s witnessed exciting developments in IC, and the paradigm shift gained visibility in the key areas of the discipline, these scholars faced criticism from traditionalist social scientific IC scholars. Furthermore, few communication studies journals were receptive to the type of work being produced by CIC scholars. Some faced rejection from the National Communication Association (NCA) journals (Gonzalez, 2010) and others, while others decided to publish their work in interdisciplinary journals or edited collections. In 2008, the National Communication Association’s Journal of International and Intercultural Communication was launched under the leadership of Nakayama, its editor-in-chief. In 2010, Nakayama and Halualani (2010) brought these discussions and voices together in The Handbook of Critical Intercultural Communication. This edited volume is, in some ways, the crown jewel of their collective effort and showcases the impact of the critical turn.