Interculturalities: multimodalities of personhood and nationhood

Abstract

This paper presents a framework for understanding and interpreting identities as multi modalities in cross and intercultural communication. It views culture as protean ways of 'doing things' or inhabiting 'spaces', based on a representation of culture as 'approximations of social reality (Nair-Venugopal 2003) in contrast to that of culture as imprints on behaviour through custom, practice and tradition. Such a view accepts that an individual can choose to be acculturated and socialised, or integrated in ways that may not fit into the ascribed templates of behaviour and practices occasioned by enculturalisation, thus implicating personal agencies of choice and preference. Thus potential agencies of individual choice and personal preference are taken to be indications of identity formation that are socially constructed or mediated through discursive and communicative practices, and technologies. Such identities may even be evoked across borders by political affiliations and alignments and purveyed through the media as stereotypes and other representations. Witness the pervasive effects of globalization, modernity and the altered perceptions of world order post 9/11 . More profitably, however, they may be viewed as 'interculturalities' or multi modal identities. Representing avenues that are available for cross and intercultural adaptation as homogeneous/ integrative assimilation and or as pluralistic/composite accommodation, they may inform the Malaysian narrative on the construction of national identity.