The voice of the maverick is the intercultural voice

This chapter aims to explore the concept of interculturality in theory, revisiting it through the figure of the marginal. The author argues that the maverick can serve as a compelling metaphor for interculturality. To support this, he draws on the work of Reiner Schürmann (1941–1993), a German philosopher, spiritual traveler, and polyglot who read in German, wrote in French, and taught in English at the New School for Social Research in New York. The author demonstrates how concepts found in Schürmann’s work, such as the dichotomy of “natality” and “mortality”, as well as other notions (“singularity”, “anarchy”, etc.), could help to redefine interculturality as an open-ended, non-consensual field. Interculturality could be understood as an institutionalized notion with detailed operating instructions. Here, the reader is invited to look at it through new lenses that may bring us far from well-trodden paths.