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“The history of all cultures is one of cultural borrowing.” Can we still today speak of culture as an autonomous whole? Can we still juxtapose cultures or place them back to back, as if they were separate, fixed and impermeable entities? Culture is a reality that forms and transforms itself-particularly in immigrant countries, where people from around the world meet on a daily basis, where exchanges and influences multiply. As we face the phenomena of globalization, migrations and new communication technologies, "mixed space" becomes a fact; it is thus necessary that we recognize it and that we multiply the places where it can be named. Far more than a passing fad in popular music and culture, this hybridity is a choice-as much ethical as aesthetic-that goes beyond folklorizing cultures, beyond juxtaposing memories, to favour the encounter between peoples and cultures. It is a choice that opens the way to a creative interculturalism, which would see each one of us as a culturally-mixed human being in constant evolution. “Mélange [...] is the great possibility that mass migration gives the world, and I have tried to embrace it.” |