Abstract

This paper acts as an introduction to the individual presentations in this collection and to their discourses of new possibilities for the humanities. The theme of communications and philosophy is a way of bringing together diverse reflections on disciplinary practices and their potential interrelations in a global world of radical pluralism. What I am seeking is the formation of a critical pedagogy of difference, which may find purchase in learning environments in the academy, but also has applications to wider domains of the life-world with its political and personal exigencies, violences, needs, necessities, and possibilities. A key focus is the work of twentieth century continental philosophers and their textual encounters in the spaces between literature and philosophy, and ways of siting the as-yet-unseen in writing, experience and discourse. Nietzsche's thrust of questioning the idealism of progressive humanity is crucial to this discussion. Ultimately I am inviting a way of weaving threads of difference in a texture of communication to elicit a more critical awareness and response to the task of living in a global world of difference as a task for the new humanities