Introduction
The modernity has been described, by different intellectuals and humanists, as a moment in western history characterized by deep transformations: in traditional ways of social and political organization; in the systems of production and distribution of wealth; and in the dynamics of production and circulation of knowledge.
Environment of contradiction, of tension between individualization and the collective forces, modernity, unlike its proposed ideology, inaugurated a historical condition, described as a (re)producer of avoidable mistakes. Science, technique and citizenship do not face up to secular problems like hunger, endemic diseases, misery, education access, social prejudice and physical violence practiced against individuals or groups considered ‘different’.
In the diversity of fields of knowledge that characterize the modernity, the prevalence of the identity paradigm is sustained by the valorization of theories and conceptual plans that appropriate, expand and engender from speeches and representations connected to the ideas of equality and/or equivalence.
However, the failure of political, social and economic utopias, disparity reducers by themselves, shows the power of interference of individuals that emerge as the authors of the speeches about themselves. This is contrary to the idea that history evolves according to structures, rather than the individuals as the transforming/producing agents of history.
Therefore, the ideas about “the other” are among the main contemporary issues. This theme engenders a variety of reflections that require an urgent analytical effort: Who is “the other”? Where does “the other” belong in the political, cultural and social imaginary? How do the political, cultural and social imaginary co-elaborate the I and the other? Which speeches are produced to translate this elaboration? Do they interfere in the process of individual and collective transformation? More than that, do these speeches interfere in social practices? Do the social practices generated by these speeches interfere in social processes?
The VI Seminar Inclusive Society, by putting in discussion the speeches and the social practices on the other, for the other by the other, intends to open a space for debate and dialogue between social actors linked to the academy, the State and the civil society, about their experiences, knowledge and practices. The main goal is to put in evidence the critical questions, the necessary limits and bases to deal with differences.