The Dussel’s analectics and the gaze of the other in the intercultural and decolonial social work

Abstract

The gaze of the Other in Dussel’s analectics has an enormous importance for intercultural and decolonial Social Work. Likewise, it is fundamental to understand and interpret the historical, political and socio-cultural processes of construction of subjectivities, knowledge and practices in our America. This paper addresses the Dusselian analectics and the gaze of the Other in relation to intercultural and decolonial Social Work, as a pluriverse and situated sentipensar-doing that is being built in the profession as a genuinely own heritage of foundation of the practices of professional training, knowledge production and social intervention. The conception of an Indo-African-American Other implies for Social Work to recover the shared meanings, intersections and crossings, which were combined in a very diverse and heterogeneous way in different historical moments, socio-political realities and lines of thought. It implies recognizing as Other a pluriversity of ways of being, existing, feeling, thinking and doing as other forms, other histories, other experiences, which are woven and intertwined outside coloniality, raciality, patriarchy and European-North American capitalism. The Other thus becomes a very powerful heuristic for Social Work, from which it is possible to think of an Other world, where many worlds fit.