Hwa Yol Jung, Question of rationality and the basic grammar of intercultural texts

How can we understand other cultures? How can we talk and write about them without ethnocentric prejudice? These questions are as difficult as they are urgent. To begin with, we may say that to understand other cultures we must be objective. But if objectivity involves epistemological independence from all cultures, it seems out of reach for us culture-bound creatures. Are we not then condemned to viewing other cultures from the perspective of our own-and treating them in accordance with our parochial interests? In the last analysis can we escape from ethnocentric prejudice? Can we reshape our own culture in the light of another?