Other
Encyclopedia
The Other or Constitutive Other (also the verb othering) is a key concept in continental philosophy
; it opposes the Same
. The Other refers, or attempts to refer, to that which is Other than the initial concept being considered. The Constitutive Other often denotes a person Other than one’s self; hence, the Other is identified as “different”; thus the spelling often is capitalised.
The idea of the other was first philosophically conceived by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
, and later made popular by Edward Said
in his well-known book Orientalism
. Despite originally being a philosophical concept, othering has political, economic, social and psychological connotations and implications.
Hegel was among the first to introduce the idea of the other as constituent in self-consciousness
. He wrote of pre-selfconscious Man: "Each consciousness pursues the death of the other", meaning that in seeing a separateness between you and another, a feeling of alienation is created, which you try to resolve by synthesis. The resolution is depicted in Hegel's famous parable of the master slave dialectic. For a direct antecedent, see Fichte.
Husserl used the idea as a basis for intersubjectivity
. Sartre also made use of such a dialectic in Being and Nothingness, when describing how the world is altered at the appearance of another person, how the world now appears to orient itself around this other person. At the level Sartre presented it, however, it was without any life-threatening need for resolution, but as a feeling or phenomenon and not as a radical threat. De Beauvoir made use of otherness — in similar fashion to Sartre — in The Second Sex
. In fact, De Beauvoir refers to Hegel's master-slave dialectic as analogous, in many respects, to the relationship of man and woman.
The French
psychoanalyst
Jacques Lacan
and the Lithuania
n-French philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas
were instrumental in coining contemporary usage of "the Other," as radically other. Lacan articulated the Other with the symbolic order
and language. Levinas connected it with the scriptural and traditional God, in The Infinite Other.
Ethically, for Levinas, the "Other" is superior or prior to the self; the mere presence of the Other makes demands before one can respond by helping them or ignoring them. This idea and that of the face-to-face
encounter were re-written later, taking on Derrida's points made about the impossibility of a pure presence
of the Other (the Other could be other than this pure alterity
first encountered), and so issues of language and representation arose. This "re-write" was accomplished in part with Levinas' analysis of the distinction between "the saying and the said
" but still maintaining a priority of ethics over metaphysics.
Levinas talks of the Other in terms of insomnia and wakefulness. It is an ecstasy
, or exteriority toward the Other that forever remains beyond any attempt at full capture, this otherness is interminable (or infinite); even in murdering another, the otherness remains, it has not been negated or controlled. This "infiniteness" of the Other will allow Levinas to derive other aspects of philosophy and science as secondary to this ethic. Levinas writes:
The "Other", as a general term in philosophy, can also be used to mean the unconscious, silence, insanity
, the other of language (i.e., what it refers to and what is unsaid), etc.
There may also arise a tendency towards relativism
if the Other, as pure alterity, leads to a notion that ignores the commonality of truth
. Likewise, issues may arise around non-ethical uses of the term, and related terms, that reinforce divisions.
, which refers to the act of emphasizing the perceived weaknesses of marginalized groups as a way of stressing the alleged strength of those in positions of power.” Othering can be done with any racial, ethnic, religious, or geographically-defined category of people.
In keeping with the example of imperial Britain, the discussion of empire building through othering unfolds in a global context. Empire building stands in fundamental opposition to global community; instead of understanding groups of people, and consequentially their intellectual, economic, and political capability as vital and contributory to the global community, othering renders all but one culture’s ideology and systems worthless. Emmanuel Wallerstein’s world systems theory is a more modern criticism of othering and the doctrine of discrimination and racism in society, economics, and all other fronts. Imperial Britain saw the values or good qualities of other cultures or powers as a threat to its own power—this was the case even with other economic and industrial powers such as Germany.
, the Frankfurt School
and other postmodernist
s that the process of othering has everything to do with knowledge, and power acting through knowledge to achieve a particular political agenda in its goal of domination. Edward Said quotes the following from Nietzsche, saying what is the truth of language but
The knowledge of this sheds much light on historiographies of other cultures created by the dominant culture, and by the discourses, whether academic or otherwise, that surround these written and oral histories. The cultures that a supposed superior ethnic group deems important to study, and the different aspects of that culture that are either ignored or considered valuable knowledge, relies on the judgment of the ethnic group in power. In the case of historiographies of the Middle East, and the Oriental discipline, another dynamic adds depth this issue. Prior to the late nineteenth century, western (specifically European) empires studied what was said to be high culture of the Middle East, being literature, language, and philology; however, a reciprocal program and curriculum of study did not exist in the Orient which looked at European lands. Distortions in the writing of history have carried over to the post-modern era in the writing of news. As mentioned before under examples of intranational othering, political parties in developing countries sometimes create facts on the ground, report threats that are nonexistent, and extenuate the faults of opposing political parties which are made up of opposing ethnic groups in the majority of cases. Othering via ideas of ethnocentricity—the belief that one’s own ethnic group is superior to all others and the tendency to evaluate and assign meaning to other ethnicities using yours as a standard —is additionally achieved through processes as mundane as cartography. The drawing of maps has historically emphasized and bolstered specific lands and their associated national identities. Cartographers in early centuries commonly distorted actual locations and distances when depicting them on maps; British cartographers for example centered Britain on their maps, and drew it proportionally larger than it should be. Polar perspectives of the Northern Hemisphere drawn by recent American cartographers uses spatial relations between the United States and Russia to emphasize superiority. Thus we see that agendas of domination and subordination are not only supported by the soft sciences like language, popular culture, and literature, but also through the hard and exact sciences like mathematics and geography.
changed the Hegelian notion of the Other, for use in her description of male-dominated culture. This treats woman as the Other in relation to man. The Other has thus become an important concept for studies of the sex-gender system. Michael Warner
argues that:
Thus, according to Warner, Freudian and Lacan
ian psychoanalysis hold the heterosexist view that if one is attracted to people of the same gender as one's self, one fails to distinguish self and other, identification and desire. This is a "regressive" or an "arrested" function. He further argues that heteronormativity
covers its own narcissistic
investments by projecting or displacing them on queer
ness.
De Beauvoir calls the Other the minority
, the least favored one and often a woman, when compared to a man, "for a man represents both the positive and the neutral, as indicated by the common use of man to designate human beings in general; whereas woman represents only the negative, defined by limiting criteria, without reciprocity" (McCann, 33). Betty Friedan
supported this thought when she interviewed women and the majority of them identified themselves in their role in the private sphere, rather than addressing their own personal achievements. They automatically identified as the Other without knowing. Although the Other may be influenced by a socially constructed society, one can argue that society has the power to change this creation (Haslanger).
In an effort to dismantle the notion of the Other, Cheshire Calhoun proposed a deconstruction
of the word "woman" from a subordinate association and to reconstruct it by proving women do not need to be rationalized by male dominance. This would contribute to the idea of the Other and minimize the hierarchal connotation this word implies.
Sarojini Sahoo
, an India
n feminist writer, agrees with De Beauvoir that women can only free themselves by “thinking, taking action, working, creating, on the same terms as men; instead of seeking to disparage them, she declares herself their equal." She disagrees, however, that though women have the same status to men as human beings, they have their own identity and they are different from men. They are "others" in real definition, but this is not in context with Hegelian definition of “others”. It is not always due to man’s "active" and "subjective" demands. They are the others, unknowingly accepting the subjugation as a part of "subjectivity". Sahoo, however contends that whilst the woman identity is certainly constitutionally different from that of man, men and women still share a basic human equality. Thus the harmful asymmetric sex/gender "Othering" arises accidentally and ‘passively’ from natural, unavoidable intersubjectivity.
Continental philosophy
Continental philosophy, in contemporary usage, refers to a set of traditions of 19th and 20th century philosophy from mainland Europe. This sense of the term originated among English-speaking philosophers in the second half of the 20th century, who used it to refer to a range of thinkers and...
; it opposes the Same
Identity (philosophy)
In philosophy, identity, from , is the relation each thing bears just to itself. According to Leibniz's law two things sharing every attribute are not only similar, but are the same thing. The concept of sameness has given rise to the general concept of identity, as in personal identity and...
. The Other refers, or attempts to refer, to that which is Other than the initial concept being considered. The Constitutive Other often denotes a person Other than one’s self; hence, the Other is identified as “different”; thus the spelling often is capitalised.
The idea of the Other
A person's definition of the 'Other' is part of what defines or even constitutes the self (in both a psychological and philosophical sense) and other phenomena and cultural units. It has been used in social science to understand the processes by which societies and groups exclude 'Others' whom they want to subordinate or who do not fit into their society. The concept of 'otherness' is also integral to the comprehending of a person, as people construct roles for themselves in relation to an 'other' as part of a process of reaction that is not necessarily related to stigmatization or condemnation. Othering is imperative to national identities, where practices of admittance and segregation can form and sustain boundaries and national character. Othering helps distinguish between home and away, the uncertain or certain. It often involves the demonization and dehumanization of groups, which further justifies attempts to civilize and exploit these 'inferior' others.The idea of the other was first philosophically conceived by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher, one of the creators of German Idealism. His historicist and idealist account of reality as a whole revolutionized European philosophy and was an important precursor to Continental philosophy and Marxism.Hegel developed a comprehensive...
, and later made popular by Edward Said
Edward Said
Edward Wadie Saïd was a Palestinian-American literary theorist and advocate for Palestinian rights. He was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and a founding figure in postcolonialism...
in his well-known book Orientalism
Orientalism (book)
Orientalism is a book published in 1978 by Edward Said that has been highly influential and controversial in postcolonial studies and other fields. In the book, Said effectively redefined the term "Orientalism" to mean a constellation of false assumptions underlying Western attitudes toward the...
. Despite originally being a philosophical concept, othering has political, economic, social and psychological connotations and implications.
History of the idea
The concept that the self requires the Other to define itself is an old one and has been expressed by many writers:Hegel was among the first to introduce the idea of the other as constituent in self-consciousness
Self-consciousness
Self-consciousness is an acute sense of self-awareness. It is a preoccupation with oneself, as opposed to the philosophical state of self-awareness, which is the awareness that one exists as an individual being; although some writers use both terms interchangeably or synonymously...
. He wrote of pre-selfconscious Man: "Each consciousness pursues the death of the other", meaning that in seeing a separateness between you and another, a feeling of alienation is created, which you try to resolve by synthesis. The resolution is depicted in Hegel's famous parable of the master slave dialectic. For a direct antecedent, see Fichte.
Husserl used the idea as a basis for intersubjectivity
Intersubjectivity
Intersubjectivity is a term used in philosophy, psychology, sociology and anthropology to describe a condition somewhere between subjectivity and objectivity, one in which a phenomenon is personally experienced but by more than one subject....
. Sartre also made use of such a dialectic in Being and Nothingness, when describing how the world is altered at the appearance of another person, how the world now appears to orient itself around this other person. At the level Sartre presented it, however, it was without any life-threatening need for resolution, but as a feeling or phenomenon and not as a radical threat. De Beauvoir made use of otherness — in similar fashion to Sartre — in The Second Sex
The Second Sex
The Second Sex is one of the best-known works of the French existentialist Simone de Beauvoir. It is a work on the treatment of women throughout history and often regarded as a major work of feminist literature and the starting point of second-wave feminism. Beauvoir researched and wrote the book...
. In fact, De Beauvoir refers to Hegel's master-slave dialectic as analogous, in many respects, to the relationship of man and woman.
The French
French people
The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...
psychoanalyst
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
Jacques Lacan
Jacques Lacan
Jacques Marie Émile Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis and philosophy, and has been called "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud". Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced France's...
and the Lithuania
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
n-French philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas
Emmanuel Lévinas
Emmanuel Levinas was a Lithuanian-born French Jewish philosopher and Talmudic commentator.-Life:Emanuelis Levinas received a traditional Jewish education in Lithuania...
were instrumental in coining contemporary usage of "the Other," as radically other. Lacan articulated the Other with the symbolic order
The Symbolic
The Symbolic is a part of the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan, part of his attempt 'to distinguish between those elementary registers whose grounding I later put forward in these terms: the symbolic, the imaginary, and the real - a distinction never previously made in psychoanalysis'.-The...
and language. Levinas connected it with the scriptural and traditional God, in The Infinite Other.
Ethically, for Levinas, the "Other" is superior or prior to the self; the mere presence of the Other makes demands before one can respond by helping them or ignoring them. This idea and that of the face-to-face
Face-to-face
The face-to-face relation refers to a concept in the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas' thought on human sociality.Lévinas' phenomenological account of the "face-to-face" encounter serves as the basis for his ethics and the rest of his philosophy...
encounter were re-written later, taking on Derrida's points made about the impossibility of a pure presence
Metaphysics of presence
The concept of the metaphysics of presence is an important consideration within the area of deconstruction. The deconstructive interpretation holds that the entire history of Western philosophy and its language and traditions has emphasized the desire for immediate access to meaning, and thus built...
of the Other (the Other could be other than this pure alterity
Alterity
Alterity is a philosophical term meaning "otherness", strictly being in the sense of the other of two . In the phenomenological tradition it is usually understood as the entity in contrast to which an identity is constructed, and it implies the ability to distinguish between self and not-self, and...
first encountered), and so issues of language and representation arose. This "re-write" was accomplished in part with Levinas' analysis of the distinction between "the saying and the said
The saying and the said
Emmanuel Levinas, in an attempt to overcome a certain naivety within his exploration of ethics as given in what he describes as the face-to-face encounter, attempts to introduce language into what had only been a "picture" of such an encounter...
" but still maintaining a priority of ethics over metaphysics.
Levinas talks of the Other in terms of insomnia and wakefulness. It is an ecstasy
Ecstasy (philosophy)
Ecstasy, from the Ancient Greek, έκ-στασις , "to be or stand outside oneself, a removal to elsewhere ."-Hellenic philosophy:...
, or exteriority toward the Other that forever remains beyond any attempt at full capture, this otherness is interminable (or infinite); even in murdering another, the otherness remains, it has not been negated or controlled. This "infiniteness" of the Other will allow Levinas to derive other aspects of philosophy and science as secondary to this ethic. Levinas writes:
The "Other", as a general term in philosophy, can also be used to mean the unconscious, silence, insanity
Insanity
Insanity, craziness or madness is a spectrum of behaviors characterized by certain abnormal mental or behavioral patterns. Insanity may manifest as violations of societal norms, including becoming a danger to themselves and others, though not all such acts are considered insanity...
, the other of language (i.e., what it refers to and what is unsaid), etc.
There may also arise a tendency towards relativism
Relativism
Relativism is the concept that points of view have no absolute truth or validity, having only relative, subjective value according to differences in perception and consideration....
if the Other, as pure alterity, leads to a notion that ignores the commonality of truth
Truth
Truth has a variety of meanings, such as the state of being in accord with fact or reality. It can also mean having fidelity to an original or to a standard or ideal. In a common usage, it also means constancy or sincerity in action or character...
. Likewise, issues may arise around non-ethical uses of the term, and related terms, that reinforce divisions.
Othering and Imperialism
Before the modern world system where the politics and economy of nation-states are relatively interdependent, there existed what is classified as the “system of world empires” up until the 1500s. In this world system political and economic affairs of different empires were fragmented and empires “provided for most of their own needs . . . [spreading] their influence solely through conquest or the threat of conquest . . .” The Dictionary of Human Geography defines imperialism as “The creation and maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural and territorial relationship, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination.” The maintenance of this unequal relationship wholly depends on the subordination of an “other” group or peoples, from which resources can be taken and land can be exploited. Other, then, describes the process of justifying the domination of individuals or groups in the periphery to facilitate subordination. The creation of the other is done by highlighting their weakness, thus extenuating the moral responsibility of the stronger self to educate, convert, or civilize depending on the identity of the other. Indeed, as defined by Martin Jones et al., othering is “A term, advocated by Edward SaidEdward Said
Edward Wadie Saïd was a Palestinian-American literary theorist and advocate for Palestinian rights. He was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and a founding figure in postcolonialism...
, which refers to the act of emphasizing the perceived weaknesses of marginalized groups as a way of stressing the alleged strength of those in positions of power.” Othering can be done with any racial, ethnic, religious, or geographically-defined category of people.
In keeping with the example of imperial Britain, the discussion of empire building through othering unfolds in a global context. Empire building stands in fundamental opposition to global community; instead of understanding groups of people, and consequentially their intellectual, economic, and political capability as vital and contributory to the global community, othering renders all but one culture’s ideology and systems worthless. Emmanuel Wallerstein’s world systems theory is a more modern criticism of othering and the doctrine of discrimination and racism in society, economics, and all other fronts. Imperial Britain saw the values or good qualities of other cultures or powers as a threat to its own power—this was the case even with other economic and industrial powers such as Germany.
Relationship between Othering and Knowledge
It is understood by a sizable body of scholars such as Michel FoucaultMichel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
, the Frankfurt School
Frankfurt School
The Frankfurt School refers to a school of neo-Marxist interdisciplinary social theory, particularly associated with the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt am Main...
and other postmodernist
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
s that the process of othering has everything to do with knowledge, and power acting through knowledge to achieve a particular political agenda in its goal of domination. Edward Said quotes the following from Nietzsche, saying what is the truth of language but
The knowledge of this sheds much light on historiographies of other cultures created by the dominant culture, and by the discourses, whether academic or otherwise, that surround these written and oral histories. The cultures that a supposed superior ethnic group deems important to study, and the different aspects of that culture that are either ignored or considered valuable knowledge, relies on the judgment of the ethnic group in power. In the case of historiographies of the Middle East, and the Oriental discipline, another dynamic adds depth this issue. Prior to the late nineteenth century, western (specifically European) empires studied what was said to be high culture of the Middle East, being literature, language, and philology; however, a reciprocal program and curriculum of study did not exist in the Orient which looked at European lands. Distortions in the writing of history have carried over to the post-modern era in the writing of news. As mentioned before under examples of intranational othering, political parties in developing countries sometimes create facts on the ground, report threats that are nonexistent, and extenuate the faults of opposing political parties which are made up of opposing ethnic groups in the majority of cases. Othering via ideas of ethnocentricity—the belief that one’s own ethnic group is superior to all others and the tendency to evaluate and assign meaning to other ethnicities using yours as a standard —is additionally achieved through processes as mundane as cartography. The drawing of maps has historically emphasized and bolstered specific lands and their associated national identities. Cartographers in early centuries commonly distorted actual locations and distances when depicting them on maps; British cartographers for example centered Britain on their maps, and drew it proportionally larger than it should be. Polar perspectives of the Northern Hemisphere drawn by recent American cartographers uses spatial relations between the United States and Russia to emphasize superiority. Thus we see that agendas of domination and subordination are not only supported by the soft sciences like language, popular culture, and literature, but also through the hard and exact sciences like mathematics and geography.
The Other in gender studies
Simone De BeauvoirSimone de Beauvoir
Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir, often shortened to Simone de Beauvoir , was a French existentialist philosopher, public intellectual, and social theorist. She wrote novels, essays, biographies, an autobiography in several volumes, and monographs on philosophy, politics, and...
changed the Hegelian notion of the Other, for use in her description of male-dominated culture. This treats woman as the Other in relation to man. The Other has thus become an important concept for studies of the sex-gender system. Michael Warner
Michael Warner
Michael Warner is a literary critic, social theorist, and Seymour H. Knox Professor of English Literature and American Studies at Yale University. He also writes for Art Forum, The Nation, The Advocate, and The Village Voice...
argues that:
Thus, according to Warner, Freudian and Lacan
Lacan
Lacan is surname of:* Jacques Lacan , French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist** The Seminars of Jacques Lacan** From Bakunin to Lacan: Anti-Authoritarianism and the Dislocation of Power, a book on political philosophy by Saul Newman** Lacan at the Scene* Judith Miller, née Lacan...
ian psychoanalysis hold the heterosexist view that if one is attracted to people of the same gender as one's self, one fails to distinguish self and other, identification and desire. This is a "regressive" or an "arrested" function. He further argues that heteronormativity
Heteronormativity
Heteronormativity is a term invented in 1991 to describe any of a set of lifestyle norms that hold that people fall into distinct and complementary genders with natural roles in life. It also holds that heterosexuality is the normal sexual orientation, and states that sexual and marital relations...
covers its own narcissistic
Narcissism
Narcissism is a term with a wide range of meanings, depending on whether it is used to describe a central concept of psychoanalytic theory, a mental illness, a social or cultural problem, or simply a personality trait...
investments by projecting or displacing them on queer
Queer
Queer is an umbrella term for sexual minorities that are not heterosexual, heteronormative, or gender-binary. In the context of Western identity politics the term also acts as a label setting queer-identifying people apart from discourse, ideologies, and lifestyles that typify mainstream LGBT ...
ness.
De Beauvoir calls the Other the minority
Minority (philosophy)
Minority, and the related concept of "becoming-minor," is a philosophical concept developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in their books Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature , A Thousand Plateaus , and elsewhere. In these texts, they criticize the concept of "majority"...
, the least favored one and often a woman, when compared to a man, "for a man represents both the positive and the neutral, as indicated by the common use of man to designate human beings in general; whereas woman represents only the negative, defined by limiting criteria, without reciprocity" (McCann, 33). Betty Friedan
Betty Friedan
Betty Friedan was an American writer, activist, and feminist.A leading figure in the Women's Movement in the United States, her 1963 book The Feminine Mystique is often credited with sparking the "second wave" of American feminism in the twentieth century...
supported this thought when she interviewed women and the majority of them identified themselves in their role in the private sphere, rather than addressing their own personal achievements. They automatically identified as the Other without knowing. Although the Other may be influenced by a socially constructed society, one can argue that society has the power to change this creation (Haslanger).
In an effort to dismantle the notion of the Other, Cheshire Calhoun proposed a deconstruction
Deconstruction
Deconstruction is a term introduced by French philosopher Jacques Derrida in his 1967 book Of Grammatology. Although he carefully avoided defining the term directly, he sought to apply Martin Heidegger's concept of Destruktion or Abbau, to textual reading...
of the word "woman" from a subordinate association and to reconstruct it by proving women do not need to be rationalized by male dominance. This would contribute to the idea of the Other and minimize the hierarchal connotation this word implies.
Sarojini Sahoo
Sarojini Sahoo
Sarojini Sahoo is an Orissa Sahitya Academy Award winner Indian feminist writer, a columnist in The New Indian Express and associate editor of Chennai based English magazine Indian AGE, who has been enlisted among 25 Exceptional Women of India by ‘Kindle’ English magazine of Kolkata.Born in the...
, an India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
n feminist writer, agrees with De Beauvoir that women can only free themselves by “thinking, taking action, working, creating, on the same terms as men; instead of seeking to disparage them, she declares herself their equal." She disagrees, however, that though women have the same status to men as human beings, they have their own identity and they are different from men. They are "others" in real definition, but this is not in context with Hegelian definition of “others”. It is not always due to man’s "active" and "subjective" demands. They are the others, unknowingly accepting the subjugation as a part of "subjectivity". Sahoo, however contends that whilst the woman identity is certainly constitutionally different from that of man, men and women still share a basic human equality. Thus the harmful asymmetric sex/gender "Othering" arises accidentally and ‘passively’ from natural, unavoidable intersubjectivity.
Some Other quotations
- The poet Arthur RimbaudArthur RimbaudJean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud was a French poet. Born in Charleville, Ardennes, he produced his best known works while still in his late teens—Victor Hugo described him at the time as "an infant Shakespeare"—and he gave up creative writing altogether before the age of 21. As part of the decadent...
may be the earliest to express the idea: "Je est un autre" [I is another]. - Søren KierkegaardSøren KierkegaardSøren Aabye Kierkegaard was a Danish Christian philosopher, theologian and religious author. He was a critic of idealist intellectuals and philosophers of his time, such as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling and Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel...
argued that others, the crowd, is "untruth", and stressed the importance of the individual. - Friedrich NietzscheFriedrich NietzscheFriedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
, in The Gay ScienceThe Gay ScienceThe Gay Science is a book written by Friedrich Nietzsche, first published in 1882 and followed by a second edition, which was published after the completion of Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Beyond Good and Evil, in 1887. This substantial expansion includes a fifth book and an appendix of songs...
, phrased it thus: "You are always a different person." - Ferdinand de SaussureFerdinand de SaussureFerdinand de Saussure was a Swiss linguist whose ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in linguistics in the 20th century. He is widely considered one of the fathers of 20th-century linguistics...
described language as, in Calvin ThomasCalvin Thomas (critical theorist)Calvin Thomas is an American academic who works in the fields of critical theory, modern and postmodern literature and culture. He is a professor at Georgia State University...
' words, a "differential system without positive terms". - Jacques LacanJacques LacanJacques Marie Émile Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis and philosophy, and has been called "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud". Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced France's...
argued that ego-formation occurs through mirror-stageMirror stageThe mirror stage is a concept in the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan. Philosopher Raymond Tallis describes the mirror stage as "the cornerstone of Lacan’s oeuvre."...
misrecognition, and his theories were applied to politics by Althusser. As the later Lacan said: "The I is always in the field of the Other." - Emmanuel LevinasEmmanuel LévinasEmmanuel Levinas was a Lithuanian-born French Jewish philosopher and Talmudic commentator.-Life:Emanuelis Levinas received a traditional Jewish education in Lithuania...
, on the other hand, saw apprehension of the other as the basis for ethicsEthicsEthics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...
, and as a limit on ontologyOntologyOntology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence or reality as such, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations...
. - Jean-Paul SartreJean-Paul SartreJean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
's character Garcin, in the play Huis clos (No ExitNo ExitNo Exit is a 1944 existentialist French play by Jean-Paul Sartre. The original French title is Huis Clos, the French equivalent of the legal term in camera, referring to a private discussion behind closed doors; English translations have also been performed under the titles In Camera, No Way Out...
), states that "Hell is others," or, alternatively, "Hell is other people." ("L'enfer, c'est les Autres.")
See also
- Jacques DerridaJacques DerridaJacques Derrida was a French philosopher, born in French Algeria. He developed the critical theory known as deconstruction and his work has been labeled as post-structuralism and associated with postmodern philosophy...
- Michel FoucaultMichel FoucaultMichel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
- Edward SaidEdward SaidEdward Wadie Saïd was a Palestinian-American literary theorist and advocate for Palestinian rights. He was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and a founding figure in postcolonialism...
- OthernessOthernessThe Otherness is a malevolent force present in several of the novels by F. Paul Wilson. From the human perspective, the Otherness is evil – greater in scope than Satan and similar high agents of evil, and possibly the inspiration for such entities...
- Subject-object problemSubject-object problemThe subject–object problem, a longstanding philosophical issue, is concerned with the analysis of human experience, and of what within experience is "subjective" and what is "objective."...
The Other of sexual difference
- Sarojini SahooSarojini SahooSarojini Sahoo is an Orissa Sahitya Academy Award winner Indian feminist writer, a columnist in The New Indian Express and associate editor of Chennai based English magazine Indian AGE, who has been enlisted among 25 Exceptional Women of India by ‘Kindle’ English magazine of Kolkata.Born in the...
- Julia KristevaJulia KristevaJulia Kristeva is a Bulgarian-French philosopher, literary critic, psychoanalyst, sociologist, feminist, and, most recently, novelist, who has lived in France since the mid-1960s. She is now a Professor at the University Paris Diderot...
- Judith ButlerJudith ButlerJudith Butler is an American post-structuralist philosopher, who has contributed to the fields of feminism, queer theory, political philosophy, and ethics. She is a professor in the Rhetoric and Comparative Literature departments at the University of California, Berkeley.Butler received her Ph.D...
- Luce IrigarayLuce IrigarayLuce Irigaray is a Belgian feminist, philosopher, linguist, psychoanalyst, sociologist and cultural theorist. She is best known for her works Speculum of the Other Woman and This Sex Which Is Not One .-Biography:...
Sources
- Thomas, CalvinCalvin Thomas (critical theorist)Calvin Thomas is an American academic who works in the fields of critical theory, modern and postmodern literature and culture. He is a professor at Georgia State University...
, ed. (2000). "Introduction: Identification, Appropriation, Proliferation", Straight with a Twist: Queer Theory and the Subject of Heterosexuality. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-06813-0. - Cahoone, Lawrence (1996). From Modernism to Postmodernism: An Anthology. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell.
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- Haslanger, Sally. Feminism and Metaphysics: Unmasking Hidden Ontologies. http://www.mit.edu/~shaslang/papers/fmnews/UHO.html. 28 November 2005.
- McCann, Carole. Kim, Seung-Kyung. (2003). Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives. Routledge. New York, NY.
- Rimbaud, ArthurArthur RimbaudJean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud was a French poet. Born in Charleville, Ardennes, he produced his best known works while still in his late teens—Victor Hugo described him at the time as "an infant Shakespeare"—and he gave up creative writing altogether before the age of 21. As part of the decadent...
(1966). "Letter to Georges Izambard", Complete Works and Selected Letters. Trans. Wallace FowlieWallace FowlieWallace Fowlie was an American writer and professor of literature. He was the James B. Duke Professor of French Literature at Duke University from 1964. Known for his translations of the poet Arthur Rimbaud and his critical studies of French poetry and drama, he also wrote about rock-poet Jim...
. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. - Nietzsche, FriedrichFriedrich NietzscheFriedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
(1974). The Gay Science. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage. - Saussure, Ferdinand deFerdinand de SaussureFerdinand de Saussure was a Swiss linguist whose ideas laid a foundation for many significant developments in linguistics in the 20th century. He is widely considered one of the fathers of 20th-century linguistics...
(1986). Course in General Linguistics. Eds. Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye. Trans. Roy Harris. La Salle, Ill.: Open Court. - Lacan, JacquesJacques LacanJacques Marie Émile Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis and philosophy, and has been called "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud". Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced France's...
(1977). Écrits: A Selection. Trans. Alan SheridanAlan Sheridan-Life:Born Alan Mark Sheridan-Smith, Sheridan read English at St Catharine's College, Cambridge before spending 5 years in Paris as English assistant at Lycée Henri IV and Lycée Condorcet. Returning to London, he briefly worked in publishing before becoming a freelance translator...
. New York: Norton. - Althusser, LouisLouis AlthusserLouis Pierre Althusser was a French Marxist philosopher. He was born in Algeria and studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he eventually became Professor of Philosophy....
(1973). Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. Trans. Ben Brewster. New York: Monthly Review Press. - Warner, Michael (1990). "Homo-Narcissism; or, Heterosexuality", Engendering Men, p. 191. Eds. Boone and Cadden, London UK: Routledge.
- Tuttle, Howard (1996). The Crowd is Untruth, Peter Lang Publishing, ISBN 0-8204-2866-3