Other

For other uses, see Other (disambiguation).

The "Other" (or "Constitutive Other") is a concept of the identity of difference that is discussed within some works of Continental philosophy and in the social sciences, such as across the taxonomies of anthropology. The state or characteristic of "the other/Other" is "being different [from] or [alien to]" the identity of self or social identities.[1] As such, the "other/Other" is perceived as dissimilar or opposite to being "us" or the Same. The terms the "other", "Other" and "Otherness" refer to who and what is distinct or separate from the Symbolic, the Real, aesthetic and/or political norm, from identity, and from the self. The "Constitutive Other," using Hegel's construct of "the relation of essential nature to outward manifestation [is a point-of-view of the binary nature of the essential and the superficial where each is the inversion of each other] in pure change, ... to infinity, [where the difference], as inner difference, ... [is within] its own self.[2][3] When used as a verb it means to distinguish then label then identify as belonging to a category and then exclude those who do not fit a societal norm. In geographic terms "to other" means to place outside of the center, somewhere along the margins where the societal norm does not reside.[4]

History

The concept that the Self requires the existence of the Other, as the counterpart who defines the Self; the philosophers explain:

Hegel was among the first to introduce the idea of the other as constituent in self-consciousness. 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. Beauvoir made use of otherness — in similar fashion to Sartre (though it is likely he took the idea from her) — in The Second Sex. In fact, 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 Lithuanian-French philosopher Emmanuel Lévinas were instrumental in coining contemporary usage of "the Other," as radically other. Lacan associated 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 others that obsess me in the other do not affect me as examples of the same genus united with my neighbor by resemblance or common nature, individuations of the human race, or chips off the old block... The others concern me from the first. Here fraternity precedes the commonness of a genus. My relationship with the Other as neighbor gives meaning to my relations with all the others.[5]

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.

According to Derek Gregory, United States President Bush's response to the attacks on 9/11 reinforced divisions, and perpetuated the concept of the other, when he addressed the American populace with the question "Why do they hate us?"[6] This question forced the public to draw a division between America and the Middle East which has been a contributing factor in the continued War on Terror as well as a step in the wrong direction in relation to eradicating imaginative geographies. According to Said "to build a conceptual framework around a notion of us-versus-them is in effect to pretend that the principal consideration is epistemological and natural – our civilization is known and accepted, theirs is different and strange – whereas in fact the framework separating us from them is belligerent, constructed, and situational."[7] These frameworks continue to shape our sub-national, national, and international relations with each other in a way that is deemed by majority of the Geographical community to be counterproductive.

Imperialism

Before the modern world system in which 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..."[8] 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."[9] The maintenance of this unequal relationship has been described as depending on the subordination of an "other" group or peoples. Imperial rule is often imposed for exploitation of land and resources. 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 Said, 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. Critics of empire building believe it stands in fundamental opposition to global community; instead of understanding groups of people, and consequently 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. Immanuel 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. This view posits that 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.

Knowledge

Scholars such as Michel Foucault, the Frankfurt School and other postmodernists have argued that the process of othering has everything to do with imaginaries and power acting through knowledge to achieve a particular political agenda in its goal of domination.[10] Edward Said quotes the following from Nietzsche,[11] saying what is the truth of language but

...a mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms—in short, a sum of human relations, which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are.[12]

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 to 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.[13] Distortions in the writing of history have carried over to the postmodern 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.[14] 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[15] —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.[16]

Scholars have different views and ideas about this concept of 'the Other.' Alison Mountz provides a definition of this concept, along with the ideas of different theorists. She differentiates between the use of the word 'other' as a noun (person/group of persons) and a verb (category/label). Mountz presents the philosophies of postcolonial scholars who demonstrate "that the colonizing powers narrated an 'other' whom they set out to save, dominate, control, civilize and/or extract resources through colonization" [17] This theory puts forth an idea that these colonized spaces needed to be saved by colonial powers, so it was for their benefit that they be colonized. Opposite to the theories of postcolonial scholars, postmodern theorists have contributed to the concept of 'the Other' in a positive way. Postmodernists see this concept of 'othering' as a celebration because it is taking neighbourhoods and groups of people that were seen as 'outsiders' and bringing them into the core . Mountz writes, "the postmodern city is a geographical celebration of difference that moves sites once conceived of as 'marginal' to the centre of discussion and analysis" [17] These two different philosophies highlight the wide range of knowledge scholars have on this concept of 'the Other.' These different perceptions provide different view points for understanding this concept.

Gender studies

Simone de Beauvoir 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:

the modern system of sex and gender would not be possible without a disposition to interpret the difference between genders as the difference between self and Other ... having a sexual object of the opposite gender is taken to be the normal and paradigmatic form of an interest in the Other or, more generally, others.

Thus, according to Warner, Freudian and Lacanian 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 queerness.

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.[18] This would contribute to the idea of the Other and minimize the hierarchical connotation this word implies.

Sarojini Sahoo, an Indian 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".[19] 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.[20]

To 'other' means to exclude a person or a group of people that are, in some way, seen as different from the norm. The concept of 'the Other' can be understood not only from a gendered lens but also from the lens of sexuality. A heteronormative world is seen as the norm and as the centre. In her definition of 'The Other,' Alison Mountz writes, "Women who love women, or men who love men, for example were (and are still in particular times and places) deemed 'deviant' because of their attraction to persons of the same sex" [17] Here, Mountz is demonstrating how sexual identity can also be perceived as a form of 'otherness,' because we live in a world where heterosexual behaviour is seen as the norm and anything outside of that is considered different and is therefore, 'othered.'

The LGBT(lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) community is very often "othered" with negative connotations. In an attempt to neutralize some of this "othering" some cities are "queering" the city. The process of queering the city involves challenging the temporal and spatial layout of the city to allow the LGBT community members to express themselves freely in an area and time of day where they are clearly visible.[21] A very popular example of such a process is the yearly gay pride parade in Toronto, Canada.

Quotations

See also

Sexual difference

References

  1. ↑ Miller, J (2008). "Otherness". The SAGE encyclopedia of qualitative research methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc. pp. 588–591. doi:10.4135/9781412963909.n304. Retrieved 27 January 2015.
  2. ↑ Hegel, G.W.F.; Miller, A.V. (1977). Hoffmeister, J., ed. Force and the Understanding: Appearance and the Supersensible World: Phenomenology of Spirit (5 ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 98–9.
  3. ↑ Findlay, J.N.; Hegel, G.W.F.; Miller, A.V. (1977). Hoffmeister, J., ed. Analysis of the Text: Phenomenology of Spirit (5 ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 517–8.
  4. ↑ Mountz, Allison. "The Other". Key Concepts in Human Geography: 328.
  5. ↑ Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, p.159
  6. ↑ The Colonial Present' Derek Gregory, p.21
  7. ↑ The Colonial Present' Derek Gregory, p.24
  8. ↑ Gelvin, James L. The Modern Middle East: A History. 2nd ed. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. 39-40. Print.
  9. ↑ Johnston, R.J., et al. The Dictionary of Human Geography. 4th Ed. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2000. 375.
  10. ↑ Said, Edward W. Orientalism. 25th Anniversary Edition. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978. xviii. Print.
  11. ↑ Nietzsche, Friedrich. "On Truth and lie in an extra-moral sense." The Portable Nietzsche. Ed. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Viking Press, 1954. 46-7.
  12. ↑ Said, Edward W. Orientalism. 25th Anniversary Edition. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978. 202. Print.
  13. ↑ Humphreys, Steven R. "The Historiography of the Modern Middle East: Transforming a Field of Study." Middle East Historiographies: Narrating the Twentieth Century. Ed. Israel Gershoni, Amy Singer, and Y. Hakam Erdem. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006. 19-21. Print.
  14. ↑ Sehgal, Meera. "Manufacturing a Feminized Siege Mentality." Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 36.2 (2007): 173. Print.
  15. ↑ Fellmann, Jerome D., et al. Human Geography: Landscapes of Human Activities. 10th Ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008. 179.
  16. ↑ Fellmann, Jerome D., et al. Human Geography: Landscapes of Human Activities. 10th Ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008. 10.
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 17.2 Gallagher, Carolyn, Dahlman, Carl T, Gilmartin, Mary, Mountz, Alison, Shirlow, Peter. Key Concepts in Political Geography. SAGE Publications Ltd, 2009. Print.
  18. ↑ McCann, 339
  19. ↑ "Feminism is Humanism. So Why the Debate?"
  20. ↑ Jemmer, Patrick: The O(the)r (O)the(r), Engage Newcastle Volume 1 (ISSN: 2045-0567; ISBN 978-1-907926-00-6) August 2010, published Newcastle UK: NewPhilSoc Publishing, Page 7, also see at "http://books.google.co.in/books?hl=en&lr=&id=YlN_kz8th4cC&oi=fnd&pg=PA5&dq=Sarojini+Sahoo&ots=EFtjSxyA3q&sig=qa7R"
  21. ↑ Mountz, Allison. "The Other". Key Concepts in Human Geography: 335.

Sources

Further reading

External links