 | This article may be too technical for most readers to understand.(January 2017) |
Alterity is a philosophical and anthropological term meaning "otherness", that is, the "other of two" (Latin alter). [1] It is also increasingly being used in media to express something other than "sameness", or something outside of tradition or convention. [2]
Within the phenomenological tradition, alterity 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 consequently to assume the existence of an alternative viewpoint. The concept was further developed by Emmanuel Levinas in a series of essays, collected in Altérité et transcendance (Alterity and Transcendence) (1995).
For Cornelius Castoriadis (L'institution imaginaire de la société, 1975; The Imaginary Institution of Society, 1997) radical alterity/otherness (French : altérité radicale) denotes the element of creativity in history: "For what is given in and through history is not the determined sequence of the determined but the emergence of radical otherness, immanent creation, non-trivial novelty." [3]
For Jean Baudrillard (Figures de l'alterité, 1994; Radical Alterity, 2008), alterity is a precious and transcendent element and its loss would seriously impoverish a world culture of increasing sameness and "arrogant, insular cultural narcissism." [4]
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's theory of alterity was introduced in a 2014 symposium titled Remaking History, the intention of which was to challenge the masculine orthodoxy of history writing. [5]
According to Spivak, it is imperative for one to uncover the histories and inherent historical behaviors in order to exercise an individual right to authentic experience, identity and reality. Within the concept of socially constructed histories one "must take into account the dangerous fragility and tenacity of these concept-metaphors." [5]
Spivak recalls her personal history: "As a postcolonial, I am concerned with the appropriation of 'alternative history' or 'histories'. I am not a historian by training. I cannot claim disciplinary expertise in remaking history in the sense of rewriting it. But I can be used as an example of how historical narratives are negotiated. The parents of my parents' grandparents' grandparents were made over, not always without their consent, by the political, fiscal and educational intervention of British imperialism, and now I am independent. Thus I am, in the strictest sense, a postcolonial." [5]
Spivak uses four "master words" to identify the modes of being that create alterity: "Nationalism, Internationalism, Secularism and Culturalism." [5] Furthermore, tools for developing alternative histories include: "gender, race, ethnicity, class". [5]
Jeffery Nealon, in Alterity Politics: Ethics and Performative Subjectivity, [6] argues that "ethics is constituted as an inexorable affirmative response to different identities, not through an inability to understand or totalize the other."
There is included a long article on alterity in the University of Chicago's Theories of Media: Keywords Glossary by Joshua Wexler. [7] Wexler writes: "Given the various theorists formulations presented here, the mediation of alterity or otherness in the world provides a space for thinking about the complexities of self and other and the formation of identity."
The concept of alterity is also being used in theology and in spiritual books meant for general readers. This is not out of place because, for believers in the Judeo-Christian tradition, God is the ultimate 'Other'. Alterity has also been used to describe the goal of many Christians, to become themselves deeply "other" than the usual norms of behavior and patterns of thought of the secular culture at large. Enzo Bianchi in Echoes of the Word [8] expresses this well, "Meditation always seeks to open us to alterity, love and communion by guiding us toward the goal of having in ourselves the same attitude and will that were in Christ Jesus."
Jadranka Skorin-Kapov in The Aesthetics of Desire and Surprise: Phenomenology and Speculation, [9] relates alterity or otherness to newness and surprise, "The signification of the encounter with otherness is not in its novelty (or banal newness); on the contrary, newness has signification because it reveals otherness, because it allows the experience of otherness. Newness is related to surprise, it is a consequence of the encounter... Metaphysical desire is the acceptivity of irreducible otherness. Surprise is the consequence of the encounter. Between desire and surprise there is a pause, a void, a rupture, an immediacy that cannot be captured and presented."
In anthropology, alterity has been used by scholars such as Nicholas Dirks, Johannes Fabian, Michael Taussig and Pauline Turner Strong to refer to the construction of "cultural others".
The term has gained further use in seemingly somewhat remote disciplines, e.g., historical musicology where it is employed by John Michael Cooper in a study of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Felix Mendelssohn. [10]
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher and one of the most influential figures of German idealism and 19th-century philosophy. His influence extends across the entire range of contemporary philosophical topics, from metaphysical issues in epistemology and ontology, to political philosophy, the philosophy of history, philosophy of art, philosophy of religion, and the history of philosophy.
Post-structuralism is a philosophical movement that questions the objectivity or stability of the various interpretive structures that are posited by structuralism and considers them to be constituted by broader systems of power. Although post-structuralists all present different critiques of structuralism, common themes among them include the rejection of the self-sufficiency of structuralism, as well as an interrogation of the binary oppositions that constitute its structures. Accordingly, post-structuralism discards the idea of interpreting media within pre-established, socially constructed structures.
Phenomenology is the philosophical study of objectivity and reality as subjectively lived and experienced.
Emmanuel Levinas was a French philosopher of Lithuanian Jewish ancestry who is known for his work within Jewish philosophy, existentialism, and phenomenology, focusing on the relationship of ethics to metaphysics and ontology.
Jean Baudrillard was a French sociologist, philosopher and poet, with interest in cultural studies. He is best known for his analyses of media, contemporary culture, and technological communication, as well as his formulation of concepts such as hyperreality. Baudrillard wrote about diverse subjects, including consumerism, critique of economy, social history, aesthetics, Western foreign policy, and popular culture. Among his most well-known works are Seduction (1978), Simulacra and Simulation (1981), America (1986), and The Gulf War Did Not Take Place (1991). His work is frequently associated with postmodernism and specifically post-structuralism. Nevertheless, Baudrillard had also opposed post-structuralism, and had distanced himself from postmodernism.
Maurice Blanchot was a French writer, philosopher and literary theorist. His work, exploring a philosophy of death alongside poetic theories of meaning and sense, bore significant influence on post-structuralist philosophers such as Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy.
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is an Indian scholar, literary theorist, and feminist critic. She is a University Professor at Columbia University and a founding member of the establishment's Institute for Comparative Literature and Society.
Other is a term used to define another person or people as separate from oneself. In phenomenology, the terms the Other and the Constitutive Other distinguish other people from the Self, as a cumulative, constituting factor in the self-image of a person; as acknowledgement of being real; hence, the Other is dissimilar to and the opposite of the Self, of Us, and of the Same. The Constitutive Other is the relation between the personality and the person (body) of a human being; the relation of essential and superficial characteristics of personal identity that corresponds to the relationship between opposite, but correlative, characteristics of the Self, because the difference is inner-difference, within the Self.
Strategic essentialism, a major concept in postcolonial theory, was introduced in the 1980s by the Indian literary critic and theorist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. It refers to a political tactic in which minority groups, or ethnic groups mobilize on the basis of shared identity attributes to represent themselves.
In postcolonial studies and in critical theory, the term subaltern designates and identifies the colonial populations who are socially, politically, and geographically excluded from the hierarchy of power of an imperial colony and from the metropolitan homeland of an empire. Antonio Gramsci coined the term subaltern to identify the cultural hegemony that excludes and displaces specific people and social groups from the socio-economic institutions of society, in order to deny their agency and voices in colonial politics. The terms subaltern and subaltern studies entered the vocabulary of post-colonial studies through the works of the Subaltern Studies Group of historians who explored the political-actor role of the common people who constitute the mass population, rather than re-explore the political-actor roles of the social and economic elites in the history of India.
French philosophy, here taken to mean philosophy in the French language, has been extremely diverse and has influenced Western philosophy as a whole for centuries, from the medieval scholasticism of Peter Abelard, through the founding of modern philosophy by René Descartes, to 20th century philosophy of science, existentialism, phenomenology, structuralism, and postmodernism.
Feminist philosophy is an approach to philosophy from a feminist perspective and also the employment of philosophical methods to feminist topics and questions. Feminist philosophy involves both reinterpreting philosophical texts and methods in order to supplement the feminist movement and attempts to criticise or re-evaluate the ideas of traditional philosophy from within a feminist framework.
Phenomenology or phenomenological psychology, a sub-discipline of psychology, is the scientific study of subjective experiences. It is an approach to psychological subject matter that attempts to explain experiences from the point of view of the subject via the analysis of their written or spoken words. The approach has its roots in the phenomenological philosophical work of Edmund Husserl.
Robert L. Bernasconi is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Philosophy at Pennsylvania State University. He is known as a reader of Martin Heidegger and Emmanuel Levinas, and for his work on the concept of race. He has also written on the history of philosophy.
Postcolonialism is the critical academic study of the cultural, political and economic legacy of colonialism and imperialism, focusing on the impact of human control and exploitation of colonized people and their lands. The field started to emerge in the 1960s, as scholars from previously colonized countries began publishing on the lingering effects of colonialism, developing a critical theory analysis of the history, culture, literature, and discourse of imperial power.
This is a list of articles in continental philosophy.
Feminist ethics is an approach to ethics that builds on the belief that traditionally ethical theorizing has undervalued and/or underappreciated women's moral experience, which is largely male-dominated, and it therefore chooses to reimagine ethics through a holistic feminist approach to transform it.
In architecture, spatial design, literary theory, and film theory—affective atmosphere refers to the mood, situation, or sensorial qualities of a space. Spaces containing atmosphere are shaped through subjective and intersubjective interactions with the qualia of the architecture. Atmosphere is linked with anthropology, architectural theory, critical theory, cultural geography, phenomenology of architecture, and pragmatism.
Gregory Victor Loewen is a Canadian social philosopher in the traditions of hermeneutics and phenomenology. The author of thirty-five scholarly non-fiction books as well as over twenty works of fiction, he is age-relative one of a number of modern period academic writers to have produced a significant body of work early in their careers, along with Herder, de Bono, Spir, Joad, Aguilera, and Schelling.
Cornelius Castoriadis was a Greek-French philosopher, social critic, economist, psychoanalyst, author of The Imaginary Institution of Society, and co-founder of the Socialisme ou Barbarie group.
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