The Other

The idea of the other is central to cultural theory. As over against modernist theory in which one begins from a unified or rationalized sense of human nature, critical theory starts "from below", or from the diverse experience of different people. In modernist theory, for instance, we are all assumed to be subject to the vagaries of the market, and are defined as goal-seeking beings who maximize their self interest. Difference is due to different of circumstance, not difference in perspective, experience, or even goals. Thus, markets can be extended to anywhere on earth and they will work. Critical theory, on the other hand, assumes that our experiences are central to any understanding we have, and that furthermore the illusion of universality in theory really just disguises the idea that we project our own frame of reference onto the world.


So, the recognition that people are different raises the question of what happens when we realize that, but then just "consume" those cultural products, or bring them into our own frames of reference. The classic example is the visual representation of the "native". It tells us nothing about actual people outside of our familiar culture, but rather reinforces our own cultural categories by establishing that there is something outside of them. The "native" is lower or more primitive on the ladder of development, we assume, which underscores our own success.


Another example is that of the place of women in Western society. Some men object that they put women on a pedestal, and thus want to argue that they value them. But the pedestal, as much as the view that women are lower, still just makes women into the other side of the male imagination of the world. No one has to deal with someone on a pedestal as a human being.


There are many more subtle senses of othering as well. Some have been listed below.

  1. Fascination: The other can be the exotic, the foreign. It could be the object of idle curiosity, of collection, of pride.

  2. Repulsion: The other can be the thing to be avoided, the leper. It could be that which reminds me of my own corrigibility, or that which just turns my stomach.

  3. Desire: The other can be the thing to be owned or controlled. It is that which I believe fulfils a lack in my existence.

  4. Dependence: The other can be the thing which makes my own existence possible. According to Karl Barth and Rudolph Otto (to use an analogy from theology), it is the otherness of God that is the real point of religion. It could be the ground of my being, or it could be the transcendence of my being; either way, it is what I am not, but what makes me possible.

  5. Smugness: The other could be the primitive (Levi-Bruhl), the ones not like us because they lack Culture. They could be valorized (Rousseau) or vilified (Hegel), but they are always easily forgotten.

  6. Appropriation/subsumption: The other could be that which is absorbed, that which is assimilated into my being, giving up its own being on my behalf.

  7. Marginalization: The other is often that which is left out after coherent meaning is arrived at. It is that which makes no sense, from the point of view of the coherent centre.

  8. Horizon: The other might be that which holds the possibility of understanding by being the place where tradition and prejudice can be uncovered, at least in part.

  9. Domination: The other could be that which is my servant, that which relieves me from the drudgery of my own existence by taking that drudgery on him-, her-, or it-self. The machine and the slave are both the other.

  10. Foil: The other could be that against which I test myself, or that against which I measure myself.

  11. Mirror: The other could be that in which I find myself again and meet myself anew, the familiar in the alien and the alien in the familiar.

  12. Body: The other could be that part of me that is always subordinate, if I believe Descartes and hold that I am a thinking thing. It may simply reduce to a tool that I can use to control other thinking things, or it could be the thing that keeps me from true Enlightenment (Plato, Gnostics). It could also be that which requires interpretation, as it is my expression in the world and the world's interaction with me (Merleau-Ponty).