Alterity is a philosophical and anthropological term meaning “otherness", that is, the "other
of two" (Latin alter).
It is also increasingly being used in media to express something other than “sameness,"
an imitation compared to the original.
Alterity is an encounter with "the other."
This “other” is not like any other worldly object or force.
The perceiving subject (I myself) sees that another human being is “like me.”
They act like I do, appear to be in control of their conscious life, just like me.
The “other” takes me out of myself and creates new understanding, that is, alterity.
Philosophically, the life of the other functions symbolically.
It is in our encounter with this other life that generates the contrasts at the foundations
of new consciousness.
In such exchanges we are not lost, but rather the “proper self,” one’s subjectivity,
scrubbed and brightly lit, becomes stained and unsure by a renewed understanding from
a nonoriginal origin.
Ego is still there; we do not disappear, but boundaries are less well defined.
The self is opened to new experiences, and the “affair” of the other is made available."
== Philosophy == 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 transcendence (Alterity and Transcendence) (1995).
=== Castoriadis === 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."
=== Baudrillard === 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."
=== Spivak ===
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.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."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 or 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."Spivak explains four "master words" to identify the
modes of being that create alterity: "Nationalism, Internationalism, Secularism and Culturalism."
Furthermore, tools for developing alternative histories include: "gender, race, ethnicity,
class".
=== Other thinkers === Jeffery Nealon, in Alterity Politics: Ethics
and Performative Subjectivity, 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.
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 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,
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.”
== Anthropology == 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".
== Musicology == 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.
== See also ==
== References ==
== Further reading == Martin Buber (1937), I and Thou.
Chan-Fai Cheung, Tze-Wan Kwan and Kwok-ying Lau (eds.), Identity and Alterity.
Phenomenology and Cultural Traditions.
Verlag Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2009 (Orbis Phaenomenologicusm, Perspektiven,
Neue Folge Band 14) ISBN 978-3-8260-3301-8 Cooper, John Michael (2007) Mendelssohn, Goethe,
and the Walpurgis Night.
University of Rochester Press.
Fabian, Johannes (1983) Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object.
Columbia University Press.
Levinas, Emmanuel (1999[1970]) Alterity and Transcendence.
(Trans.
Michael B. Smith) Columbia University Press.
Maranhao, Tullio (ed.), Anthropology and the Question of the Other.
Paideuma 44 (1998).
Nealon, Jeffrey (1998) Alterity Politics: Ethics and Performative Subjectivity.
Duke University Press.
Strong, Pauline Turner (1999) Captive Selves, Captivating Others: The Politics and Poetics
of Colonial American Captivity *Narratives.
Westview Press/Perseus Books.
Taussig, Michael (1993) Mimesis and Alterity.
Routledge.
== External links == The dictionary definition of alterity at Wiktionary