Research: 'Othering' - Misc Reading Material

Chapter 5
The process of finding miscellaneous, and not always academic sources to better understand a situation, viewpoint or background. I highlight interesting parts to take note of, to learn or consider when writing on the topic. Additionally, many writings cite their sources
which allows me to access them for further information.

The Other and 'Othering' - A short introduction

Yannis Gabriel

Othering is the process of casting a group, an individual or an object into the role of the ‘other’ and establishing one’s own identity through opposition to and, frequently, vilification of this Other. The Greeks’ use of the word ‘barbarian’ to describe non-Greeks is a typical example of othering and an instance of nationalism avant la lèttre. The ease with which the adjective ‘other’ generated the verb ‘to other’ in the last twenty years or so is indicative of the usefulness, power and currency of a term that now occupies an important position in feminist, postcolonial, civil rights and sexual minority discourses.

Othering is a process that goes beyond ‘mere’ scapegoating and denigration – it denies the Other those defining characteristics of the ‘Same’, reason, dignity, love, pride, heroism, nobility, and ultimately any entitlement to human rights. Whether the Other is a racial or a religious group, a gender group, a sexual minority or a nation, it is made rife for exploitation, oppression and indeed genocide by denying its essential humanity, because, as the philosopher Richard Rorty put it, “everything turns on who counts as a fellow human being, as a rational agent in the only relevant sense – the sense in which rational agency is synonymous with membership of our moral community” (Rorty, 1993, p. 124).

The process of othering may be initiated by an encounter between civilizations that have no previous tradition of contact or understanding. Within a few years of Columbus’s landing in the New World, its indigenous inhabitants were enslaved, tortured and killed, their immense civilizations despoiled, desecrated and destroyed for ever. Their conquerors questioned whether native Americans belonged to the same species as themselves. But othering can also take place between groups that know each other well and have lived in close proximity for centuries, as the genocide of Rwanda and the ethnic cleansing of Bosnia remind us. In these situations, othering is prompted by what Freud (Freud, 1921c; 1930a) referred to as ‘narcissism of minor differences’ – the person or group that ‘othered’ is the one in closest physical and symbolic proximity, as it is seen to present a major threat to one’s identity and pride – precisely what was to happened to Freud and hundred of thousands Jews in Germany and Europe. The consequences of this narcissism of minor differences can range from the petty but serious antagonism of supporters of neighbouring football clubs or  neighbouring towns, to ethnic cleansing and genocide (Blok, 2001).

Theorizing the Other has drawn extensively on the work of three theorists who influenced each other – psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, ethnographer Claude Lévi-Strauss and philosopher Emmanuel Levinas. Lacan (Lacan, 1988) examined how the ego is formed during the early stage of infancy as the child comes to contemplate its own face in a mirror. The child first encounters him/herself as an Other and misrecognizes himself as a subject, thereafter sustaining this recognition in the gaze of the other. There is thus an interesting link between theory of the Other and alienation. Othering is a process that may be applied to oneself, whereby one experiences oneself as a stranger, indeed Lacanian theory views this ‘self-othering’ as the process whereby the symbolic order is established – the unconscious is the stranger within ourselves. A man, for example, has no choice but to silence or even kill the ‘woman in him’.

Lévi-Strauss (Lévi-Strauss, 1955/1992) proposed that throughout human history, people have employed two strategies in dealing with the Other, the foreign, the deviant or the stranger – one is to incorporate them, as in the case of cannibalism, eliminating any boundaries between the same and the other; the second strategy it to expel them and exclude them (‘spit them out’) by erecting strong boundaries and special institutions in which they are kept in isolation. These strategies can be observed in many contemporary situations. Finally, Levinas (Levinas, 1969) based his moral philosophy on the face-to-face encounter with another human being, viewing the moment of this encounter as the one irreducible and concrete way of establishing a relation with the Other, as against relying on abstract and impersonal rules of ethics to do so.

Many current discourses on the Other are taking an extremely pessimistic and bleak view of relations among human beings, returning to the Hobbesian view of homo homini lupus (‘a human is a wolf to a fellow-human’). Some authors (notably Said, 1985, 1994) have argued that Western identity and culture are fundamentally forged by an othering logic, one that dehumanizes or devalues other people, such as primitives, uncivilized, orientals, blacks, non-believers, women and so forth. An essential feature of othering is denying the Other his/her own voice, denying him/her the opportunity to speak for him/herself and instead attributing qualities, opinions and views that refer to one’s own identity and culture.

Sources

Blok, A. 2001. Honour and violence. Cambridge: Polity.
Freud, S. 1921c. Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (Standard ed.). London: Hogarth Press.
Freud, S. 1930a. Civilization and Its Discontents. In S. Freud (Ed.), Freud: Civilization, Society and Religion, Vol. 12. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Lacan, J. 1988. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan. Book 2. The ego in Freud's theory and in the technique of psychoanalysis, 1954-1955. New York: W.W. Norton.
Lévi-Strauss, C. 1955/1992. Tristes tropiques. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Levinas, E. 1969. Totality and infinity; an essay on exteriority. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press.
Rorty, R. 1993. Human rights, rationality and sentimentality. In S. Shute, & S. Hurley (Eds.), On human tights: 112-134. New York: Basic Books.
Said, E. W. 1985. Orientalism. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Said, E. W. 1994. Culture and imperialism. London: Chatto and Windus.