Other: Encyclopedia - Other

Other

For the movie, see The Others. For the Doctor Who character see Other (Doctor Who).

The other or constitutive other is a key concept in continental philosophy. It refers to that which a person considers to be entirely unrelated to their own concept of their self-identity.

As such, a person's definition of the 'Other' is part of what defines or even constitutes the self (see self (psychology), self (philosophy), and self-concept) and other phenomena and cultural units. Lawrence Cahoone explains it thus:

Other - History of the other in philosophy

The concept that the self requires the other to define itself is an old one and has been expressed by many writers:

• The German philosopher Hegel, wrote "Each consciousness pursues the death of the other", meaning that in seeing a separateness between you and another, a feeling of alienation is created, which you try to resolve by synthesis. Hegel's famous parable of the Master and Slave uses this concept of "the other" to great effect.
• The poet Arthur Rimbaud may be the earliest to express the idea: "Je est un autre" [I is other].
• Friedrich Nietzsche, in The Gay Science, phrased it thus: "You are always a different person."
• Ferdinand de Saussure described language as, in Calvin Thomas' words, a "differential system without positive terms".
• Jacques Lacan argued that ego-formation occurs through mirror-stage misrecognition, and his theories were applied to politics by Althusser.
• Emmanuel Levinas, on the other hand, saw apprehension of the other as the basis for ethics, and as a limit on ontology.

Other - The Other in gender studies

Simone De Beauvoir adopted the Hegelian notion of the Other in her description of how male-dominated culture treats woman as the Other in relation to man. The Other has thus become an important concept for studies of the sex-gender system. According to Michael Warner

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 narcissist investments by projecting or displacing them on queerness.

De Beauvoir calls the Other the minority, the least favored one and often times a woman, when compared to a man because, "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 achievments. They automatically identified as the Other without knowing (Colwill). 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 effort to dismantle the notion of the Other, Cheshire Calhoun proposed a deconstruction of the word "woman" from a subordinate association and reconstruct it by proving women do not need to be rationalized by male dominance (McCann, 339). This would contribute to the idea of the Other and minimize the hierarchal connotation this word implies.

See also

• Subject-object problem
• Michel Foucault
• Jacques Derrida
• Julia Kristeva
• Judith Butler

Other - Bibliography

• Foucault, Michel (1990). The History of Sexuality vol. 1: An Introduction. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage.
• Derrida, Jacques (1973). Speech and Phenomena and Other Essays on Husserl's Theory of Signs. Trans. David B. Allison. Evanston: Ill.: Northwestern University Press.
• Kristeva, Julia (1982). Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Trans. Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Butler, Judith (1990). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge.
• Butler, Judith (1993). Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex". New York: Routledge.

Other - Sources

• Thomas, Calvin, ed. (2000). "Introduction: Identification, Appropriation, Proliferation", Straight with a Twist: Queer Theory and the Subject of Heterosexuality. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0252068130.
• Cahoone, Lawrence (1996). From Modernism to Postmodernism: An Anthology. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell.
• Colwill, Elizabeth. Reader--Wmnst 590: Feminist Thought. KB Books, 2005.
• Haslanger, Sally. Feminism and Metaphysics: Unmasking Hidden Ontologies. [1]. 11/28/2005.

McCann, Carole. Kim, Seung-Kyung.

• Feminist Local and Global Theory Perspectives Reader. Routledge. New York, NY. 2003.
• Rimbaud, Arthur (1966). "Letter to Georges Izambard", Complete Works and Selected Letters. Trans. Wallace Fowlie. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Nietzsche, Friedrich (1974). The Gay Science. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage.
• Saussure, Ferdinand de (1986). Course in General Linguistics. Eds. Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye. Trans. Roy Harris. La Salle, Ill.: Open Court.
• Lacan, Jacques (1977). Écrits: A Selection. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Norton.
• Althusser, Louis (1973). Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. Trans. Ben Brewster. New York: Montly Review Press.
• Warner, Michael (). "Homo-Narcissism; or, Heterosexuality", Engendering Men, p.191. Eds. Boone and Cadden.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Other", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki