Other

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

Related Topics:
The Other - Doctor Who - Other (Doctor Who)

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The other or constitutive other is a key concept in psychology and philosophy where it is often considered to be what defines or even constitutes the self (see self (psychology), self (philosophy), and self-concept) and other phenomena and cultural units: "What appear to be cultural units--human beings, words, meanings, ideas, philosophical systems, social organizations--are maintained in their apparent unity only through an active process of exclusion, opposition, and hierarchization. Other phenomena or units must be represented as foreign or 'other' through representing a hierarchical dualism in which the unit is 'privileged' or favored, and the other is devalued in some way." (Cahoone 1996). Emmanuel Levinas, on the other hand, saw apprehension of the other as the basis for ethics, and as a limit on ontology.

Related Topics:
Psychology - Philosophy - Self (psychology) - Self (philosophy) - Self-concept - Emmanuel Levinas - Ontology

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The poet Arthur Rimbaud may be the earliest to express this idea: "Je est un autre" . 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. Also see Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Julia Kristeva, and Judith Butler. (Thomas 2000). Yet before all these it was used by the German philosopher, Hegel, who said: 'Each consciousness pursues the death of the other', meaning that in seeing a separateness between you and another, causing a feeling of alienation, you try to resolve it by dissolution into a higher synthesis. Hegel's famous parable of the Master and Slave uses this concept of "the other" to great effect. Famous French feminist, Simone De Beauvoir, adopted this Hegelian notion of the Other, in her description of how male-dominated culture treats woman as the Other in relation to man. .

Related Topics:
Arthur Rimbaud - Friedrich Nietzsche - Ferdinand de Saussure - Jacques Lacan - Mirror-stage - Althusser - Michel Foucault - Jacques Derrida - Julia Kristeva - Judith Butler

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According to Warner (1990) "the modern system of sex and gender would not be possible without a disposition to interpret the difference between genders as the difference between self and Other...having a sexual object of the opposite gender is taken to be the normal and paradigmatic form of an interest in the Other or, more generally, others." 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, and is "regressive" or an "arrested" function. He further argues that heteronormativity covers its own narcissist investments by projecting or displacing them on queerness.

Related Topics:
Paradigm - Freud - Lacan - Heterosexist - Heteronormativity - Queer

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