GreeNTD Food for Thought: On the Other and Alterity - A philosophical insight

Technical Meeting on

Negotiation Environment and Territorial Development

Green NEGOTIATED TERRITORIAL DEVELOPMENT (GreeNTD)

FAO-HQs Rome, 9-10 September 2015 – Ethiopia Room

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

On the Other and Alterity

A philosophical insight

Margherita Brunori

Etre deux

The question of the other – writes Luce Irigaray, speaking about gender- has been poorly formulated in the Western tradition, for the other is always seen as the other of the same, the other of the subject itself, rather than another subject irreducible to the masculine subject and sharing equivalent dignity.

In the traditional process of the discovery of the self, the self is engaged with its negative in a dialectical operation. The operation of the negative should instead engage in two subjects, in order not to reduce the two to the one, the other to the same. Through this gesture, the subject gives up being one and singular. It respects the other, the two, in an intersubjective relation. Another subject that is two but is not second.

In Irigaray’s opinion, succeeding in the revolutionary move of affirming the self as other and valorising the difference is a gesture that allows us to promote the recognition of all forms of others without hierarchy, privilege, or authority over them: whether it be differences in race, age, culture, religion.

Alterity

Talking in more general terms, nowadays the question of alterity is gaining an increasing importance. The complex processes of social and cultural change make momentum for a new look on the issue of the other. Following those changes, the differences (be it cultural, of values, or experiences) penetrates in everyone’s daily life and the problem of alterity emerges with all its anthropological, historical and political implications.

Due to the current mutations, traditional categories are increasingly unapt for the comprehension of reality to the point that it is no longer possible to think to alterity as something that is external or counterposed to identity. Indeed, the other is no longer collocated in a remote, delimited and circumscribed space, above the boundaries of the individual or collective self, but it is increasingly near.

The dialogue, or the “polilogue”

According to Gadamer, in order to understand the alterity, it is necessary to perceive it as within a relation, and not as an absolute and isolated object of knowledge. It should be a dialogue based on the exchange of questions and answers that does not aim at reaching a unilateral point of view, but rather an agreement on the issue.

To comprehend the alterity means to provoke a “fusion of horizons” because the truth is not monological but dialogical, it does not unveil a pre-existing situation, but it is the result of the common understanding and interpreting.

Pushing the dialogical element further, Franz Martin Wimmer talks about the polilogue. Opposed to the monologue and recognizing the plural essence of the other, the polilogue is a model in which everyone is constantly willing to call his/her own concepts into question. The dialogical, or polilogical, model do not presuppose an absolute truth already found by someone: its task is to activate processes; it is the dialogue that produces reality.

Being two in a dialogue

The temptation to resolve the pluralism -rising in the attempt to comprehend alterity- should be highlighted and avoided; the attempt to integrate or reduce differences should be contrasted. This commitment should begin from the acknowledgement that the other is irreducible to the personal pre-concepts: it should remain visible in its diversity. The goal of the imperative of understanding the other should never be assimilation nor the exclusion. Rather, it is an endless task in which the other appears essentially as the other.

Conclusions

Trying to summarize what previously said, some points are highlighted:

·         The other is an irreducible other worth of same dignity.

·         There are many others, according to the concrete context and situation; the other is plural, and near.

·         The other is originally perceived through a relation, and in the dialogical (or polilogical) relation the otherness should be recognized and valorised.

Only within the dialogue the relation can evolve from a sharing of living spaces, to a sharing of projects that are finalized to organize those spaces.

Bibliography

Camera, F., “Vivere come l’altro dell’altro”. Appunti per una logica relazionale dell’alterità. In Pirni, A. (a cura di), Logiche dell’alterità. Edizioni ETS (2009), pp. 43-58.

Irigaray, L. Guynn, N., “The question of the other”. Yale French Studies, n°87, Another Look, Another Women: Retraslation of French Feminism (1995), pp.7-19.

Wimmer, F.M., Czajka, A., “Gli altri sono esseri pensanti come noi”. Inizi, tappe, problemi e compiti della filosofia interculturale. In Pirni, A. (a cura di), Logiche dell’alterità. Edizioni ETS (2009), pp. 173-186.