“When China Meets China”: Sinéad Morrissey’s Figurations of the Orient, or the Function of Alterity in Julia Kristeva and Paul Ricoeur

This article attempts to investigate the potential resonances between Paul Ricoeur’s and Julia Kristeva’s theories of otherness as applied to the study of poetry by the Northern-Irish poet Sinéad Morrissey. In all of her five poetry books she explores various forms of otherness and attempts to sketch them in verse. She confronts alterity in many ways, approaching such subjects as the relationship with the body and children, encounters with foreigners, and coming to terms with what is foreign within us. This article engages primarily with her experiences of China, which she recorded in the long poem “China” from her third collection, The State of Prisons (2005). Firstly, this article tackles the question of the body, which is interpreted on the basis of Morrissey’s “post-mortem” poems. Their reading prepares the ground for further explorations of otherness, which Morrissey locates at the very heart of human subjectivity. In this way, she also manages to establish a poetic framework for an ethical consideration of otherness. By investigating the working of the human psyche, Morrissey seems to go along the lines of Kristeva and Ricoeur, who claim that otherness is inextricably linked with the formation of human subjectivity. Taking a cue from their philosophical enquiries, the article also attempts to establish where Kristeva’s and Ricoeur’s philosophies overlap

Making sense of ourselves and others: a contribution to the community-diversity debate

In recent years, a debate has played out concerning the relationship between two of Community Psychology's core values: promoting diversity and promoting a sense of community. To elaborate on this dialectical relationship, we propose to inscribe it within the broader framework of the identity-otherness dynamics, which currently underpins a variety of disruptive socio-political processes across Europe (e.g., the decrease of solidarity in dealing with the refugee crisis, the spreading of eurosceptic attitudes, and the waves of xenophobia and populism). All these phenomena entail, either as a premise or as a consequence, the negation of otherness and diversity. Some theories in cultural and semiotic psychology suggest that a deeper understanding of the community-diversity dialectics would benefit from taking into account not only the traditional socio-cognitive processes, but also the symbolic and meaning-making processes that envelop the experience of self and the experience of otherness. This perspective would also help in developing community interventions that acknowledge both the need for belonging and identity, and the need for diversity

Anthropology and law: dialogue for otherness

To become self-reflexive, Jurisprudence must to establish a dialogue: the human sciences should lose their exotic character in the eyes of Legal Science. It is in the middle between the "order" and the thinking about it, where the "naked experience" happens, that culture and therefore Law builds itself e it is constructed. This paper demonstrates the need to use other human sciences, with emphasis on anthropology, as "methodological strategies" for Jurisprudence self-reflection to become more faithful to the reality of the researched object. Anthropology has the power to show what is "anti-modern". It questions the intellectual space of modernity where the hard definition of antagonisms detached from reality occurs - West/East, “I”/other, civilized/barbarian. Jurisprudence consolidates antagonisms: the diversity and plurality of human societies are rarely seen as a fact but as an aberration, always demanding a justification. It is necessary to create a methodology using what is most extraordinary and human in the analysis of fact: "Anthopological Blues". Anthropology is capable of breaking with the classical conception of scientific methodology that is based on stiffness to produce absolute truths and also support the fulfillment of legal concepts with content and meaning, providing a reinterpretation of science as a human instrument of intervention on reality

Feeling Different: Being the 'Other' in US Workplaces

What does it mean to be an "other" in the workplace?Everyone has complex and multiple identities that define both how they see themselves and how others perceive them. These include personal attributes such as gender, race, ethnicity, or nationality and are lenses through which people view the world. The more different someone is and feels from their workgroup or workplace as a whole, the more they may feel like the "other" at the table.This report examines the experience of otherness in the US workplace and focuses on how people with multiple sources of otherness in a workplace are impacted in terms of their opportunities, advancement, and aspirations

Constructing the other: managerial rhetorics of diversity.

In this article, we examine how HR managers rhetorically construct diversity as discourses of Otherness. Our analysis relies on argument schemes developed by the classical rhetoric tradition. HR managers talk about diverse employees as visible, hearable and enjoyable Others, measure Otherness in terms of time, pace and rhythm, and evaluate the Other in terms of his/her compliance. While these discourses are varied and sometimes contradict the dominant (negative) Discourses of Otherness, they remain at the same time monolithic. The construction and valorisation of Otherness is predominantly deployed in function of reinforcing dominant managerial Discourses of discipline, compliance and control.Employment; Expected; Managers; Studies;

Alterity, Otherness and Journalism: From Phenomenology to Narration of Modes of Existence

In a theoretical reflection, the aim of this paper is primarily to discuss alterity in journalism. We believe that journalism plays a fundamental role in the construction of knowledge on similarities and differences between human beings, stressing social diversity as one of its purposes. We associate the concept of otherness, understood as a singular mode of existence of the “other”, with the purpose of journalism and with actions of empathy, sympathy and compassion. Based on a phenomenological perspective, we discuss the importance of the meeting between the "self" and the "other", as well as the ability of journalists to perceive and narrate on the aspects that shape the identities of human beings. Moreover, we discuss otherness in journalistic narratives, approaching the relation between the lifeworld and the world of text..

Pixelated flesh

The pixel and the technique of pixelating faces belong to a politics of fear and a digital aesthetics of truth which shapes public perceptions of criminality and the threat of otherness. This article will draw on Paul Virilio's account of the pixel in Lost Dimension in order to analyze its specific role and operation in relation to contemporary representations of incarceration. In particular, the article will consider the figure of the incarcerated informant. The incarcerated criminal or informant plays a complex role as both subversive other and purveyor of truth and as such constitutes an important example of the ways in which pixelation functions as a visible signifier of a dangerous truth whilst blurring, erasing and, ultimately, dehumanizing those "speaking" this truth. Our discussion forms part of a larger analysis of the production, framing and circulation of images of otherness, identifying Virilio as key to debates around the violence of the screen

Creolization and the collective unconscious: locating the originality of art in Wilson Harris' Jonestown, The Mask of the Beggar and The Ghost of Memory

Alongside the essays and fiction of Edouard Glissant, Wilson Harris's writings stand as one of the most important contributions to Caribbean creolization theory. Drawing from the philosophical projects of both authors, this essay argues that while creolization has typically been cast as a process of cultural, linguistic, and racial mixing akin to hybridity, it should, rather, be understood as providing a paradigm for the shifting structural relations necessary for the generation of genuinely original forms. As such, it has great significance for imaginative and literary production, and provides a framework for my readings of Harris's novels, Jonestown (1996), The Mask of the Beggar (2003), and The Ghost of Memory (2006), which explore the creative potential of creolization as a dialogue between consciousness and, what Jung and Harris refer to as, the collective unconsciousness. This essay brings into focus Harris's use of Jungian-inspired concepts, such as archetypes and the collective unconscious, in a development of creolization theory as a imaginative response to historical trauma and the generation of originality in art

Cosmopolitanism, sociology and the otherness of the other

This article is concerned with the ‘cosmopolitan turn’ in sociology and examines the ways in which the discipline attempts to come to terms with the otherness of the other as a corrective to its own Eurocentrism. It examines in particular the pluralisation of the notion of modernity and argues that although this strategy allows sociology to maintain its disciplinary identity, it falls short of the aim of transforming the discipline into a cosmopolitan discourse. More broadly, the article argues that cosmopolitanism is not a possible object of experience. Like other idealisations, it is plagued by what Derrida calls ‘autoimmunity’ – the tendency to self-destruct