Perspectives on Embodiment: The Uses of Narrativity in Ethnographic Writing

1991 ◽  
Vol 1 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 213-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katharine Young
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
Ethnographic Writing ◽  
Scientific Epistemology ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Anthropological Discourse

Abstract Take as pivotal in anthropological discourse the invention of the category of the Other. Once invented, the category conjures up another realm, a realm inhabited by the Other and estranged from the realm of the self. Ethnographic writings are then constructed to get access to the Other. At issue, then, are how realms of experience are constellated with respect to each other, how they communicate, and how they coalesce. One name for these realm relations is dialogism. Under a dialogic description, the boundaries between self and Other become blurred, along with the boundaries between the universes of discourse they inhabit. Eth-nographic writings formulate relationships between realms in terms of conven-tions of perspective and voice. These conventions are anchored in the body. In particular, a hierarchy of modalities of perception informs a social scientific epistemology. In this article, the realm status of self and Other in anthropological discourse is investigated in three perspectives: the objective, the subjective, and what I call the intersubjective. Problems of access turn out to be artifacts of our invention of the category of the Other. (Ethnographic Writing)

scholarly journals The Unruly, the Mut(ilat)ed, the Ailing: Corporeality as a Space of Subversion in J. M. Coetzee’s Fiction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
AWEJ for Translation & Literary Studies ◽  
Kamel Abdaoui
Keyword(s):  
Active Site ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
Dominant Discourse ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
Textual Construction ◽  
Waiting For The Barbarians

This paper addresses corporeality as a space of subversion to hegemonic discourses in J. M. Coetzee’s fiction. The body is not only elusive to representation but it is also entrusted with a certain degree of authority that allows it to contravene the systems of normalization imposed by dominant discourse. The paper tends to appropriate poststructuralism and postcolonialism as its main theoretical grid to argue that corporeality in Coetzee’s novels is deployed as a fluid construct that offers a space of interaction between subjectivities beyond the rigid contours of discursive representation. In Dusklands, the clear-cut demarcations erect between the Self and the Other often blur and disintegrate while facing the permeability and extensiveness of the body. In Waiting for the Barbarians and Foe, however, the mutilated and silenced body of the Other is presented as a space of resistance to the Empire’s attempts to inscribe its statement of powerviolently. It is only the diseased body of Mrs. Curren, in Age of Iron, which transforms into an intersubjective space of reciprocity between Self and Other that is capable of overcoming the fixed barriers between subjects. Being an active site of contestation between subjectivities, the textual construction of corporeality in Coetzee's aforementioned novels offers creative opportunities of becoming and grants an imaginative understanding of otherness outside the limits of the logic of binarism encapsulated in colonial and imperialist discourses.

scholarly journals The Experienced Self and Other Scale: A technique for assaying the experience of one’s self in relation to the other

2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Erel Shvil ◽  
Herbert Krauss ◽  
Elizabeth Midlarsky
Keyword(s):  
Sense Of Self ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Factorial Structure ◽  
Factor Solution ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
Venn Diagrams ◽  
Self In Relation ◽  
Higher Power ◽  
Perception Of Self

The construct “self” appears in diverse forms in theories about what it is to be a person. As the sense of “self” is typically assessed through personal reports, differences in its description undoubtedly reflect significant differences in peoples’ apperception of self. This report describes the development, reliability, and factorial structure of the Experience of Sense of Self (E-SOS), an inventory designed to assess one’s perception of self in relation to the person’s perception of various potential “others.” It does so using Venn diagrams to depict and quantify the experienced overlap between the self and “others.” Participant responses to the instrument were studied through Exploratory Factor Analysis. This yielded a five-factor solution: 1) Experience of Positive Sensation; 2) Experience of Challenges; 3) Experience of Temptations; 4) Experience of Higher Power; and 5) Experience of Family. The items comprising each of these were found to produce reliable subscales. Further research with the E-SOS and suggestions for its use are offered.  DOI:10.2458/azu_jmmss_v4i2_shvil

scholarly journals „Es war kein Job, es war eine Berufung“ – Gouvernementale Führung, fragmentierte Subjekte und <i>contre-conduite</i> in der nichtstaatlichen Entwicklungspraxis

2019 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-181
Author(s):  
Kirsten Linnemann
Keyword(s):  
Critical Distance ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
Development Professionals ◽  
Western Values ◽  
The One ◽  
And Shifts ◽  
Good Cause ◽  
Development Practice

Abstract. With their donation appeals aid organisations procure a polarised worldview of the self and other into our everyday lives and feed on discourses of “development” and “neediness”. This study investigates how the discourse of “development” is embedded in the subjectivities of “development” professionals. By approaching the topic from a governmentality perspective, the paper illustrates how “development” is (re-)produced through internalised Western values and powerful mechanisms of self-conduct. Meanwhile, this form of self-conduct, which is related to a “good cause”, also gives rise to doubts regarding the work, as well as fragmentations and shifts of identity. On the one hand, the paper outlines various coping strategies used by development professionals to maintain a coherent narrative about the self. On the other hand, it also shows how doubts and fragmentations of identity can generate a critical distance to “development” practice, providing a space for resistant and transformative practice in the sense of Foucauldian counter-conduct.

scholarly journals Othering and Selfing: Reading Gender Hierarchies and Social Categories in Michel Houellebecq's Novel Soumission

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Wening Udasmoro
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
World Trade Center ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
French Society ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
Gender Hierarchies

In literature, questions of the self and the other are frequently presented. The identity politics that gained prominence after the attack on the World Trade Center in New York on 11 September 2001 has occupied considerable space in this debate throughout the globe, including in France. One example of a novel dealing with the self and other is Michel Houellebecq’s Soumission (2015). This article attempts to explore the processes of selfing and othering in this work. The politics of identity that seems to present Muslims and Islam as the other and French as the self is also extended to other identities and aspects involved in the novel. This article attempts to show, first, how the French author Houellebecq positions the self and other in Soumission; second, the type of self and other the novel focuses on; and third, how its selfing and othering processes reveal the gender hierarchy and social categorization of French society. It finds that the novel presents a hierarchy in its narrative through which characters are positioned based on their gender and sexual orientation, as well as their age and ethnic heritage.

Self, Indian theories of

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
T.S. Rukmani
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
Inner Self ◽  
Spiritual Energy ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Ultimate Principle ◽  
Ultimate Nature

Hindu thought traces its different conceptions of the self to the earliest extant Vedic sources composed in the Sanskrit language. The words commonly used in Hindu thought and religion for the self are jīva (life), ātman (breath), jīvātman (life-breath), puruṣa (the essence that lies in the body), and kṣetrajña (one who knows the body). Each of these words was the culmination of a process of inquiry with the purpose of discovering the ultimate nature of the self. By the end of the ancient period, the personal self was regarded as something eternal which becomes connected to a body in order to exhaust the good and bad karma it has accumulated in its many lives. This self was supposed to be able to regain its purity by following different spiritual paths by means of which it can escape from the circle of births and deaths forever. There is one more important development in the ancient and classical period. The conception of Brahman as both immanent and transcendent led to Brahman being identified with the personal self. The habit of thought that tried to relate every aspect of the individual with its counterpart in the universe (Ṛg Veda X. 16) had already prepared the background for this identification process. When the ultimate principle in the subjective and objective spheres had arrived at their respective ends in the discovery of the ātman and Brahman, it was easy to equate the two as being the same spiritual ‘energy’ that informs both the outer world and the inner self. This equation had important implications for later philosophical growth. The above conceptions of the self-identity question find expression in the six systems of Hindu thought. These are known as āstikadarśanas or ways of seeing the self without rejecting the authority of the Vedas. Often, one system or the other may not explicitly state their allegiance to the Vedas, but unlike Buddhism or Jainism, they did not openly repudiate Vedic authority. Thus they were āstikadarśanas as opposed to the others who were nāstikadarśanas. The word darśana for philosophy is also significant if one realizes that philosophy does not end with only an intellectual knowing of one’s self-identity but also culminates in realizing it and truly becoming it.

scholarly journals Knowing me, knowing you: Spontaneous use of mentalistic language for self and other in autism

Autism ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 136236132095101
Author(s):  
Alexandra Zinck ◽  
Uta Frith ◽  
Peter Schönknecht ◽  
Sarah White
Keyword(s):  
Similar Pattern ◽  
Mental States ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Psychological Traits ◽  
Unique Pattern ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
Autistic People ◽  
Physical Traits ◽  
Autistic Adults

Recent studies on mentalizing have shown that autistic individuals who pass explicit mentalizing tasks may still have difficulties with implicit mentalizing tasks. This study explores implicit mentalizing by examining spontaneous speech that is likely to contain mentalistic expressions. The spontaneous production of meta-statements provides a clear measure for implicit mentalizing that is unlikely to be learned through experience. We examined the self- and other-descriptions of highly verbally able autistic and non-autistic adults in terms of their spontaneous use of mentalistic language and meta-representational utterances through quantitative and qualitative analysis. We devised a hierarchical coding system that allowed us to study the types of statements produced in comparable conditions for the self and for a familiar other. The descriptions of autistic participants revealed less mentalistic content relating to psychological traits and meta-statements. References to physical traits were similar between groups. Within each group, participants produced a similar pattern of types of mental utterance across ‘self’ and ‘other’ conditions. This suggests that autistic individuals show a unique pattern of mental-state-representation for both self and other. Meta-statements add a degree of complexity to self- and other-descriptions and to the understanding of mental states; their reduction in autism provides evidence for implicit mentalizing difficulties. Lay abstract Autistic people can have difficulties in understanding non-autistic people’s mental states such as beliefs, emotions and intentions. Although autistic adults may learn to overcome difficulties in understanding of explicit (overt) mental states, they may nevertheless struggle with implicit (indirect) understanding of mental states. This study explores how spontaneous language is used in order to specifically point to this implicit (indirect) understanding of mental states. In particular, our study compares the spontaneous statements that were used in descriptions of oneself and a familiar other person. Here, we found that autistic and non-autistic adults were comparable in the number of statements about physical traits they made. In contrast, non-autistic adults made more statements about mentalistic traits (about the mental including psychological traits, relationship traits and statements reflecting about these) both for the self and the other. Non-autistic and autistic adults showed no difference in the number of statements about relationships but in the number of statements about psychological traits and especially in the statements reflecting on these. Each group showed a similar pattern of kinds of statements for the self and for the other person. This suggests that autistic individuals show the same unique pattern of description in mentalistic terms for the self and another person. This study also indicates that investigating spontaneous use of language, especially for statements reflecting about mental states, enables us to look into difficulties with implicit (indirect) understanding of mental states.

Spatial representations of self and other in the hippocampus

Science ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 359 (6372) ◽  
pp. 213-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teruko Danjo ◽  
Taro Toyoizumi ◽  
Shigeyoshi Fujisawa
Keyword(s):  
Receptive Fields ◽  
Pyramidal Cells ◽  
Spatial Location ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Spatial Representations ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
Ca1 Pyramidal Cells ◽  
Ca1 Region ◽  
Reward Information

An animal’s awareness of its location in space depends on the activity of place cells in the hippocampus. How the brain encodes the spatial position of others has not yet been identified. We investigated neuronal representations of other animals’ locations in the dorsal CA1 region of the hippocampus with an observational T-maze task in which one rat was required to observe another rat’s trajectory to successfully retrieve a reward. Information reflecting the spatial location of both the self and the other was jointly and discretely encoded by CA1 pyramidal cells in the observer rat. A subset of CA1 pyramidal cells exhibited spatial receptive fields that were identical for the self and the other. These findings demonstrate that hippocampal spatial representations include dimensions for both self and nonself.

scholarly journals Self and other in critical international theory: assimilation, incommensurability and the paradox of critique

2010 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
VASSILIOS PAIPAIS
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
International Theory ◽  
Critical Edge ◽  
Critical Approaches ◽  
And Function ◽  
The Way

AbstractThis article is principally concerned with the way some sophisticated critical approaches in International Relations (IR) tend to compromise their critical edge in their engagement with the self/other problematique. Critical approaches that understand critique as total non-violence towards, or unreflective affirmation of, alterity risk falling back into precritical paths. That is, either a particularistic, assimilative universalism with pretensions of true universality or a radical incommensurability and the impossibility of communication with the other. This is what this article understands as the paradox of the politics of critique. Instead, what is more important than seeking a final overcoming or dismissal of the self/other opposition is to gain the insight that it is the perpetual striving to preserve the tension and ambivalence between self and other that rescues both critique's authority and function.

The linguistic marking of agentivity and control in child language

1989 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 263-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Budwig
Keyword(s):  
Functional Analysis ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Use Of Self ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
Reference Form ◽  
And Control ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Self Reference

ABSTRACTThe present study examines the relationship between linguistic forms and the functions they serve in children's early talk about agentivity and control. The spontaneous linguistic productions of six children ranging between 1;8 and 2;8 served as the data base. Preliminary analyses of who the children referred to and what forms were used in subject position suggest that the children could be divided into two groups. Three children primarily referred to Self and relied on multiple Self reference forms in subject position, while the other children referred to both Self and Other and primarily used the Self reference form, I. A functional analysis was carried out to examine whether the seemingly interchangeable use of Self reference forms could be related to semantic and pragmatic patterns. The findings indicate that at a time before they regularly refer to others, the children systematically employed different Self reference forms to mark distinct perspectives on agency.

scholarly journals A Contrastive Critical Discourse Analysis of Netanyahu’s and Abbas's Speeches on the Gaza War (2014)

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alaa’ G. Rababah ◽  
Jihad M. Hamdan
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Functional Grammar ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
United Nations General ◽  
United Nations General Assembly

This study provides a contrastive critical discourse analysis of the speeches of the Israeli Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to the United Nations General Assembly regarding the Gaza War (2014). The analysis explores the representation of the “Self” and the “Other” in relation to the war. Van Dijk’s ‘Ideological Square’ theory is adopted to explore the group polarization of Us versus Them dichotomy. Moreover Halliday’s Systematic Functional Grammar is utilized in the analysis to study how the polarization of the “Self” and “Other” is constructed via particular grammatical transitivity choices. The results indicated that the representation of the “Self” and “Other” in the speeches reflects two different opposing ideologically-governed perspectives on the Gaza conflict. Both speakers present the “Self” as ‘strong’, ‘human’ and ‘honorable’ in contrast to the “Other” that is deemed to be a ‘dire threat’ and an ‘agent of destruction’.

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