scholarly journals The identity/alterity nexus in international relations: two cases of encounter with difference

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 234-247
Author(s):  
Erica Resende
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
Formation Processes ◽  
Different Levels

The aim of this article is to survey the implications of the identity/alterity nexus in international relations (IR) as related to processes of othering for understanding conflict and violence in global politics. I will offer what I could call an ontology of difference in global politics, where I stress the reliance of understanding othering practices in global politics, as I explore two cases from which I ask the following questions: How do identity and identity formation processes occur and develop at different levels, times and dimensions? How do discourses of differentiation and identification help construct state identities and interests? Following Emmanuel Lévinas, I will argue that by seeking ways to reach out towards the Other, we free ourselves from the restraints of selfishness, from indifference and isolation. Finding and coming to terms with a composition of the Self that also includes the Other enables us to take responsibility for him/her inasmuch it prevents the conditions for violence and conflict.

Emotions and the everyday: Ambivalence, power and resistance

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-268 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Schick
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Two Dimensions ◽  
The State ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Power And Resistance ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Relations Of Power

This special issue on emotions and the everyday represents a provocative intervention in the literature on emotions in International Relations. A strong theme that emerges is the ambivalence of emotions in global politics, which I explore in two parts. First, I explore emotions’ ‘ambivalent potentiality’ in international politics, highlighting two dimensions: the ways emotions are generated and captured by relations of power and the state to create ‘willing geopolitical subjects’, and the ways emotions resist power by creating and sustaining ‘sites of contestation’ that challenge hegemonic emotional regimes. Second, I trace the contributors’ claims regarding the promise and danger of empathy in global politics, maintaining that the special issue highlights the deep ambivalence that attends empathy as well as emotions more generally. I then trouble the notion of empathy as resistance and argue that a more radical and reflexive empathetic engagement could be captured by a greater emphasis on listening and vulnerable interrogation of the self as well as the other.

Tracing Sexual Difference

1998 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Pamela Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Personal Identity ◽  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
Sexual Difference ◽  
Western Culture ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Luce Irigaray ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
The Difference

A reading of Luce Irigaray suggests the possibility of tracing sexual difference in philosophical accounts of personal identity. In particular, I argue that Irigaray raises the possibility of moving beyond the aporia of the other which lies at the heart of Paul Ricoeur's account of self-identity. My contention is that the self conceived in Ricoeur's Oneself as Another is male insofar as it is dependent upon the patriarchal monotheism which has shaped Western culture both socially and economically. Nevertheless there remains the possibility of developing Ricoeur's reference to 'the trace of the Other' in order to give a non-essential meaning to sexual difference. Such meaning will emerge when (i) both men and women have identities as subjects, and (ii) the difference between them can be expressed. I aim to elucidate both conditions by appropriating Irigaray's 'Questions to Emmanuel Levinas: On the Divinity of Love.'

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.

Autoethnographic International Relations: exploring the self as a source of knowledge

2010 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 779-798 ◽  
Author(s):  
MORGAN BRIGG ◽  
ROLAND BLEIKER
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Personal Experience ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Knowledge Communities ◽  
Personal Involvement ◽  
Insight Into

AbstractResearch is all about a person's engagement with an issue. But most approaches to International Relations actively discourage personal involvement by the researcher. We question the adequacy of this norm and the related scholarly conventions. Instead, we explore how the personal experience of the researcher can be used as a legitimate and potentially important source of insight into politics. But we also note that simply telling the story of the researcher is inadequate. We engage the ensuing dilemmas by discussing how to both appreciate and evaluate autoethnographic insights. Rather than relying on pre-determined criteria, we argue that methodological uses of the self should be judged within knowledge communities and according to their ability to open up new perspectives on political dilemmas. We then advance two related suggestions: one advocates conceptualising research around puzzles; the other explores the methodological implications of recognising that producing knowledge is an inherently relational activity.

“I” and the “Other”

2009 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 132-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Petrus Van Ewijk
Keyword(s):  
Alcoholics Anonymous ◽  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
Language Game ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Infinite Jest ◽  
I And Thou ◽  
To Come

In David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, the presence of Alcoholics Anonymous can be considered as an attempt to come up with a solution for both the addiction and the solipsism of the characters. AA tries to accomplish this by reconnecting the addict with the “Other”. The assimilation of the “Other” by the totalizing tendency of the self is dropped in favor of an earnest connection. This article focuses on the similarities between AA’s methods, Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy of the language-game, Emmanuel Levinas’ ethics of the “Other” and Martin Buber’s I and Thou. It illustrates how, in light of this knowledge, a reader might be able to uncover moments of earnestness in Infinite Jest, as well as pick up on the rules necessary to counter contemporary American solitude.

scholarly journals The Geography of ‘Otherness’: Spaces of Conflict in Smaro Kamboureli’s in the Second Person

Humanities ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 17
Author(s):  
Rocco De Leo
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Second Person ◽  
Abstract Language ◽  
The Difference ◽  
To Come ◽  
Different Levels

In today’s “liquid” society, boundaries and limits are shifting or disorienting: belonging to no place, not knowing where ‘home’ is, underlines the sense of uncertainty and in-betweenness experienced by people. This contribution suggests five spatial issues Greek-born Canadian author Smaro Kamboureli has to negotiate with in her ‘poetic diary’ in the second person, where she investigates the duality of the self, displaying the double “I” of the writer’s split subjectivity on a concrete (Greece) as well as abstract (language) place of living. Kamboureli’s account of a duel with and a paradoxical courting of what was and is now for her “the place of language” is related to the awareness of inhabiting a “third” zone of expectations: the difference of origin, of country, of point of view. In conclusion, the different levels of spatial negotiations Kamboureli has had to come to terms with have made her a completely different person. Her life on the border, epitomized in turn by airports, boats, Greece, and the Greek islands, is indeed an endless research of, as well as a conflict with, the ‘Other’, which opens up questions about the relativity of the space/place dichotomy.

scholarly journals Endlessly Responsible: Ethics as First Philosophy in Stanley Cavell’s Invocation of Literature

Humanities ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 114
Author(s):  
Mette Blok
Keyword(s):  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Early Writing ◽  
Ethics And Literature ◽  
Shakespearean Tragedy ◽  
Two Sides ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
Epistemological Skepticism ◽  
First Philosophy

This essay aims to give an overview of the topic ethics and literature in Stanley Cavell’s complete oeuvre. It argues that Cavell’s preoccupation with literature is, from beginning to end, primarily ethical, even though he takes his point of departure in epistemological skepticism. Recent research on the affinities between Cavell’s early writing on Shakespearean tragedy and the ethics of Emmanuel Levinas has helped to establish this but the question of how this part of Cavell’s work is related to his later development of Emersonian perfectionism is rarely touched upon. Consequently, this essay further argues that skepticism and perfectionism in Cavell’s thinking are two sides of one and the same ethics, which are bound together by the genre of romanticism. While Cavell’s work on skepticism is primarily concerned with the other, his work on perfectionism is primarily concerned with the self. Finally, this essay marks the point where Cavell’s and Levinas’ overall thinking part ways due to the fact that Cavell embraces Emersonian perfectionism.

scholarly journals Appropriating the abject: an anthropophagic approach to organizational diversity

2014 ◽  
Vol 33 (7) ◽  
pp. 595-613 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gazi Islam
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Close Relation ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Organizational Diversity ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
Brazilian Art ◽  
Positive Identity ◽  
Fluid Process

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the monstrous in organizational diversity by introducing the concept of cultural anthropophagy to the diversity literature. Using Kristeva's notion of abjection to better understand cultural anthropophagy, the paper argues that cultural anthropophages cross boundaries, and build identity through desire for and aggression toward valued others. Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses a conceptual discussion of abjection, along with a historical survey of anthropophagic approaches from Brazilian art and cultural studies. Findings – Anthropophagic approaches highlight unique features of organizational identity, framing identity formation as a fluid process of expulsion and re-integration of the other. While abjection approaches focus on the exclusion of material aspects of the self and the formation of self-other boundaries, anthropophagy focusses on the re-integration of the other into the self, in a symbolic gesture of re-integration, desire, and reverence for the other. Originality/value – The idea of anthropophagy is a recent entrant into the organizational literature, and the close relation between anthropophagy and abjection is illuminated in the current paper. Original insights regarding the search for positive identity, the ambivalence of self and other, and the relation of the particular and the universal, are offered with regards to the diversity literature.

scholarly journals Civil Society in Ukraine: Strategies and Strategemes of Functioning and Development

2021 ◽  
pp. 121-140
Author(s):  
Valentyn Krysachenko
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
Civic Identity ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Self Organization ◽  
Illegal Activities ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Different Levels

The article studies the functioning and development of civil society in Ukraine. In times of statelessness, it was the self-organization and resistance of the Ukrainian people that guaranteed the preservation of their identity and implementation of liberation strategies. Civil society has played a decisive role in gaining the independence of modern Ukraine and serves as a kind of precautionary mechanism for stabilizing crisis situations in its development. Attention is drawn to the importance of political strategies for reforming society and threats to substitute them with strategemes – situational concepts of influencing public opinion. Emphasis is put on the need to improve the relationship between civil society and various branches of power, moreover at different levels of government. This causes civic identity formation as conscious self-determination by citizens of their exclusive affiliation to the Ukrainian state and territorial space. Of particular importance is the improvement of political and legal support for such cooperation in the context of attempts to use public organizations for illegal activities, including the support of the aggressor country’s policy.

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