scholarly journals In praise of strangeness. Exploring the hermeneutical potential of an unlikely source

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernard C Lategan
Keyword(s):  
Communication Theory ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Dark Side ◽  
Power Relationship ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
Scale Down ◽  
Leading Question ◽  
The Stranger

In a field already investigated extensively, the article focuses on a particular aspect, namely on the nature of the interaction between the self and the other. The leading question is: What is the hermeneutical potential of the other and the stranger in relation to the self? The following dimensions are examined: the direction of flow of the interaction, the power relations involved in the process, the claim of the other on the self and the existential dimensions of strangeness.The first section examines various approaches to the other in a number of disciplines: anthropology and ethnology, art and art history, religion, philosophy, communication theory, and pedagogy. Several common traits are evident: The flow of action is pre-dominantly from the self to the other; the power relationship is unequal, skewed in favour of the self; the other is rarely perceived in his or her own right but is compared with the self who serves as norm; and strangeness is seen as inherently problematic and accompanied by negative connotations. There is consequently a constant attempt to scale down differences and to domesticate the other by various means.An alternative approach aims at reversing the normal power relationship and releasing the potential of change for the self in the encounter with the other. This requires a conscious decision to change the direction of action – from the other to the self and not vice versa. Furthermore, to break the binary hold of subject on object, the decentring of the subject is necessary. This requires the recognition of the “incompleteness” of human existence (Nyamnjoh) which opens the self for new possibilities. Acceptance of the radical openness of systems (in this case the “system” of human relationships) is the key to release the “excess” of potential available to the self in the encounter with the other and with what is strange and alien.In this context, the strategies of liberating and of enrichment through the other becomes important. Even when considering the dark side of strangeness, these strategies still apply and illustrate more clearly the existential necessity of strangeness. The potential of the other and of strangeness for liberating and enriching the self remains undervalued.

scholarly journals Ali Smith’s There But For The: Identity, Hospitality and Transcendence in the Age of Surveillance

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-74
Author(s):  
Andrei-Bogdan Popa
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Identity ◽  
Personal Information ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
The Right To Privacy ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Stranger ◽  
Subjective Identity

Abstract The aim of this essay is to prove that, throughout Ali Smith’s There But For The (2011), the “narrative” subjective identity (Alphen 83) accessed via the face-to-face relation (Levinas and Hand 42), as well as through storytelling itself, is liable to be turned into archivable information under the pressures of a surveillance state in which its citizens are complicit. I will use this archival/narrative identity dyad as articulated by theorist Ernst van Alphen in order to investigate at length the novel’s staging of hospitality as corrupted by surveillance. I will oppose the notion of identity as information against Emmanuel Levinas’s conception of the face-to-face relation (Levinas and Hand 42), whereby true hospitality depends upon the mutual respect one person has for the absolute singularity of the other, which involves personal information and the right to privacy. As it will become apparent, these identities lose or gain agency according to the engagement of the self with a newly arrived foreign alterity. Thus, the arrival of strangers throughout Smith’s novel thematizes the scenario of hospitality in tension with the stranger as surveyor or as surveyed. The doubling of language, the self-editing of one’s discourse and the risky openness towards the Other are modes of resistance that eschew the artificial categorizations upon which the archival identity is contingent. However, the bridge from interiority to exteriority is mediation. Smith therefore develops a conception of secularized Grace that works by exploring the revolutionary potential of this very mediation and can disrupt the logic of tyrannical surveillance. Part of this approach to history and language is informed by the witnessing of the traces left on the bodies of martyrized dissidents by unjust systems at their apex. There But For The is narrated by four characters in the mediatic aftermath of a bourgeois dinner party in an affluent suburb of London that witnessed the sudden and unexplainable reclusion of Miles Garth into the spare room of his stunned hosts. The event, as well as those leading up to and following it, is recounted by a grieving nature photographer in his sixties named Mark; May, a rebellious old woman suffering from dementia; an unemployed, middle-aged Anna; and Brooke, a ten-year old girl and voracious reader. The essay will approach these characters’ meditations upon the nature of identity as split between its narrative and archival forms.

The Sacred Fount: The Narrator and the Vampires

PMLA ◽  
1961 ◽  
Vol 76 (4-Part1) ◽  
pp. 407-412 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norma Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Henry James ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Fictional World ◽  
Rebecca West ◽  
Human Relationships

Criticism of Henry James's controversial novel The Sacred Fount has tended rather insistently to take one of two interpretive directions. Since Edmund Wilson's famous essay “The Ambiguity of Henry James” appeared in 1934 and made everyone more aware of the potential complexity of James's handling of the focus of narration, the perhaps more frequently encountered approach to the novel has been one which regards it, like The Turn of the Screw and In the Cage, as principally another Jamesian experiment with a narrator of doubtful omniscience. The other approach, one still found in many treatments of the novel, tends rather to accept completely the narrator's version of events at Newmarch and looks for the meaning and significance of the work in his most obvious preoccupation during the weekend in which those events occur, the vampire theme of fulfillment and depletion in intense human relationships. Both approaches are valid. Indeed, one of the impressive aspects of the serious criticism of The Sacred Fount is that nearly all of the important attempts at analysis have been and remain true to some degree. Leon Edel, following and building on the hints of Wilson, has shown that the novel clearly is about “appearance and reality,” and R. P. Blackmur has pointed out the parabolic nature of the story and called attention to The Sacred Fount as the “nightmare nexus” in the Jamesian struggle “to portray the integrity of the artist and… the integrity of the self.” Even Rebecca West, in her witty dismissal of the book some years ago, was correct—more correct than she knew perhaps since she gives James no credit for a deliberate and skillfully manipulated irony—-in recognizing and mocking the disparity between the passion, pride, and labor expended by the incredibly egocentric, narcissistic narrator and the, if not completely trivial, at least gossamer issues involved. But the irony, like the ambiguity, is both constant and conscious. Unlike the narrator, to whom James has frequently been compared, James presides confidently over his fictional world like, in Lady John's words, “a real providence,” who “knows” (p. 176).

scholarly journals O PUDOR COMO PASTOR DO SER: REFLEXÕES SOBRE A SEXUALIDADE EM CHAVE PERSONALÍSTICA

2010 ◽  
Vol 37 (102) ◽  
pp. 225
Author(s):  
Massimo Pampaloni
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Dark Side ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Phenomenological Reflection ◽  
The Veil ◽  
The One ◽  
Irreducible Core

Partindo de uma reflexão fenomenológica em chave personalística, o autor propõe a leitura do pudor em duas direções fundamentais. Por um lado, o pudor intervém em situações de “crise”, revelando um lado obscuro do eros. Por outro lado, ele não se limita a ser um “freio” ou um “sinal de perigo”, antes revela o outro e o si mesmo como não redutíveis a puro-objeto-de prazer. Assim, retira do ser-outro o véu da objetivação à qual é reduzido quem é objeto de um olhar despudorado. Nesse sentido, o autor propõe, contra a concepção banal e redutiva da sexualidade, uma resgate do pudor próprio como guardião e pastor do núcleo irredutível da pessoa e de sua dignidade.ABSTRACT: From the perspective of a phenomenological reflection in a personalista approach, the author proposes an interpretation of pudency in two fundamental directions. On the one hand, modesty intervenes in situations of “crisis”, revealing the dark side of eros. On the other hand, it is not a “brake” nor a “signal of danger”, but rather it reveals the other and the self as not limited to a purelypleasure-object. So, it takes away the veil of objectification from the other-being who was reduced to an object of a wanton stare. In this sense, against a banal and reductive conception of sexuality, the author proposes a retrieval of self prudency as a guardian and shepherd of the person’s irreducible core and dignity.

The Discursive Format of “Social Warming”

2021 ◽  
pp. 202-218
Author(s):  
Giuseppe Mininni
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Social Representations ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Critical Psychology ◽  
Process Of Change ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
Meeting Point ◽  
Ongoing Process ◽  
Mixed Families

This chapter deals with human relationships that currently come up against increasingly overheated communication. Combining the perspective of social representations with that of discursive acts, Giuseppe Mininni relaunches his diatextual approach, placing social psychology at the meeting point between the epistemological axes of cultural, discursive, and critical psychology. Studies on mixed families illustrate the issue. Mixed families seem fundamentally diatextual because their texts are embedded within enunciative contexts animated by multifarious dynamics of perennial change. The author’s analysis shows that these families activate three kinds of social-epistemic rhetoric, focusing on distinction, mediation, and integration. The interplay between the Self and the Other is thus explained, acknowledging the vital impulse toward hybridization. The hyphenated identities produced in mixed families show the Self that the best way to save its own identity may be by strewing it in the Other’s, in an ongoing process of change.

Promoting Peace through Democratizing Schools on Gandhian Vision

2016 ◽  
pp. 212-227
Author(s):  
Abdul Gafoor K. ◽  
Mini Narayanan
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
Peace Education ◽  
Classroom Practices ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Discussion Forums ◽  
Student Centered ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
Unity In Diversity ◽  
Problem Solving Strategies

The more one realizes about himself, the more he appreciates about the other. The need of having a harmonious mind and life with the nature through an education powered by peace and non-violence is stressed in this chapter. An attempt is made to advocate ways to prepare children in accomplishing peace through instructional principles implied by Gandhian philosophy. Classroom practices proposed herein embrace peace education strategies to develop tolerance in children for the survival in the global society. It also deals with the classroom practices that can be designed to find the “self” in a child to make him self-sufficient, natural and complete. A student-centered approach, which comprises strategies like collaborative learning, cooperative learning, discussion forums, and problem solving strategies not only strengthens the human relationships but also creates a sense of unity in diversity.

EXPRESS: Revisiting conflict: Neoliberalism at work in the gig economy

2021 ◽  
pp. 001872672110645
Author(s):  
Alessandro Niccolò Tirapani ◽  
Hugh Willmott
Keyword(s):  
Business Model ◽  
Radical Change ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Dark Side ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Gig Economy ◽  
Conditions Of Possibility ◽  
The One

What is the role of conflict in bringing about radical change? Taking the case of the gig economy, we study the conditions of possibility for fairer alternative ways of organising to emerge, and the relative impeding forces. Currently, some commentators underscore the sense of freedom of working as a self-employed contractor; others focus on its negative and exploitative dimensions. Less attention has been given to the potential for the emergence of (radical) conflicts around the nature of gig work contracts that might be expected. We analyse this puzzle by appreciating how, on the one hand, neoliberal gig work mobilises positive fantasies of self-entrepreneurship, leading to reformist responses to contractual disputes; and, on the other hand, how the dark side of gig work can trigger radical conflict, which rejects the assumptions underpinning the “self-employed contractor” business model. The prospect of imaginative labour revolts is, we argue, buffered by neoliberal individualisation and hegemonic ideology – articulated in the phenomenon that we term “econormativity”. Yet, since its elements offer no resolution to structural grievances, conflict continues to simmer in the background. Thus, this work aims to improve from an organisation studies perspective our understanding of conflict and its role in unleashing radical alternatives.

My Words + Your Words = Our [email protected]

2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-84
Author(s):  
GRACIELA BORUSZKO
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Urban Communities ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Use Of Self ◽  
Multiple Levels ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Stranger

ABSTRACT Contemporary urban communities are the likely scenarios where the constructions of personal identities are achieved within a bilingual or multilingual sociolinguistic environment. Tradition acts as a negotiator between the forces that chisel a modified shape to an individual that seeks to immerse the self into a new collectivity. Between the fear to lose the already acquired identity and the forging of a new identity, there are words and worlds that need to be expressed within a discussion on the use of self-translation as a linguistic bridge to reach the other. The decision to embrace bilingualism is based on the desire to explore beyond their “village” and engage in broader conversations. Independently of the reasons of the individual to decide to be immersed in another culture, the decision implies the acceptance of modifications of a somewhat monolithic vision of the “self” and “the other”. To get immersed in bilingualism is the first step to penetrate a biculturalism that is bound to leave marks on the chore of the self as another referent is taken alongside the self, even in a competing way or at least following a comparative approach. That cumulus of life transcends to others through words that reveal a personal mysterious world that is in constant formation and transformation. In this article, I explore the experience of the self and the stranger in relation to linguistic and artistic exile in literature. The multicultural and multilingual author, Nancy Huston, chose literature, the land of words, as a place to establish her inner personal worlds. Words and worlds create a fascinating synergy as they interact with the illusion of a certain identity. “Self” and “the other” engage in conversations that lead to reinventing the self through the use of languages. The situational “exile” of the author is then expressed at multiple levels as the concept of national and foreign, original and translation, individual and collective, fidelity and infidelity, identity and otherness, and mother tongue and foreign language all play interchangeable roles in the hope of constituting a “unique monolithic identity".

Providing Freshmen with a Good “Starting-Block”

2019 ◽  
Vol 78 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 69-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mikaël De Clercq ◽  
Charlotte Michel ◽  
Sophie Remy ◽  
Benoît Galand
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Student Adjustment ◽  
Social Psychological ◽  
Pivotal Phase ◽  
Study Program ◽  
Study Task ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Belonging ◽  
Intention To Persist

Abstract. Grounded in social-psychological literature, this experimental study assessed the effects of two so-called “wise” interventions implemented in a student study program. The interventions took place during the very first week at university, a presumed pivotal phase of transition. A group of 375 freshmen in psychology were randomly assigned to three conditions: control, social belonging, and self-affirmation. Following the intervention, students in the social-belonging condition expressed less social apprehension, a higher social integration, and a stronger intention to persist one month later than the other participants. They also relied more on peers as a source of support when confronted with a study task. Students in the self-affirmation condition felt more self-affirmed at the end of the intervention but didn’t benefit from other lasting effects. The results suggest that some well-timed and well-targeted “wise” interventions could provide lasting positive consequences for student adjustment. The respective merits of social-belonging and self-affirmation interventions are also discussed.

Stories and the Self

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 47-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Krause ◽  
Markus Appel
Keyword(s):  
Meta Analysis ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Lower Degree ◽  
Contrast Effects ◽  
Self Perception ◽  
Self Perceptions ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One ◽  
Implicit And Explicit

Abstract. Two experiments examined the influence of stories on recipients’ self-perceptions. Extending prior theory and research, our focus was on assimilation effects (i.e., changes in self-perception in line with a protagonist’s traits) as well as on contrast effects (i.e., changes in self-perception in contrast to a protagonist’s traits). In Experiment 1 ( N = 113), implicit and explicit conscientiousness were assessed after participants read a story about either a diligent or a negligent student. Moderation analyses showed that highly transported participants and participants with lower counterarguing scores assimilate the depicted traits of a story protagonist, as indicated by explicit, self-reported conscientiousness ratings. Participants, who were more critical toward a story (i.e., higher counterarguing) and with a lower degree of transportation, showed contrast effects. In Experiment 2 ( N = 103), we manipulated transportation and counterarguing, but we could not identify an effect on participants’ self-ascribed level of conscientiousness. A mini meta-analysis across both experiments revealed significant positive overall associations between transportation and counterarguing on the one hand and story-consistent self-reported conscientiousness on the other hand.

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