Transcending the other: moral economy and universal ethics

If we want to transcend pejorative othering which adversely affects all of us, we have to construct a new political and economic, ethical and cultural settlement to address, respond to, and transform the conditions of existence that produce the pejorative other. Transcendental Materialism provides the psychoanalytical platform to consider this transformational possibility. There will be no change to the current politico-economic order of things until and unless we take seriously the possibility of transcending present arrangements that reproduce the other.

Framing the other: stepping into the stream of history

Since the Agricultural Revolution 12,000 years ago, human beings have demonstrated an extraordinary capacity to carve up the world between us and them, have and have nots. This cleaving of humanity reflects fertile soil for the production and reproduction of the pejorative, demonised, and relegated other which is the subject of this book. From ancient empires, stepping into the classical age of Greece and Rome, to more recent political tyrannies, the refugee crisis, and the problem with the European Union, this chapter explores and illustrates the long reach of pejorative othering. It doing so it frames the subject to provide critical and urgent insights into a pressing problem.

Concluding comment

We have a problem, a long-standing problem, aggravated and compounded by the weight of history. Its origins can be traced to the Agricultural Revolution when Homo sapiens started to live alongside each other in larger groups. Agricultural developments precipitated social problems, exposed by biological deficiencies (...

Prologue

The ethical question confronting all of us without exception, and with a pressing urgency, is how to live alongside each other where the other person is our neighbour, not our competitor or disposable enemy. We are all the other to each other, a relation that sometimes descends into relegation and demonisation. This short monograph refines thinking on the subject of the ...

Contesting the other: sinking ethical shafts

From framing the other in chapter one, criminalising in chapter two, now to contesting the other in chapter three. This chapter sinks a disparate collection of ethical shafts – including Schweitzer on reverence for life, Bonhoeffer, Kung, Anderson, Kant, personalism, Lacan and Zizek, moral economy – to disturb the hard packed sediment of the production and reproduction of the pejorative other evidenced by the historical record (in chapter one). To reduce pejorative othering which affects all of us, politics must be reinvigorated by ethics to fracture the conditions of existence responsible. I argue for an urgent return to ethical enquiry to contest the other.

Criminalising the other: a criminal justice excursus

After wading in the stream of history, this chapter advances a detailed examination of the other in criminology and the criminal justice system. In other words, an organisational perspective. Chapter two assembles a rich literature review on the subject, paying particular attention to the Eriksson edited collection: Punishing the Other (2016). Importantly, this chapter draws together the interrelated themes of crime, punishment, criminal justice, and neoliberal capitalism. It is not possible to explore the other in criminology and modernised criminal justice system without paying attention to the conditions of existence provided by the neoliberal politico-economic platform.