Identity and Alterity

This paper explores the mechanisms of construction of ‘otherness’ at both the levels of language and content in Elfriede Jelinek’s text Die Schutzbefohlenen and in its English translation.
Firstly, Jean-François Lyotard’s critique of Hegel and conception of a politics of forgetting will be applied to the text as a productive tool to enrich a post-modern reading. In Heidegger and the “jews”, Lyotard introduces the “jews” as the unrepresentable excess of our identity, that unconceivable element which needs to be removed, exterminated, forgotten for a sense of unified, pure identity to be secured. Jelinek’s “wir”/“we” in Die Schutzbefohlenen, hovering between being and non-being, untimely beyond time and space, dissolving in water into nothingness, indeed embody the Lyotardian ‘forgotten’ that the West drowns in a desperate attempt to prevent this threat from coming to the surface to be seen, heard and disturb the illusion of an identity.
Secondly, the analysis will incorporate a queer perspective by applying Sara Ahmed’s concept of ‘spatial orientation’ and ‘normalisation of directions’ to highlight the way in which the textual references to movements reveal and challenge totalizing ideals of “sameness” and spatial identity (nationalism).
In this respect, the paper pays close attention to linguistic mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion and to the tension/interplay between patterns of unification and fragmentation. These include: alternations of the particles “ein-“ and “aus-” and the personal pronouns “wir”, “Sie”, “du”, “ihr”; the conflation between an all-encompassing divine and bureaucratic authority; play on words in revealing the hypocrisy of democratic ideals.
These aspects are analysed by comparing the text with the English translation (Charges (The Supplicants)), highlighting potential translation challenges, gains, losses and the way the two languages use their linguistic and cultural specificities in ‘othering’ and ‘queering’.
Lyotard’s forgotten “jews” and Ahmed’s displaced others emerge as productive elements which, applied to the German and English texts, enhance Jelinek’s disruption of any comforting, unifying pattern of identity and of those grand narratives of freedom and humanity that Europe holds dear, exposing their hidden yet dangerous mechanisms of selective inclusion and oppressive exclusion.

“Power is war, the continuation of war by other means”: Foucault’s reversal of Clausewitz’s formula has become a staple of critical theory — but it remains highly problematic on a conceptual level. Elaborated during Foucault’s 1976 lectures (“Society Must Be Defended”), this work-hypothesis theorises “basic warfare” [la guerre fondamentale] as the teleological horizon of socio-political relations. Following Boulainvilliers, Foucault champions this polemological approach, conceived as a purely descriptive discourse on “real” politics and war, against the philosophico-juridical conceptuality attached to liberal society (Hobbes’s Leviathan being here the prime example).
However, in doing so, Foucault did not interrogate the conceptual validity of notions such as power and war, therefore interlinking them without questioning their ontological status. This problematic conflation was partly rectified in 1982, as Foucault proposed a more dynamic definition of power relations: “actions over potential actions”.
I argue, somewhat polemically, that Foucault’s hermeneutics of power still involves a teleological violence, dependent on a polemological representation of human relations as essentially instrumental: this resembles what Derrida names, in “Heidegger’s Ear”, an “anthropolemology”. However, I show that all conceptualisation of power implies its self-deconstruction. This self-deconstructive (or autoimmune) structure supposes an archi-originary unpower prior to power: power presupposes an excess within power, an excessive force, another violence making it both possible and impossible. There is something within power located “beyond the power principle” (Derrida). This (self-)excess signifies a limitless resistantiality co-extensive with power-relationality. It also allows the reversal of pólemos into its opposite, as unpower opens politics and warfare to the messianic call of a pre-political, pre-ontological disruption: the archi-originary force of différance. This force, unconditional, challenges Foucault’s conceptualisations of power, suggesting an originary performativity located before or beyond hermeneutics of power-knowledge, disrupting theoreticity as well as empiricity by pointing to their ontological complicity.
The bulk of this essay is dedicated to sketching the theoretical implications of this deconstructive reading of Foucault with respect to the methodology and conceptuality of political science and social theory.

This anthology explores depictions of alterity, monstrosity and deviation in medieval Icelandic literature, Scandinavian history, and beyond. The authors explore issues of identity, genre, character and text and the interplay between them, challenging long-held perceptions about the lack of ambiguity in Old Norse literature and culture.

Medieval Icelandic literature has often been reduced to the supposedly realist Íslendingasögur and their main protagonists at the expense of other genres and characters. Indeed, such a focus obscures and erases the importance of those beings and narratives that move on the margins of mainstream culture — whether socially, ethnically, ontologically, or textually. This volume aims to offer a new perspective on a variety of theoretical and comparative approaches to explore depictions of alterity, monstrosity, and deviation. Engaging with the interplay of genre, character, text, and culture, and exploring questions of behavioural, socio-cultural, and textual alterity, these contributions examine subjects ranging from the study of fragmented and ‘Othered’ saga narratives, to attitudes towards foreign people and lands, and alterities in mythological and legendary texts. Together the papers effectively challenge long-held perceptions about the lack of ambiguity in medieval Icelandic literature, and offer a far more nuanced understanding of the importance of the ‘Other’ in that society.

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La tesi presenta inizialmente il pensiero di Jacques Derrida sull'animalità. Il tema affrontato è la sovranità dell'uomo sul resto dei viventi, in particolare nei riguardi della discriminazione dell'animalità. Nei capitoli a seguire si attua un'emancipazione dell'animalità e non dall'animalità come la corrente umanista voleva. Attraverso l'ontogenesi del concetto di "umanità" viene decostruito il costrutto che sorregge la soglia che divide l'uomo dagli animali, laddove essi partecipano all'animalità in maniere differenti. L'emergenza di questa composizione dei temi trattati si erge ad azione esemplare con cui Derrida, prima di morire, ha lasciato delle tracce da seguire durante il ricevimento del premio Adorno.

This study aims to build a theological construction that can help erase anti-Chinese stigma in Indonesia post-1998, so religious people, especially Christians, become more sensitive about ethnic discrimination. The discrimination against ethnic Chinese in Indonesia has occurred for a long time, usually because of their capability to control the market and business. Their success in business impacts hatred and racism and turns into an anti-Chinese stigma. The research uses qualitative study on the philosophy of heteronomous alterity, and builds a theological framework on the theory of heteronomous alterity in positivistic philosophy. The theological framework will remove the anti-Chinese stigma in Indonesia. This study concludes that the theology of heteronomous alterity can help decrease anti-Chinese stigma by appreciating trinitarian relations and accepting the other as they are.

The first part of this paper presents a historical outline of how racial and cultural alterity (particularly indigeneity) has been imagined and represented by elites in Colombia since the nineteenth century. The evolution of these ideas takes us to the contemporary category of “ethnic groups” and its representation in positive terms, a process that signifies a substantial change compared to past discourses in favour of cultural homogeneity. The second part of this text reflects on the ways in which ethnic policies are legitimized  –today more than ever– through the principle of “the protection of cultural diversity”, a principle which is widely praised and uncontested, but which has become totally dependent on problematic concepts such as “cultural damage”, “authenticity” or “preservation”. Furthermore, the institutional actions based on that principle are actually uncertain, ambiguous and inefficient, a situation that invites us to question the “policies for diversity”.

This paper's goal it's to do a review, for the first time in Spanish, of A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America by the Historian Ronald Takaki (1939-2009). Takaki’s works were key for the incorporation, into the American historical narrative of the multiculturalism and of the recognition of ethnic and cultural diversity in the American society.
Also I aim to do a presentation or at least to remind him, and his Historical approach to the Spanish speaking academic community.

Utilizing examples from fieldwork in the museum, this essay engages Pueblo Grande as a site where colonial identities are re/enacted through symbolic, material, and social encounters. At the same time, I seek to also address decolonizing possibilities residing within, and beyond, the museum site. I argue that approaching rhetoric as holographic enables attention to contested memories as they unfold within the imaginative and material geographies of U.S. settler colonialism. The holographic analytic productively connects rhetorical inquiry in specific places to larger symbolic, material, and social landscapes to attend to multiplicity and difference without attempting to flatten it into a “definite image- repertoire.” Such a perspective engages rhetorical fragments taken from multiple places and perspectives while also calling attention to critics’ positionalities in relation to their object(s) of study. In particular I draw attention to how public memory scholars have approached their objects of analysis and how recent expansions in both our sites and methods of inquiry present opportunities as well as new challenges for decolonizing our approaches.

This paper proposes an existentialist reading of The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border (2018), a memoir by former U.S. Border Patrol agent Francisco Cantú. Drawing upon Anya Topolski's political ethics of relationality, grounded in Emmanuel Levinas's notion of alterity and Hannah Arendt's concept of plurality, and Luna Dolezal's rereading of Jean-Paul Sartre's account of shame, it examines the triangulation of the personal, the intersubjective, and the public in Cantú's autobiographical act. The paper argues that by articulating its protagonist's experience from the perspective of both a law enforcer and an emotionally involved immediate observer of the hazards and horrors of undocumented immigration, Cantú's memoir negotiates subjectivity in relational terms, exposing complex human realities of the U.S./Mexico borderlands that signify the immigrant body as a product of alarmist discourses, illegal industries, and geopolitical mapping, and hence adds new perspectives to the human tragedy produced by the global economic apartheid. The paper also maintains that by turning the private lives of immigrants from abstractions into subjects of the polarizing (trans)national debate and foregrounding both its protagonist's and its readers' ethical and critical response, The Line Becomes a River affirms the existentialist view that the ability to sustain personal responsibility and relationality within a network of Others by making a conscious authentic choice is the ultimate signpost of our humanity and self-determination.

An inner link has always connected the artistic avant-garde with acts of insurgency carried out by socially disenfranchised populations insofar as both embrace the possibility of an emancipated future that is radically at odds with the present (picture Gustave Courbet
helping to topple the Vendome Column in
1871), except something about such historical repetition and reenactment at this time  –a moment best described as an uncanny present: a present unfamiliar in its very presentness (Rebecca Bryant)– cries out for something like verification. The essay (published in ASAP Journal 3.2 2018) asks is such a thing as proof of authenticity even possible?

The article focuses on the analysis of various aspects concerning the functions of name in Véronique Olmi’s recent novel Bakhita (2017). How can identity be reconstructed after the loss of the name and, more important, after the devastating experience of modern slavery? How relevant is the memory work in putting together the self and what are the literary techniques that the writer uses in constructing the novel? What are the limits of words and language in rendering Bakhita’s Harrowing to Hell and her Redemption?

Der Text spannt einen breiten Bogen vom stark kritisierten Cover der Weltwoche an den Beginn der Frühen Neuzeit, um das Verhältnis von Bild und Betrachtendem, Eigenem und Fremdem anhand von Graphik, Gemälden, Karikaturen und Zeitschriftencovern zu analysieren.

De communautaire spanningen binnen de Belgische Werkliedenpartij liepen voor de Eerste Wereldoorlog hoger op dan tot nu toe aangenomen werd. Niet alleen zorgde de taalkwestie voor onenigheid, maar Vlamingen en Franstaligen bleken zich te identificeren met andere vaderlanden: de Franstaligen met België, de Vlamingen met Vlaanderen. De Vlaamse socialisten hadden tot de Eerste Wereldoorlog zelfs anti-Belgische trekken omdat zij de Belgische Omwenteling verwierpen als een ongelukkige broodopstand, die door de katholieken misbruikt was om zich van Nederland af te scheuren. De achterliggende gedachte was zelfs dat België een kunstmatige creatie was. Hun Franstalige kameraden eigenden zich 1830 nadrukkelijk toe als een nationale revolutie, die door de burgerij aan de arbeiders ontstolen was. Zij profileerden zich als ‘volbloed’ Belgen, met dien verstande dat verschillende Waalse socialisten al vanaf 1909 de wallingantische toer opgingen.
Kortom, de partijeenheid binnen de BWP is sterk overschat. Er is terecht op gewezen dat socialistische politici in de eerste plaats binnen het Belgische politieke kader dachten. Maar daar de conclusie aan verbinden dat ze allen aan hetzelfde vaderland verknocht waren, is fout. Deze onderschatting van de communautaire verschillen binnen de partij is ten eerste te wijten aan het selectieve geheugenverlies van de meeste socialistische voormannen na de Eerste Wereldoorlog. De zware aanvaringen tussen Vlamingen en Walen pasten niet in het succesverhaal dat de partij na 1918 schreef. Ten tweede heeft de Vlaamse beweging in de loop van de 20ste eeuw een monopolie verworven op het keurmerk van het 'Goede Vlamingschap'. Door zichzelf op te werpen als de voorhoede van de hele natie, is de Vlaamse beweging erin geslaagd haar tegenstanders af te schilderen niet alleen als vijanden van de flaminganten, maar van heel Vlaanderen. De uitvallen van de Vlaamse socialisten naar de Vlaamse beweging zijn dan ook vaak geïnterpreteerd als zovele bewijzen voor hun 'anti-Vlaamse' houding. Uit dit boek blijkt echter dat hun anti-flamingantisme vóór 1914 niet tot een afwijzing van Vlaanderen leidde, noch tot een toenadering tot het Belgische vaderland. Daarvoor waren er te veel tegenstrijdige factoren in het spel, waarvan de belangrijkste factor vanaf de eeuwwisseling de zware communautaire crisis in de partij was. De Gentse socialisten voelden de verwijten van hun Waalse kameraden aan het duistere Vlaanderen immers aan als een onterechte kritiek op hun propaganda-arbeid. Een kritiek die des te harder aankwam omdat hun voorhoederol in 'Arm Vlaanderen' een van de centrale mythen van hun zelfbeeld was.

This article reviews the contribution that the ontology of language has historically done to intercultural philosophy in social praxis, as the basis for a better understanding of otherness and alterity present in the actions taken by subjects in intercultural environments. The ontology of language is seen as a triadic relationship between the speaker, language, and action. It also examines the role of judgments as triggers of misunderstanding of intercultural processes, disrespect for diversity and non-discrimination. The word, as a mediator between the subject and things is presented. Language and its mediating role between the linguistic communities and the surrounding social context is also seen.

This e-book is a collection of papers focussing on the discursive dimension of the 'eastern enlargement' of the European Union, relying on lessons from post-colonial scholarship, world-systems analysis and critical race studies. The empirical material comes from discourse of 'eastern enlargement' process in the late 1990s-early 2000s .

Sense of identity is related with the belief of "sameness", to be the one among rest of all and the sense of "otherness" is its contrary. When a single entity is perceived with IDENTITY, he is considered stronger whereas the weaker that stands isolated is considered as "other".

The aim of this paper is to illustrate the Ricoeurian contribution to the development of a hermeneutics of otherness. Beginning with Ricoeur's confrontation with Heideggerian thought on temporality, the paper proceeds to develop the connection between time and narrative as an answer to the aporias of time, discovered in the analysis of the cosmological and existential idea of time. In conclusion, the third part will outline the importance of the narrative conception of temporality in the development of a hermeneutics of otherness.

As the site of the assassination that triggered World War I and the place where the term "ethnic cleansing" was invented during the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s, Bosnia has become a global symbol of nationalist conflict and ethnic division. But as Edin Hajdarpasic shows, formative contestations over the region began well before 1914, emerging with the rise of new nineteenth-century forces—Serbian and Croatian nationalisms as well as Ottoman, Habsburg, Muslim, and Yugoslav political movements—that claimed this province as their own. Whose Bosnia? reveals the political pressures and moral arguments that made this land a prime target of escalating nationalist activity.
To explain the remarkable proliferation of national movements since the nineteenth century, Hajdarpasic draws on a vast range of sources—records of secret societies, imperial surveillance files, poetry, paintings, personal correspondences—spanning Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia, Turkey, and Austria. Challenging conventional readings of Balkan histories, Whose Bosnia? provides new insight into central themes of modern politics, illuminating core subjects like "the people," state-building, and national suffering. Hajdarpasic uses South Slavic debates over Bosnian Muslim identity to propose a new figure in the history of nationalism: the (br)other, a character signifying at the same time the potential of being both "brother" and "Other," containing the fantasy of both complete assimilation and insurmountable difference. By bringing such figures into focus, Whose Bosnia? shows nationalism to be an immensely dynamic and open-ended force, one that eludes any clear sense of historical closure.

In this chapter, I analyse narrative manifestations of the Far North (Thule, Hyperborea) in Roman literature in order to chart the ways in which they shape and reflect Roman identities. As various scholars have argued, Hyperborea in Greek literature tends to be portrayed as a utopian and religious location occupied by a fortunate people, while Thule is a contested geographic marker. This chapter shows how these northern alterities are refashioned by Roman authors from Catullus to Sidonius Apollinaris (first century BCE to fifth century CE). In particular, I demonstrate that Thule and Hyperborea are shaped and reshaped into positive and negative symbols of autocratic ambition and Roman identity. I ultimately conclude that, in Roman literature, Thule and Hyperborea are not fixed concepts of northern alterity, but are instead mutable and metonymic.

Colonialism is both a practice and a worldview. As a practice, it involves the domination of a society by settlers from a different society. As a worldview, colonialism is a truly global geopolitical, economic, and cultural doctrine that is rooted in the worldwide expansion of West European capitalism that survived until well after the collapse of most colonial empires.

Volume curato nell'ambito del progetto "Stranierità - Foreignness - Fremdheit" (finanziato dal Bando dell’Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna "Accordi di Cooperazione Internazionale con Istituzioni di Istruzione Superiore", disp. dirigenziale 434/2017, prot. 11875 del 03/02/2017). Si vale del contributo di studiosi provenienti da università italiane, europee e nordamericane, e affronta con metodo interdisciplinare la definizione dell'idea di "straniero" nelle culture classiche, nelle lingue e letterature europee moderne e in campo sociologico e giurisprudenziale. Tutti i contributi sono stati sottoposti a double blind peer review.

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O ato de jogar pode ser envolvente de tal forma que um mundo paralelo parece se erguer enquanto se joga. Nos chamados jogos virtuais essa característica toma proporções que fazem deles um universo pixelado de inúmeras possibilidades. De modos de ser e de estar. O texto, assim, traça trilhas e percorre mapas pelos diferentes olhares que os games recebem buscando vê-los não como fuga do real, mas como experimentações no real. Feito baú de tesouros, alguns games são encontrados pelo caminho. Undertale se destaca, principalmente quando visto com os conceitos de alteridade em Bakhtin e experiência em Larossa.

The act of playing can be engaging in such a way that a parallel world seems to rise while playing. In so-called virtual games this feature takes proportions that make them a pixelated universe of innumerable possibilities. Ways of be. The text thus traces paths and traverses maps by the different looks that the games receive in order to see them not as an escape from the real, but as experiments in the real. Like treasure chest, some games are found during the path. Undertale stands out, especially when viewed with the concepts of alterity in Bakhtin and experience in Larossa.

Chez Nicolas de Cues, comme chacun le sait, Dieu est caractérisé comme coincidentia oppositorum ou comme au-delà d'une telle coincidentia. Mais on rencontre aussi chez lui un discours trinitaire classique : Dieu est Père, Fils, Esprit, ce que Nicolas traduit volontiers conceptuellement en Unité, Egalité et Connexion. Ces trois hypostases sont consubstantielles, elles ne forment qu'une seule nature ; sans être autres les unes que les autres, ces hypostases sont cependant distinctes.

Los conceptos de alteridad e identidad han ocupado en los últimos años un espacio central en los debates académicos en torno a la multiculturalidad. Con este libro se pretende hacer una aportación novedosa al debate uniendo dos tiempos y dos espacios que habitualmente han sido estudiados por separado: el mundo europeo y mediterráneo medieval y el mundo atlántico de comienzos de la modernidad. El trabajo parte de una pregunta fundamental: ¿cómo describe el viajero al otro totalmente desconocido en comparación al extraño ya conocido o del que al menos se tienen referencias? Este interrogante dará pie a otros que permitirán al lector viajar junto a Bernhard von Breidenbach, Pero Tafur, Hieronymus Münzer, Leo von Rozmital, Jean de Béthencourt, Fernando de Magallanes o Cristóbal Colón entre otros.

Montaigne hat sich nicht nur in den beiden bekannten Kapiteln Des cannibales und Des coches über die Eroberung Süd- und Mittelamerikas geäußert, sondern auch an zahlreichen anderen Stellen seiner Essais, was zeigt, dass das Thema für  ihn  gedanklich  präsent  war und er es des Öfteren, vor allem wenn es um einen Perspektivenwechsel bei der Bewertung von Sitten und Gebräuchen ging,ansprach.  Diese  auf  das  Gesamtwerk  verteilten  Stellen  werden  also  indirekt auch  die  recht  gut  erforschten  zwei  in wesentlichen Teilen den Indianern gewidmeten Kapitel beleuchten. Des Cannibales ist um 1579/80 entstanden, Des coches rund 10 Jahre später um 1587/88. Wichtig ist die Differenz im Ton: dem „monde  enfant“  der  jungsteinzeitlichen  Tupi  treten  in  Des  coches  die mittelamerikanischen Hochkulturen gegenüber als Kulturen in ihrer Reife, die aber  ebenso  der  Zerstörung  durch  die  europäische  Kolonisation  ausgeliefert sind, die ihnen jegliche Entwicklungsmöglichkeit abgeschnitten hat.

A synthetic review of three books: Philippe Van Haute, "Psychoanalyse en filosofie. Het imaginaire en het symbolische in het werk van Jacques Lacan" (Louvain: Peeters, 1989); Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen, "Lacan. Le maître absolu" (Paris: Flammarion, 1990); Bernard Baas, "Le désir pur. Parcours philosophiques dans les parages de J. Lacan" (Louvain: Peeters, 1992).

La investigación sobre identidad y alteridad en la historia es una línea de estudio en pleno desarrollo en la historiografía actual y es a la vez una forma inmejorable de acercarse a un debate de actualidad dentro y fuera de nuestras fronteras: el de la territorialidad española, su origen, su formación y la justificación de las fronteras físicas y culturales actuales.
Este libro recoge diferentes perspectivas sobre las singularidades de la Edad Media hispana, un territorio de convivencia, de cohabitación y de desencuentros, inevitablemente marcado por un largo proceso de transferencias entre culturas y de negociaciones colectivas e individuales de la propia identidad.

The Arabic word majūs, while initially used as an exonym for Zoroastrians in the Middle East, was used in al-Andalus, medieval Muslim Spain, for a variety of people. It became best known, however, as the appellation used by Andalusis for the Viking parties attacking the Iberian Peninsula in the 9th and 10th centuries. Previous attempts at explaining the use of majūs for Scandinavians produced varied conclusions. Mikel de Epalza deems it to be legal jargon, while Omeljan Pritsak touted a Celtic origin for the word. The theory that has garnered most recognition is Arne Melvinger’s, who suggests that it was given to Scandinavians due to a perceived similarity between their cremation ceremonies and Zoroastrian cults of fire. The word retained a firm connection to Zoroastrians in the Middle East. Zoroastrians, while accepted as a protected people, ahl al-dhimma, alongside Christians and Jews, and thus allowed to practice their religion within Islamic lands, were still regarded as ‘second-class’ dhimmīs (members of ahl al-dhimma) due to their perceived polytheism, idolatry and lack of holy scripture. The negative view of Zoroastrians gave majūs a negative connotation and was used as a term of abuse against peoples, religions or other Islamic sects, comparing them to Zoroastrians. In al-Andalus, the connection to Zoroastrianism was largely lost, and majūs underwent a semantic widening to mean ‘pagan.’ Scandinavians, then, were only one of the myriad groups Andalusis called majūs. This pejoration has a parallel in Greek and Latin literature, where mágos/magus underwent a similar process, whereby its use for Persian priests transformed into a variety of sorcerers and magical practitioners. The hybrid culture of al-Andalus, where Arabic-, Latin/Romance- and Hebrew-speaking populations coexisted and exchanged ideas and vocabulary allowed majūs, already carrying connotations of idolatry, to widen its semantic range. The dual meaning of the term has caused some confusion for both medieval authors as well as modern scholars. The attribution of fire-worship and incest Ibn Diḥya gave to Scandinavians in his story of al-Ghazāl, a source Melvinger used to justify his theory on fire-worship, is a case of an erroneous transfer of Zoroastrian tropes to them on the merits of the common term used for both. The Castilian author/s of the Primera Crónica General also struggled with interpreting majūs in the Arabic sources; rendering it as almuiuces, they combined multiple uses of the word. In modern times, Évariste Lévi-Provençal misinterpreted the use of majūs for Zoroastrians in an Andalusi legal manual that forbade the consumption of Zoroastrian-produced cheese, leading to a conclusion that some of the Vikings harrying in Seville settled there and produced cheese.

Dando por sentada la tesis de que el problema de la identidad personal no hizo su plena aparición en la escena filosófica moderna sino hasta la formulación cartesiana del cogito como un yo desvinculado, el objetivo general de nuestro trabajo ha sido contribuir a repensar la pre-historia de esa subjetividad. Más en concreto, hemos buscado determinar cuál es el aporte que Michel de Montaigne puede hacernos en tal sentido. Presuponiendo, asimismo, que las reflexiones del ensayista acerca de la identidad son inseparables de aquellas que esboza acerca de la alteridad. Así, asumiendo la dificultad de lograr una presentación académica del errático pensamiento de Montaigne, hemos guiado nuestra búsqueda a partir de tres conceptos rectores; los cuales, a su vez, se han convertido en útiles herramientas para organizar cada uno de los capítulos: en el primero, el concepto de diversidad nos ha permitido desentrañar la influencia que cada ambiente cultural posee en la conformación de la identidad personal. En el segundo, a través del concepto de pluralidad, hemos intentado ilustrar dos modos concretos de rechazo y de asimilación de la alteridad propuestos por Montaigne. Por último, en el tercero, en el cual hemos abordado más propiamente la cuestión de la identidad personal, el concepto de identidad abierta nos ha permitido indicar en qué medida el yo que subyace en los escritos del ensayista es un yo siempre inacabado, y en estrecha relación con los otros. De esta manera, hemos pretendido reconstruir la concepción de un yo polifacético, fluctuante y atravesado por la alteridad; un yo capaz de ser presentado como una alternativa válida a concepciones más rígidas o asépticas de la identidad que se abrirán paso en la modernidad; en una palabra, un yo hecho de retazos.

I this paper I wish to contribute a Filipino notion that somehow breaks the identity-alterity duality and harmonizes the I-other distinction – the Filipino notion of ‘kapwa.’  The first part will be a general discussion on identity-alterity duality and intersubjectivity based on the philosophies of Gabriel Marcel and Martin Buber. The second part will be on the Filipino notion of ‘kapwa’ and the value of ‘pakikipagkapwa-tao.’

«¿Cómo puedo seguir siendo yo mismo, respetar la alteridad del otro y, con todo, ser capaz de saltar la verja del aislamiento y tocar al otro por dentro?» Esta pregunta es la que inicia y dirige el presente escrito. En él, se ahonda en la cuestión de la alteridad siguiendo el pensamiento de Emmanuel Levinas desde sus primeras obras hasta 1961. Se comienza con un recorrido amplio por las diversas influencias de dicho autor —especialmente la fenomenología y el pensamiento judío— y se analiza la posibilidad de una síntesis de ambas tradiciones en el pensamiento de Levinas. A continuación, se estudia su aportación filosófica a la cuestión de la alteridad. Este desarrollo se hace de la mano de otros conceptos clave en la filosofía levinasiana de la época, como son: el tiempo, la soledad del yo, la muerte y, finalmente, el otro. Por último, se propone un diálogo entre la filosofía levinasiana y otras filosofías de la alteridad para advertir semejanzas y contrastes. Al final del trabajo, se recogen de manera muy concisa y esquemática las principales ideas a modo de conclusión y se ofrece una recopilación bibliográfica de las obras citadas a lo largo del texto.