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/lp/state-university-of-new-york-press/the-ethics-and-politics-of-otherness-negotiating-alterity-and-racial-1HTR380HPq
- Publisher
- State University of New York Press
- ISSN
- 2155-0905
Abstract
The Ethics and Politics of Otherness Negotiating Alterity and Racial Difference Lisa Guenther In her essay “Choosing the Margin,” bell hooks draws attention to the way uncritical celebrations of difference and otherness often act as an alibi for progressive politics. hooks writes: I am waiting for them to stop talking about the “Other,” to stop even describing how important it is to be able to speak about difference. It is not just important what we speak about, but how and why we speak. Often this speech about the “other” is also a mask, an oppressive talk hiding gaps, absences, that space where our words would be if we were speaking, if there were silence, if we were there. This “we” is that “us” in the margins, that “we” who inhabit marginal space that is not a site of domination but a place of resistance. Enter that space. (hooks 1990, 151) The recent proliferation of discourses on alterity, particularly with the growth of Levinas studies, makes hooks’s critique all the more relevant for ethical and political theory today. To what extent has this emphasis on alterity affected the dynamics of philosophical and political life ? Does it fall into the
Journal
philoSOPHIA – State University of New York Press
Published: Jun 5, 2012