Very Most Annoying Word Or Phrase Of The Day
"The Other" Edition
It's downright amazing how many stupid and/or irritating terms and phrases are either created or popularized by the PoMos and/or continental philosophy. Among the most irritating:
"the Other"
Jeez Louise.
But hey kids it gets worse! One can--if one is very, very irritating, also speak of "Othering" somebody...I guess as in:
Hey, man, did you see Mike Other the hell out of John the other day?
Ceaseless references to "the Other" by PoMo types sometimes leads philosophers on my side of the fence to ask "the other what?", though that rarely leads anywhere productive. Even merely complaining about this term is, I guess, a matter of Otherizing some, well, other folks--the ones who think the term is so, like, awe-some--and I'm under the impression that Otherification is bad, though I'm not exactly clear on why. If you knew me better, you might take a more favorable view of me viewing other folks as Other...folks. Or whatever.
'The Other', ladies and gentlemen...today's Very Most Irritating Word Or Phrase Of TheDay!
"The Other" Edition
It's downright amazing how many stupid and/or irritating terms and phrases are either created or popularized by the PoMos and/or continental philosophy. Among the most irritating:
"the Other"
Jeez Louise.
But hey kids it gets worse! One can--if one is very, very irritating, also speak of "Othering" somebody...I guess as in:
Hey, man, did you see Mike Other the hell out of John the other day?
Ceaseless references to "the Other" by PoMo types sometimes leads philosophers on my side of the fence to ask "the other what?", though that rarely leads anywhere productive. Even merely complaining about this term is, I guess, a matter of Otherizing some, well, other folks--the ones who think the term is so, like, awe-some--and I'm under the impression that Otherification is bad, though I'm not exactly clear on why. If you knew me better, you might take a more favorable view of me viewing other folks as Other...folks. Or whatever.
'The Other', ladies and gentlemen...today's Very Most Irritating Word Or Phrase Of TheDay!
posted by Winston Smith at
9:15 PM
1 Comments:
I think the term "the Other" is usually intended to mean something like:
* a person or group who is perceived, from the standpoint of another person or group to be so different as to be nearly non-human.
To "other" someone would therefore mean:
* to label or construe some person or group as so different from one's self or one's group as to be nearly non-human.
In this latter sense, the government of Oceania creates propaganda designed to other the Eurasians and therefore make it easier for soldiers to kill them.
If this is the right way to understand the phrase, it seems to me like a perfectly fine term to describe an important phenomenon.
N.B. I think Levinas uses the term "Other" in a positive way, but I don't really understand him.
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