REPRESENTATIONS OF ALTERITY
REPRESENTATIONS OF ALTERITY

Summary/Abstract: Knowledge of the Self is perfected through knowledge of the Other. The Self is reflected and recognized in the Other, either by identification or by differentiation. We only truly know ourselves when our own identity meets the identity of the Other. A nuclear representation of the European as otherness is Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, a synthesis of the mythical (self)representations that Europeans have reflected on the Others and on themselves. In all psychosocial representations of the foreigner, we read the fear of miscegenation and the tendency to prevent it through segregation, exclusion and discrimination. The fear of the Other takes shape in the offensive cultural connotations of the term Outsider, which aggressively designates the status of the individual or group (ethnic, religious, etc.) not integrated into the social system. One's own internal barbarism can thus easily be transformed from language into political attitude: xenophobia, racism, nationalism.

• Details
• Contents