The Undeniable Other
The Undeniable Other

Summary/Abstract: The efforts to explain the other constantly fail. The creation of images reveals the presence of the other who appears both as an excess of any explanation and as a condition for the understanding of the diversity of such images. Even in its denial, such presence demands a dialogical dimension which includes both the explainer and the other. The birth of Western civilization, in its Socratic mode, was profoundly dialogical. Various trends, such as scientism and theology, shifted discourse to monological doctrines. Regardless of the kind of monologue, each claimed to subsume the other in its own logic, depriving the other of equal voice. Yet what is significant is that such a voice was always present – even in its denial. Good examples come from cultural conquests, racisms and colonialisms. Yet the most pronounced monological logic is scientific reductionism to a single ontological base: the fragmenting logic of materialism.

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