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Othering, An Analysis, Lajos L. Brons

Lajos Brons

Othering is the construction and identification of the self or in-group and the other or out-group in mutual, unequal opposition by attributing relative inferiority and/or radical alienness to the other/out-group. The notion of othering spread from feminist theory and post-colonial studies to other areas of the humanities and social sciences, but is originally rooted in Hegel’s dialectic of identification and distantiation in the encounter of the self with some other in his “Master-Slave dialectic”. In this paper, after reviewing the philosophical and psychological background of othering, I distinguish two kinds of othering, “crude” and “sophisticated”, that differ in the logical …