MAPPING THE ANATOMY OF OTHERNESS: FROM INTERSUBJECTIVITY TO RACIALIZATION

Abstract

Human reality incorporates an intricate matrix of subjects engaging in horizontal and vertical interactions within a spatio-temporal dimension. These human beings endeavor to assert their prominence in the surrounding world, seeking to achieve a sense of both wholeness and singularity. The Self manifests as an autonomous being determined by its own existence, confirming its presence through its essence. This self-aware entity establishes an existential actuality that reinforces its absolute dominance, negating the subjectivity of the Other. The latter, despite its marginal manifestation, stands as a self-conscious subject that manages to affirm its referentiality. It presents itself as an introspective ego that constitutes its potentiality through its transcendental difference. The Self and the Other, therefore, emerge as existential possibilities of one another, following interchangeable modes of being. This ontological indeterminacy discloses the indefinite nature of human relationality which is conditioned by the dynamics of power. The paper investigates the construction of otherness through several theoretical frameworks, tracing its development across existential philosophy and postcolonial theory. It, specifically, seeks to explore the politics of racialized discourses that define black subjectivity as the subordinate Other within Eurocentric epistemologies. By bringing these multidisciplinary perspectives into dialogue, the study demonstrates that otherness is not an inherently fixed condition but rather a discursively and ideologically produced construct that shapes human identity.