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Otherness as a paradigm in anthropology

  • Bernhard Leistle (b. 1968) is an assistant professor at Carleton University <bernhard.leistle@carleton.ca>. His research interests include interrelations between phenomenology and semiotics, ritual and culture in Morocco, and psychiatric anthropology. His publications include “Ritual as sensory communication: A theoretical and analytical perspective” (2006); “Difficult heritage: Time and the other in Moroccan rituals of possession” (2011); and “From the alien to the other: Steps towards a phenomenology of spirit possession” (2014).

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Published/Copyright: March 27, 2015
Semiotica
From the journal Semiotica Volume 2015 Issue 204

Abstract

The article proposes to take seriously the notion of otherness in anthropology and to assign it paradigmatic function for the discipline. Building on phenomenological philosophy, in particular Merleau-Ponty and Waldenfels, the Other is approached as alien, as something that essentially eludes the orders of self and culture, while at the same time challenging them. The article then discusses several ways in which this altered understanding of otherness might productively inform anthropology as the “science of the culturally Other.” Ethnographic representation, cultural and ritual orders, and social events are conceptualized in exemplary fashion as responses to an alien demand.

Keywords: otherness/alienness; anthropology; phenomenology; cultural theory; ethnographic representation; sensory experience

About the author

Bernhard Leistle

Bernhard Leistle (b. 1968) is an assistant professor at Carleton University <bernhard.leistle@carleton.ca>. His research interests include interrelations between phenomenology and semiotics, ritual and culture in Morocco, and psychiatric anthropology. His publications include “Ritual as sensory communication: A theoretical and analytical perspective” (2006); “Difficult heritage: Time and the other in Moroccan rituals of possession” (2011); and “From the alien to the other: Steps towards a phenomenology of spirit possession” (2014).

Published Online: 2015-3-27
Published in Print: 2015-4-1

©2015 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston

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https://doi.org/10.1515/sem-2014-0089
Keywords for this article
otherness/alienness; anthropology; phenomenology; cultural theory; ethnographic representation; sensory experience

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Gender equality in Swedish child health centers: An analysis of their physical environments and parental behaviors
  3. The semiotics of emotion and narrative therapy in the case of Montaigne
  4. On the concept of translation: A perspective based on Greimassian semiotics
  5. Burqa and the human umwelt
  6. A memorable thirteen-word sentence
  7. On the characteristics of verbal irony
  8. Tying in comment sections: The production of meaning and sense on Facebook
  9. Multimodality in Canadian print advertising: Different functional connections between headlines and visual texts of advertisements in English and French consumer magazines
  10. Language, communication, and speech: Human signs in global semiosis
  11. The calligram and the title card
  12. Harnessing the unconscious mind of the consumer: How implicit attitudes predict pre-conscious visual attention to carbon footprint information on products
  13. Otherness as a paradigm in anthropology
  14. Chasing the myth: A Harley-Davidson story(telling)
  15. Communicology and human conduct: An essay dedicated to Max
  16. Saussure's équivalence sémiologique in the case study of Czech sonants
  17. A semiotic study on modality in Chinese Criminal Law and its English version
  18. Color, shape, and sound: A proposed system of music notation
  19. Reading Deleuze through the lens of Hermeticism
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