cuturalalterity

Cultural alterity: Cross-cultural communication and feminist theory in North-South contextsHypatia; Bloomington; Spring 1998; Ofelia Schutte Volume: 13Issue: 2Start Page: 53-72ISSN: 08875367Subject Terms: FeminismCultural relationsGeographic Names: North AmericaLatin AmericaAbstract:How to communicate with "the other" who is culturally different from oneself is one of the greatest challenges facing North-South relations. This paper builds on existential-phenomenological and poststructuralist concepts of alterity and difference to strengthen the position of Latina and other subaltern speakers in North-South dialogue.Full Text:Copyright Indiana University Press Spring 1998HeadnoteHow to communicate with "the other" who is culturally different from oneself is one of the greatest challenges facing North-South relations. This paper builds on existential-phenomenological and poststructuralist concepts of alterity and difference to strengthen the position of Latina and other subaltern speakers in North-South dialogue. It defends a postcolonial approach to feminist theory as a basis for negotiating culturally differentiated feminist positions in this age of accelerated globalization, migration, and displacement. This essay will address the issue of understanding cultural differences in the context of cross-cultural communication and dialogue, particularly those cases in which such communication or attempted communication takes place between members of a dominant culture and a subaltern culture. From an examination of these issues we can perhaps draw some ideas that will permit us to reach a fuller understanding of cross-cultural feminist exchanges and dialogues. The reason for focusing on the topic of cross-cultural communication is that recently, I have become increasingly aware of the levels of prejudice affecting the basic processes of communication between Anglo-American and Latina speakers, as well as the difficulties experienced by many Latin American immigrants to the United States. It seems to me that in these times of massive prejudices against immigrants and of extraordinary displacements of people from their communities of origin, the question of how to communicate with "the other" who is culturally different from oneself is one of the greatest challenges facing North-South relations and interaction. If the question before us is how to frame the conditions for the possibility of a global feminist ethics-or whether such an ethics is indeed possible-I see no better place to start than to examine the conditions of possibility for cross-cultural communication as such. My methodology for understanding what is at stake in cross-cultural and intersubjective communication will depend largely on an existential-phenomenological concept of alterity. In this tradition, the breakthrough in constructing the concept of the other occurs when one combines the notion of the other as different from the self with the acknowledgment of the self's decentering that results from the experience of such differences.1 Moreover, the breakthrough involves acknowledging the positive, potentially ethical dimensions of such a decentering for interpersonal relations (as in Levinas 1979, Irigaray 1993, and Kristeva 1991), in contrast to simply taking the decentering one might experience in the light of the other's differences as a deficit in the individual's control over the environment. According to this understanding, interpersonal and social interactions marked by cultural (as well as sexual, racial, and other kinds of difference) allow us to reach new ethical, aesthetic, and political ground. In other words, the other is not the one who passively confirms what I am predisposed to think about her; she is not the one who acts as the mirror to my self or the one whose image justifies my existing ego boundaries. If this were the case, the other would only be a stand-in for the self's narcissism. Just the contrary; the other is that person or experience which makes it possible for the self to recognize its own limited horizons in the light of asymmetrically given relations marked by sexual, social, cultural, or other differences. The other, the foreigner, the stranger, is that person occupying the space of the subaltern in the culturally asymmetrical power relation, but also those elements or dimensions of the self that unsettle or decenter the ego's dominant, self-enclosed, territorialized identity. In addition to these presuppositions regarding otherness and difference derived from the phenomenological-existential and poststructuralist tradition, I will take into account recent methodological developments regarding the concept of cultural difference as represented in postcolonial feminist theory. Working against the background of the West's history of colonial enterprises and its exploitation of other societies and cultures, postcolonial theory, in its various manifestations, pays special attention to issues of language, class, racial, ethnic, sexual, and gender differences, and to the justification of narratives about the nation-state.2 Postcolonial feminist theory, in turn, directs its attention to the lives of women and to the tensions affecting women whose voices appear in national narratives and accounts of diasporic migrations. At stake in these "post" theories is a certain loss of innocence with regard to narratives of identity because of a more critical awareness of the regulative power such narratives have in defining who we are, who we aren't, and who others are and aren't.3 The regulative power of narratives of identity is something with respect to which we are, to some extent, complicit, but we are also able to examine these narratives from some distance. Postcolonial and feminist critics have therefore used psychoanalytic theory to investigate further and to elaborate aspects of the relation between self and other in the light of accepted narratives of cultural identity and difference. In particular, Kristeva has studied symbolic analogies between the foreign other and the Freudian concept of the uncanny in the self-what she has called the stranger within the self (Kristeva 1991). Postcolonial feminisms, problematizing the Western concept of self, question the regulative use of gender in national and postnational narratives, but also the Enlightenment concept of individualism that fails to notice the complex, multilayered, fragmented, contradictory aspects of the self. Finally, and on a different note regarding issues of alterity and identity, one more presupposition guiding these reflections is the belief that what we hold to be the nature of knowledge is not 2页空白没用的，请掠过阅读吧哈,这2页空白没用的，请掠过阅读吧哈,请掠过阅读吧，哈哈哈“交易系统”导致不同的结果。你意识到其实可能一条简单的移动平均线就可以赚钱了，只要你的心态和资金管理正确的话。你开始读一些交易心理学方面的书，将书里描绘的角色对自己进入对号入座。然后，“顿悟”就出现了 “顿悟”好象将你头脑里的两条筋给联了起来。你突然认识到，不单是你，而是所有的人都无法精确地预测到下一个10秒市场会怎么走，更别说下一个20分钟了。 因为这个新发现，你停止去关注其他人在想什么了-“主力”在这个数据公布后将怎么搞，那个事件会导致什么变化.你成为了一个按照自己交易方法交易的“独立人”。 你开始按照你自己的交易方式和交易方法来工作，现在你变得快乐交易了，而且风险也在你的掌控之中。 你开始用你的这把“快刀”来操作，抓住每一个可能盈利的好机会。当你的头寸变坏时，你也不生气了，甚至你会觉得“这不是我的错，我不可能预测市场”。当你觉得你的头寸不好时，你只是简单地平仓了事。“下一次、再下一次或者再下下一次将会有越来越高的成功可能”，因为你知道你的交易系统是可行的。 你停止用一单交易一单交易的角度来看交易的结果，你开始以每周的角度来看交易报表，“嗯，一单不好的交易并不是差劲的交易系统造成的。” 你终于认识到“交易游戏”是在做一件事：持续不竭地使用你的“快刀”、遵守你自己的交易纪律，而不管你的喜好是什么。 你学习到了正确的资金管理和杠杆的使用，而这时它们已经与你融为一体。你回想走一看前就有人这么建议你时，你脸上浮出一丝微笑，“那时我还年轻，现在我理解了。” “顿悟”出现在你真正接受你无法预测市场的那一瞬间。空白没用的，请掠过阅读吧哈这1页空白没用的，请掠过阅读吧哈空白没用的，请掠过阅读吧，这1页空白没用的，请掠过阅读吧，你“搞定”了-就像开车，每天你坐进你的座位和交易-你达到了一种“行云流水”的水平，就像你坐在自动导航的车上一样。你开始做真正的“大买卖”了，1天盈利200点，不过不会比盈利1点更加兴奋。 当你在论坛上看到有新手在大叫“钱来呀！钱来呀”，就像他们骑着好马赢得大满贯比赛一样，这时你好象看见了自己，不过这已经是几年前的自己了。 这时，你已经进入了交易的“乌托邦”境界，你能控制你的情绪，而且你是一个真正的“操盘手”-一个日进斗金的操盘手。 你成了论坛呀、聊天屋呀的明星，每个人都想听一听你要说什么。你从他们的问题中看到了2年前的自己。你发表你的建议，不过，你知道讲了也没什么用，“他们还是小孩”-但他们中有人会成为你的，有些人会快些，有些人慢些-当然，我们知道大多数的他们无法进入第二个阶段，但肯定会有的。 “交易”现在变得不那么令人兴奋了，事实上，你还觉得有点儿闷。就象世间的其他事情一样，你就算做得很好你也得继续做下去，“开始有点闷了，不过，这是给自己打工。真的，就是这样。” 最后，你从聊天屋里找了几个志同道合的人讨论市场，但这时已经变成了纯粹的技术探讨，大家都不会互相影响了。 你潜心磨炼出来你的交易系统，它给你带来了最大的利润而风险并无增加。你的交易方法没有改变-只是变得更好，现在，你拥有了美眉经常说的一种能力：“直觉” 你现在能大声地说，“我是一个操盘手了！”，不过，谦虚的你觉得没有必要告诉任何人，“这只是一份工作而已。” 我希望你喜欢这篇文章，希望你用交易员的心来读，更加希望你能从这篇文章里得到些东西。 请记住，只有5%的人能真正走到第五个阶段，但是原因并非“能力”的问题，而是“坚持”、而是当有新事物出现时有改变自己的以往的经验的能力 失败者是某些想“一夜暴富”的人，有这样的想法没什么不对，但是他们进入市场只是区区的6个月就戴上了一双有色眼镜，所以他们看不到事物的本质，他们的口头禅是“这就是我看到的事情，那就是我发现的规律”，他们拒绝吸收新鲜的事物，拒绝改变自己的无知。 我告诉你，当初我进入市场也是想“一夜暴富”，不过，现在我想“慢点富吧”。 如果你要放弃这项工作，我还有一项建议给你，问自己一个问题：当你知道毕业后有份年薪百万的工作时，你上大学读了多少年？空白没用的，请掠过阅读吧哈这1页空白没用的，请掠过阅读吧哈空白没用的，请掠过阅读吧，这1页空白没用的，请掠过阅读吧，在双底走势中，最有依据的买入机会在向上突破颈线后，以及突破颈线后的回抽确认机会，即图中的红色点；而图中的黄色点则只是带有博弈性质的机会，是否能够入场或者说是否能按照双底来入场，需要更多局部走势与指标的配合来进一步判断。作为最有依据的止损价位，应该是双底形态的底部，只有底部被向下突破才能确认双底形态的失败；而在实际走势中，可能双底的幅度较大，而导致直接以下破最低位作为止损设置的幅度偏宽，盈亏比并不合适，这个时候就要求在上破后寻求止损价位的时候参考图中的止损价参考线，这两条线实际为汇价上破前的显著低点和高点。在上图中大家还要注意：左边的实际走势图与右边的简化图中，颈线倾斜的方向不一致，实际上这并不影响对头肩底形态的判定。在实际走势中，右边高点高于左边高点则更为有利，即颈线向上倾斜更为有利。culture-free but is determined by the methodologies and data legitimated by dominant cultures. In other words, the scientific practices of a dominant culture are what determine not only the limits of knowledge but who may legitimately participate in the language of science. In everyday practices, outside of university environments, women are seen as particularly illiterate when it comes to having scientific knowledge or being able to discuss scientific issues with experts in the field. One does not need to have read Foucault to realize how very interconnected is the relation of knowledge to power. My point is that cultural (not just scientific) knowledge involves a highly constraining form of power. This power involves constraints over oneself and constraints over others. The type of constraints I shall try to examine and deconstruct to some extent are those dealing with a dominant culture's understanding of cultural differences. In addition, my analysis tries to understand sociocultural differences without subjecting them to masculine-dominant, gender-normative categories and maxims. There is a need to develop a model of ethical and philosophical understanding in which the meaning of sexual difference is not limited by a gender-normative bias regarding what constitutes "the female body" or the proper function of a woman's mental abilities. Similarly, there is a need to develop a model for the understanding of subaltern cultural differences. In other words, both the critique of gender-normative biases and the critique of cultural imperialism need to be taken into account. Nevertheless, given that quite a number of critiques of cultural imperialism are themselves based on masculinist (often highly authoritarian) models of liberation from imperialism, which in turn presuppose and reinforce the domination of men over women in liberation struggles, the critique of cultural imperialism should be tempered by some kind of pluricultural feminist perspective. All these considerations lead to a feminist postcolonial perspective that can balance the struggle against the legacy of colonial-imperial domination with the struggle for the creation of feminist and feminist-compatible societies. THE DISPARITY IN SPEAKING POSITIONS These reflections begin with some of my personal impressions regarding the difficulties of cross-cultural communication when one culture circumstantially holds the upper hand over another. The culture with the upper hand will generate resistance in the group that fails to enjoy a similar cultural status, while the culture of the subaltern group will hardly be understood in its importance or complexity by those belonging to the culturally dominant group unless exceptional measures are taken to promote a good dialogue. Even so, it is my view that no two cultures or languages can be perfectly transparent to each other. There is always a residue of meaning that will not be reached in cross-cultural endeavors, a residue sufficiently important to point to what I shall refer to more abstractly as a principle of (cross-cultural) incommensurability.4 The most common way to point to this excess of meaning is to refer to the untranslatable aspects of a language vis-a-vis another language. In this case, one might think of incommensurability arithmetically as a kind of minus effect to cross-cultural communication-what I get from the differently situated speaker is the conveyable message minus the specific cultural difference that does not come across. Theorized in this manner, the way to maximize intercultural dialogue would be to devise a way to put as much meaning as possible into the plus side of the exchange, so that as little as possible remains on the minus side of it. But although creating more effective means of communication between disparate groups can help reduce social conflict and tension, I don't believe much is understood about cultural difference if incommensurability is thought of in this predominantly quantitative manner. Another way to think of incommensurability, and one that is much more relevant and fruitful for our discussion, is to look at nodes in a linguistic interchange or a conversation in which the other's speech, or some aspect of it, resonates in me as a kind of strangeness, as a kind of displacement of the usual expectation. Cultural alterity requires that one not bypass these experiences or subsume them under an already familiar category. Even the category of cultural diversity is called into question when diversity is institutionalized so as to mask a more radical view of differences. Postmodern postcolonial discourse looks for the possibilities of using nontotalizing concepts of difference rather than "the consensual, ethnocentric notion of the pluralistic existence of cultural diversity" (Bhabha 1994, 177). In the establishment's view of diversity, the rules controlling the representation of diversity usually reflect the will of the winners in political and military struggles. As Lyotard's debate with Habermas makes clear, the rationality of consensus is only a few steps from the desire for one system, one truth-in sum, one rationality-to dominate human civilization. In its extreme, the will to one truth has yielded the totalitarian Reign of Terror.5 The representation of the one system as "pluralist" and favorable to cultural diversity must be called into question because of the sweeping power exercised by the system to harness the many into the yoke of the one (cf. Bhabha 1994, 152-55, 162-64). Even when the system is formulated as pluralist, the drawback is that only those differences are likely to enter the plural stage as are able to fit within the overall rationality that approves and controls the many as one. Perhaps partly, though not exclusively, on account of this reason-because the new paradigm is born specifically out of the life experiences of many migrant and postcolonial peoples-some postcolonial critics have started to theorize the question of cultural difference in terms of what Homi Bhabha has called a "disjunctive temporality" (Bhabha 1994, 177) and Nestor Garcia Canclini has labeled a "multitemporal heterogeneity."6 These categories refer, in the first case, to the splitting, and in the second case, to the superimposition of temporalities marking off cultural differences, speaking positions, and narrative timeframes. In Latin American societies, as Garcia Canclini's work demonstrates, African, indigenous, Spanish colonial, modern, and global narrative timeframes may intersect, simultaneously or disjunctively, a speaker's discourse. Taking this thought further, I would note that when such culturally situated speakers enter diasporic locations-as happens when they migrate from their original societies to the United States-they will bring with them these forms of cultural difference and hybridity. It is not exceptional for many Latin Americans to become acculturated as a result of sociocultural influences criss-crossed by two or more incommensurable cultures, sometimes in literal juxtaposition. For example, in the Caribbean, because of the effects of colonization, some of the Yoruba deities gained counterparts in the Spanish Catholic roster of saints. We could say the Catholic and the Yoruba figures inhabit two very different kinds of temporalities. From the standpoint of the worshipers' experiences, in some cases one of the temporalities would be superimposed on the other, while in other cases the two would become distinct. In Borderlands/La Frontera, Gloria Anzaldua, speaking as a Chicana-Tejanalesbian-feminist writer, juxtaposes the temporality of ancient indigenous myths with her postcolonial North American existence. The shifts from English to Spanish to Nahuatl in Anzaldua are not just shifts in languages or "codes," as she calls them, but in temporalities of perception and consciousness (Anzaldua 1987, viii). These pluricultural temporalities create a disjunctive tension with the linear temporality of modernity governing the identities of producers and consumers in advanced capitalist societies. These multiple and disjunctive temporalities create a displacement in the relation between self and other, allowing the recognition of alterity both inside and outside the self. Their premise of selfhood begins with the acknowledging and appreciation of the nonidentical self. Anzaldua's multihyphenated mestiza self reminds us of Kristeva's stranger within. More broadly, it exemplifies feminism's notion of the differences not only among but within women. These multiple layers within the self, responding to different perceptive fields and different, not necessarily commensurable temporalities, can predispose us psychologically to appreciate both the richness and the incommensurability of cultural differences. They lay the groundwork for cognitive, perceptual, and linguistically constituted relations between ourselves and others where the other's differences, even if not fully translatable into the terms of our own cultural horizons, can be acknowledged as sites of appreciation, desire, recognition, caring, and respect. I am speaking here of a psychological state in which the stranger is not abjected, derided, persecuted, shut out of view, or legalized out of existence, but-departing from the premise that the other is also human-neither is she subjected to the demand that she be the double, or reflected mirror image, of ourselves. The question arises of how the principle of incommensurability applies to feminist ethics when feminist ethics is engaged in making and executing normative judgments cross-culturally. Will the feminist ethical claim or the normative judgment be impaired by the principle of incommensurability, and if so, to what extent? How are feminist ethical terms negotiated cross-culturally? Should they be negotiated at all? My first task is to try to explain how the principle of incommensurability works at the concrete level of everyday experience. I will address this issue from an existential standpoint based in part on my personal experience. THE CULTURALLY DIFFERENT OTHER What does it mean to be culturally different and to speak, at the level of culture, in a different voice? This question is generally answered by those with the power to mark others (or "the other") as different, rather than by those whose difference is in question in relation to the majority, or main members, of a given group. To be culturally different is not the same as being individually different or different by virtue of one's age or sex. If I am in a group among other women with roughly the same kind of education and occupational interests as myself and if we are roughly of the same age, what will mark me as culturally different is that I am, in today's terms, a Latina-a name that, while pointing to some aspects of my background, also erases important aspects of my individuality and the actual specificities of my cultural genealogy, which includes Caribbean, Latin American, and Western European b