Synopsis "Notions of Otherness: Literary Essays From Abraham Cahan to Dacia Maraini"
Defining what one means by the notion of 'otherness' is no mean feat. Typing the word into JSTOR results in no fewer than 39,000 citations. There is 'Todorov's Otherness' and 'Taylor, Foucault, and Otherness'. There is the 'Other in the Writings of Heidegger' and 'Hegel on Others and Self', not to mention the notion of 'Otherness in the Pratyabhijñā philosophy'. Lilia Melani defines the other as an individual who is perceived by the group as not belonging, as being different in some fundamental way, as lacking essential characteristics possessed by the group. Interactions within and without groups follow codes, categories and boundaries to identify the included, the excluded, the conformist and the deviants as Outsiders, according to Howard Becker, with regard to their disobedience of juridical and political norms or to social and cultural codes. [NP] The entirety of the literary texts that have been written about (Cahan, Woolf, Schulz, Lawrence, Ionesco, Duras, Wittig, Maraini) have been addressed from the perspective of being 'outside the group' and 'confronting' the group both from a sociological perspective and an aesthetic one. Challenging male authority is one example of being outside the group; challenging traditional notions of writing fiction is another aspect of being outside the group; challenging one's own loss of culture or being forced to do so is being outside the group and advocating a fascist form of living within a democracy is yet another aspect of being outside the group. Each of these texts challenges 'codes of otherness' and by so doing manifests notions of otherness in a distinctly unique manner.
