ABSTRACT
The Other is, ontologically, a hybrid concept, as it is used in the human sciences, since it can refer to a “real” entity, a projective one, and at the extreme, as in paranoia, a phantasmatic one that may, but need not, be articulated around a “real” entity. It may be functionally fragmented, particularly in its projective modality, as in Lacan’s differentiation between the Other, the other, and the petit a (Lacan 1977:292-324). It is transcendent, at least in the phenomenological sense and at times in the spiritual sense (for example, a deity or spirit). Though transcendent, it may be “located” outside ego in the “real” or ethereal world, hovering between exteriority and interiority, as in spirit possession, or-paradoxically-within the ego itself as an inner voice, conscience, or a sense of the unknowable at the core of the psyche (Lacan’s petit a ). 1 It may be treated with suspicion, as mysterious, menacing, death-dealing even, or as welcoming, friendly, seductive and supportive, but always disturbing-fremd, or alien, in Waldenfels’ (2011) sense-and in consequence challenging the status quo and the taken-forgranted. It always bears considerable symbolic weight in both of these modalities and as such is emotionally invested, at times, as in war or racial hatred, with inordinate intensity. It may refer to a singular entity-the person who stands before you-or a group, which, though less tangible, is subject to the dynamics of singular confrontations, as in the personifi cation of a group. Of course, the singular entity may be taken as a representative of the group.
