ABSTRACT
As Mary Douglas’ writings have shown, the Other – that which is conceptualized as radically different from the self – is the subject of anxiety and concern, particularly if it threatens to blur boundaries, to overtake the self. These anxieties and fears tend to emerge from and cohere around the body, which itself is a highly potent symbolic object. This chapter begins with a discussion of how Otherness is conceptualized, followed by an analysis of the links between dominant notions of the body and concerns about risk and Otherness. I then explore accounts of the ambivalence produced by hybridity and liminality and the psychoanalytic dimension of responses to Otherness, particularly in relation to the abject. The chapter ends with a discussion of spatiality as it relates to questions of risk and the Other.
