earticle

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The idea of alterity or heterogeneity has been one of the key issues in literature as well as in other areas of postmodern investigations, including philosophy, feminism, and postcolonial studies. Scholars in those fields argue that traditional Western philosophy revolves around the dualistic vision and self-other division that inevitably lead to an unethical view that regards the other as an ontologically and epistemologically inferior being. Postmodern philosophy questions the tradition of dualism in terms of its attitudes toward the difference between mind and body, humans and animals, men and women, and consciousness and subconsciousness. It also examines the tradition's attitudes toward temporality and productivity. Various philosophers argue that a person can never achieve a genuine identification with oneself, not to mention with others because one lives in an entirely different time than one's past or future selves and others. That is why one should never attempt to totalize other human beings; rather, one is a hostage to the face of the other because the other, with his or her infinite vulnerability, demands one's love and responsibility. Anti-productivity is another important postmodern concept that derives from such an attitude toward others including the environment and other people. The essay examines two novels, i. e. Ursula Le Guin's Always Coming Home (1985) and Toni Morrison's Tar Baby (1981) to see how such postmodern reflections determine and qualify the careers and moral standings of major characters and their societies. The idea of alterity takes on a more complex and disturbing character when it is associated with American Literature, since the history of the nation is riddled with conflicts, conquests, ethnocides and other forms of extreme violence perpetrated against various others such as Native Indians, blacks, non-Christians, women, and immigrants. The white Americans defined and defended themselves against the others and forged new identities for them. In Always Coming Home, Le Guin portrays a utopian community named Kesh, where the other is respected and loved (and sometimes just left alone), where men and women live in equality and freedom, and the characteristics of this good society are highlighted against the backdrop of a bad society called Dayao that bears a striking resemblance to the Judaic community in Old Testament literature with its monotheism and strict patriarchal system. Morrison likewise contrasts the blacks and whites in her novel to examine how the whites' misguided notions of time and history distort and erase the other, and how the same attitude alienates them from their own true selves. She creates a female character named Jadine Childs who is a black but thinks like a white, and her confused, fumbling, and eventually aborted search for black identity through her love affair with Son shows how tough it is to imagine the other, understand the other, and establish one's proper relationship with himiher. These novels are remarkable because they both show how the idea of alterity operates from both perspectives (that of self and of the other), how it can define and modify one's identity, and how it determines the moral and political character of a community. They both argue that only when one is able to establish an ethical relationship with the other, be it another human being, nature, or one's own unconscious, can one live a full and meaningful life.