Notions of Otherness

Literary Essays from Abraham Cahan to Dacia Maraini

By (author) Mark Axelrod-Sokolov

Publication date:

30 April 2019

Publisher

Anthem Press

Dimensions:

229x153mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9781783089284

One can approach the notion of otherness or alterity in various ways: politically, aesthetically, ethically, culturally, religiously and sexually. Writing in Saylor.org, Lilia Melani defined the other as an individual who is perceived by the group as not belonging, as being different in some fundamental way. Any stranger becomes the Other. The Other in a society may have few or no legal rights, may be characterized as less intelligent or as immoral, and may even be regarded as sub-human. The collection of essays ‘Notions of Otherness’ addresses many of these approaches as ways of interrogating how varied yet how similar they are in relation to the individual literary texts.

Introduction; 1. Acculturation, Otherness and the Loss of Jewish Identity in Abraham Cahan’s ‘The Rise of David Levinsky’; 2. Aesthetic Otherness in Woolf’s ‘Mark on the Wall’, ‘Kew Gardens’ and ‘Lappin and Lappinova’; 3. The Prose of Otherness in Bruno Schulz’s ‘Street of Crocodiles’; 4. D. H. Lawrence and ‘Ranamin’: Otherness and Visions of a Fascist American Utopia; 5. The Aesthetics of Otherness in Nathalie Sarraute’s ‘Tropisms’, ‘The Square’, ‘The Lover’ and ‘Hiroshima, Mon Amour’: Fiction, Film and Duras’s Notion of the Other; 6. Otherness and Sexual Alterity in Monique Wittig’s ‘Les Guérillères’; 7. Mystery, Authority and the Patriarchal Voice in Dacia Maraini’s ‘Voices’; Index.

“Mark Axelrod-Sokolov’s 'Notions of Otherness' comes at a crucial moment in the history of the concept, a radical shift from understanding ‘otherness’ as that which cannot be known to that which should elicit an ‘encounter.’ With his signature breadth of perspective and theoretical originality, Axelrod-Sokolov brings our current historical juncture—defined by alterity—into the fold of this broader ethical and even metaphysical discussion.”
—Pablo Baler, Professor of Latin American Literature, California State University, Los Angeles, USA, and Author of Latin American Neo-Baroque: Senses of Distortion