The quality of being fundamentally different, alien, or foreign to one's normal experience. A sense of encountering something that exists outside familiar categories of understanding.
From Old English 'other' plus the suffix '-ness.' The philosophical concept gained prominence through phenomenology and postmodern theory, describing encounters with radical difference that challenge our assumptions about reality.
Otherness triggers our brain's 'anomaly detection' systems, originally evolved to spot threats in our environment. But when these same circuits encounter something truly alien yet non-threatening, they create a unique cocktail of fascination and unease that drives both xenophobia and spiritual seeking.
Colonial and patriarchal discourse used 'otherness' to categorize women, racial minorities, and indigenous peoples as fundamentally different and inferior to white male norms, enabling discrimination and exploitation.
Use 'otherness' analytically to name exclusion, not descriptively to essentialize difference. Center voices of those labeled 'other' in reclaiming and redefining their identities.
["difference","distinctiveness","particularity"]
Feminist and postcolonial scholars (Said, Spivak, hooks) reframed 'otherness' from a tool of oppression into a site of agency and knowledge production.
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