The women of the other and us

Abstract

It is by now a common place in identity theory that the construction of an identity for the individual and collective Self implies and is correlated with the concomitant construction of an Other or of a set of differences that allow for the contouring of the I /We. Yet the analysis and epistemological reflection about these processes of Othering or of producing, interpreting and valuing difference, is far from exhausted, since they are extremely complex, ambiguous versatile, delusive, multidirectional, multilayered and reach from representation and discourse inextricably to social and political practices. Framed by this extremely broad set of questions my paper will focus upon the construction of an understanding of the West that sets itself against its many Others through complex logics that involve cultural, racial, ethnic, religious and national paradigms, but are moreover deeply sexualized. Indeed, it seems that Western thought, knowledge and politics, both in their more conservative patriarchal and in their more progressive feminist models, and in ideological stances that can be segregationist or solidary in their intentions, need to create an Other that will invariably be evoked as a non‑sexualized block or referred to as a generalizing male norm, but that in fact almost always involves the simultaneous creation of the Other of this Other: the non‑western Woman, or the Woman of the Rest. The word “rest” will express here the many ways in which these women are in fact pushed back to the ultimate layer of crossed processes of Othering that condemn them to silence and invisibility both within their cultures and as instruments of Western identity and “real” politics.