The Other Side of Dialogue: On Making the Other Strange and the Experience of Otherness

Abstract

The central assumption of phenomenological and related approaches holds that the possibility of mutual understanding and communication in interpersonal relations in contingent on the supposition of the sameness of self and other. Under this assumption, the otherness of the other is conceived as an obstacle to achieving mutual understanding. Thus, the categories of stranger and strangeness are not considered constitutive of interpersonal communication and, consequently, are analyzed either in terms of social role or as a methodological device. The present paper examines this assumption by focusing on the process of "making the other strange," which involves the disengagement of the other's presence from his or her familiar, taken-for-granted identity. The other is thereby rendered. "other," that is, opaque and irreducible in his individuality. This suspension of the taken-for-granted understanding opens up the possibility of a creative and critical search to understand the other and allows distinguishing among selves. Without this possibility, the picture of interpersonal communication remains incomplete. The discussion of the principles underlying this process and of its implications for an analytical account of interaction is followed by examples from everyday occurences of making strange.