Page "Ethnocentrism" Paragraph 5

In Precarious Life, Judith Butler discusses recognizing the Other in order to sustain the Self and the problems of not being able to identify the Other.

Butler notes ' that identification always relies upon a difference that it seeks to overcome, and that its aim is accomplished only by reintroducing the difference it claims to have vanquished.

The one with whom I identify is not me, and that ' not being me ' is the condition of the identification.

Otherwise, as Jacqueline Rose reminds us, ' identification collapses into identity, which spells the death of identification itself ' ( 146 ).

However, Butler's understanding of Self and Other is Eurocentric itself because she writes that one cannot recognize Self unless it is through the Other.

Therefore, Self and Other are limited through a language of binary codes.

Considering that language is essential to culture, individuals will know themselves through the result of language plus culture.

Dichotomous language is embedded in English and similar languages ; however, dichotomous language is not universal.

Indeed, there are few dichotomies in many Indigenous and non-European languages ( Battiste and Henderson 76 ).

It is by looking into the language of a culture that one will be able to see oneself in relation to one's environment and one's place in the world.