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The Barbara Johnson Reader
The Surprise of Otherness
Barbara Johnson
Duke University Press, 2014
This Reader collects in a single volume some of the most influential essays written by Barbara Johnson over the course of her thirty-year career as a pioneering literary theorist and cultural critic. Johnson achieved renown early in her career, both as a brilliant student of the Yale School of literary criticism and as the translator of Jacques Derrida's Dissemination. She went on to lead the way in extending the insights of structuralism and poststructuralism into newly emerging fields now central to literary studies, fields such as gender studies, African American studies, queer theory, and law and literature. Stunning models of critical reading and writing, her essays cultivate rigorous questioning of universalizing assumptions, respect for otherness and difference, and an appreciation of ambiguity.

Along with the classic essays that established her place in literary scholarship, this Reader makes available a selection of Johnson's later essays, brilliantly lucid and politically trenchant works exploring multilingualism and translation, materiality, ethics, subjectivity, and sexuality. The Barbara Johnson Reader offers a historical guide through the metamorphoses and tumultuous debates that have defined literary study in recent decades, as viewed by one of critical theory's most astute thinkers.  
 
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The Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait
Religion, Identity and Otherness in the Analysis of War and Conflict
Hamdi A. Hassan
Pluto Press, 2005

Focusing on the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, Hamdi Hassan offers a balanced examination of the motivation of the Iraqi polity and the conditions which accelerated and facilitated the decision to invade. Critical of the traditional approach of most Middle East studies, The Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait offers a counterpoint to Western interpretations of this key event in the contemporary history of the Middle East.

Hassan examines how Saddam Hussein assessed and responded to American and Israeli intentions after the invasion, the reaction of other Arab states, and the unprecedented grassroots support for the Iraqi leadership. In this context, the author examines the social structure of Iraqi society – families, clans and regional alliances – and the importance of Ba’athism. Hassan also examines the political structure of the country, relating the identity of Arabism – the religion and language which is associated closely with the Pan Arabist ideals – to Iraqi foreign policy.

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The Otherness of Self
A Genealogy of Self in Contemporary China
Xin Liu
University of Michigan Press, 2002
An exploration of the conflict between traditional Chinese ideology and modern Chinese business practice
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The Otherness of the Everyday
Twelve Conversations from the Chinese Art World during the Covid-19 Pandemic
Edited by JIANG Jiehong
Intellect Books, 2021
Jiang Jiehong seeks to understand the Covid-19 pandemic through interviews with leading figures of the Chinese art world during the summer of 2020. 

In late 2019, as a deadly pandemic began to take hold, China’s Wuhan province was the first to feel the effects. As the virus spread, the streets and squares of the world emptied, and the structures of our social world were redefined. 

In response to the pandemic, Jiang Jiehong convened in-conversation talks with twelve figures—such as Chen Danqing, Pi Li, Xiang Biao, and Zhang Peili, among others—from different disciplines in the Chinese-speaking world, including anthropology, architecture, art, curation, fashion, film, literature, media, museum, music, and photography. Presented here, the conversations foster new understandings of the ongoing crisis. The discussions explore the threat of the invisible; notions of distance and spatialization, separation and isolation, communication and mobility, discipline and surveillance, and community and collectiveness; and China’s changing relationship with the rest of the world. These illuminating reflections on the global crisis allow us to re-examine past norms and begin to form visions of a post-Covid world.
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The Subject of Coexistence
Otherness in International Relations
Louiza Odysseos
University of Minnesota Press, 2007

In this pioneering book, Louiza Odysseos argues that debates about ethnic conflict, human rights, and the viability of multicultural communities all revolve around the question of coexistence. Yet, issues of coexistence have not been adequately addressed by international relations. Instead of being regarded as a question, “coexistence” is a term whose meaning is considered self-evident.

The Subject of Coexistence traces the institutional neglect of coexistence to the ontological commitments of international relations as a modern social science predicated on conceptions of modern subjectivity. This reliance leads to the assumption that coexistence means little more than the social and political copresence of individuals, a premise that occludes the roles of otherness in the constitution of the self. Countering this reliance necessitates the examination of how existence itself is coexistential from the start.

Odysseos opens up the possibility of a coexistential ontology, drawing on Martin Heidegger and his interlocutors, in which selfhood can be rethought beyond subjectivism, reinstating coexistence as a question for global politics—away from the restrictive discursive parameters of the modern subject.

Louiza Odysseos is senior lecturer in international relations at the University of Sussex.

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Text, Image, and Otherness in Children's Bibles
What is in the Picture.
Caroline Vander Stichele
SBL Press, 2012
Children’s Bibles are often the first encounter people have with the Bible, shaping their perceptions of its stories and characters at an early age. The material under discussion in this book not only includes traditional children’s Bibles but also more recent phenomena such as manga Bibles and animated films for children. The book highlights the complex and even tense relationship between text and image in these Bibles, which is discussed from different angles in the essays. Their shared focus is on the representation of “others”—foreigners, enemies, women, even children themselves—in predominantly Hebrew Bible stories. The contributors are Tim Beal, Ruth B. Bottigheimer, Melody Briggs, Rubén R. Dupertuis, Emma England, J. Cheryl Exum, Danna Nolan Fewell, David M. Gunn, Laurel Koepf, Archie Chi Chung Lee, Jeremy Punt, Hugh S. Pyper, Cynthia M. Rogers, Mark Roncace, Susanne Scholz, Jaqueline S. du Toit, and Caroline Vander Stichele.
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Utopias Of Otherness
Nationhood And Subjectivity In Portugal And Brazil
Fernando Arenas
University of Minnesota Press, 2003
Forges a new understanding of how these two Lusophone nations are connected. The closely entwined histories of Portugal and Brazil remain key references for understanding developments--past and present--in either country. Accordingly, Fernando Arenas considers Portugal and Brazil in relation to one another in this exploration of changing definitions of nationhood, subjectivity, and utopias in both cultures. Examining the two nations' shared language and histories as well as their cultural, social, and political points of divergence, Arenas pursues these definitive changes through the realms of literature, intellectual thought, popular culture, and political discourse. Both Brazil and Portugal are subject to the economic, political, and cultural forces of postmodern globalization. Arenas analyzes responses to these trends in contemporary writers including José Saramago, Caio Fernando Abreu, Maria Isabel Barreno, Vergílio Ferreira, Clarice Lispector, and Maria Gabriela Llansol. Ultimately, Utopias of Otherness shows how these writers have redefined the concept of nationhood, not only through their investment in utopian or emancipatory causes such as Marxist revolution, women's liberation, or sexual revolution, but also by shifting their attention to alternative modes of conceiving the ethical and political realms. Fernando Arenas is associate professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies at the University of Minnesota. He is coeditor (with Susan Canty Quinlan) of Lusosex (2002).
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