THE OTHER: ALIEN AND ALTER. SOLIDARITY AND THE ETHICS OF DISTINCTION
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32782/upj/2026-4-1-5Keywords:
Other, alter, alien, solidarity, anxiety, projection, symbolic order, symbolic castrations, vulnerability, depressive position, internal fascism, ethics of nonviolence, psychoanalysis, Lacan, Dolto, ButlerAbstract
When does the other become an enemy? The classical psychoanalytic dichotomy between the big Other (symbolic order) and the little other (others in the register of the Imaginary) overlooks a critical moral distinction: not all “others” function identically in our psyche and society. This text proposes an ethics of distinction between two modalities of the other–“the alien” and “the alter”–as a tool for orientation in contemporary social conflicts, wars, and migration crises. The alter is the other we recognize in their subjectivity, vulnerability, and difference. The alien is the other-as-threat, a screen for our projections, a bearer of attributed excessive, obscene jouissance, who “must be destroyed.” What transforms the alter into the alien? The capacity to distinguish self from other develops throughout life and remains precarious under the pressure of anxiety. Three lines of anxiety–annihilation, separation, and castration–activate archaic projective mechanisms, generating destructive quasi-solidarity around a shared enemy-projection. Anti-Semitism, homophobia, xenophobia–all these phenomena feed on one mechanism: the transformation of the other into the alien. But not all solidarity against the other is destructive projection. The text distinguishes quasi-solidarity (against the projective alien) from legitimate solidarity (against the real violator of the symbolic order’s constitutive taboos–murder, violence, incest). This distinction is critical: it allows us to fight against actions without dehumanizing persons, to preserve the capacity for future peace, to avoid becoming what we fight against. Drawing on Judith Butler’s ethics of vulnerability and psychoanalytic concepts, the author proposes the deconstruction of “internal fascism”–the inability to tolerate ambivalence, total projection, dehumanization–as a spiritual exercise of our time. The capacity to see the other’s vulnerability becomes a marker that we see in them the alter, not the alien.This psychic and ethical work does not replace political struggle but makes it more ethical, allowing us to maintain critical distinction even under conditions of conflict. The distinction between alien and alter is not merely a theoretical distinction but an ethical necessity for preserving humanity in an age of wars and polarization.
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