On the third day of its international French-Emirati colloquium, which is held under the patronage of H.E. Dr. Mugheer Khamis Al Khaili, Vice President of Paris-Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi (PSUAD), and Director General of ADEC, PSUAD concluded “Fear of the Other” in the attendance of Pr. Xavier Galmiche, PSUAD Academic Director; Pr. Jean-Yves de Cara, PSUAD Administrative Director; Dr. Mohamed Al Aboodi, Deputy Academic Director; and Dr. Mohammed Al Shehhi, Deputy Administrative Director, Dr. Donald Baker, Dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at UAE university in Al Ain (UAEA); and representatives from UAEA. The third and final day of the colloquium was held at the premises of UAEA.
The lecture General Vincent Desportes; from Collège interarmèes de défense in France; titled The Fear of the Other: source and tool of war, expressed the fear of the Other as one of the consubstantial elements of war. “Often at the origin of the latter, it constitutes, from tactics to strategy, from classical action to nuclear dissuasion, it is an essential element of the psychological dimension which is an essential dimension”. He explained.
Dr. Jonathan PENNY from UAEA discussed Terror and the Other: Fear and Islam in Post-9/11 British Fiction. Her paper is a first foray into a planned larger project examining responses to Islam via its representation in letters by non-Muslim and Muslim writers, especially since 9/11, but related more meaningfully to the increasing size and influence of Muslim communities in traditionally Christian and politically secularist European nations. For the purposes of this conference, I will discuss two recent British novels: John Le Carre’s A Most Wanted Man and Ian McEwan’s Saturday, novels which grapple in very different ways with the cultural implications of the implicit and explicit forms of power now wielded by Islam as a nation among nations. McEwan’s novel displaces its fear onto a non-Muslim hoodlum, who stands in symbolically and indeed embodies as both perpetrator and victim for the alien terror that disturbs the protagonist. Le Carre’s novel is more explicitly oriented on the conflation of radical and arguable mainstream identities in the popular conception, and examines the consequences of this conflation for “radical” other and native self alike. Questions I am asking include these: How and how profoundly is radical Islam coloring perceptions of Muslims in literary representation? Are these writers resisting, redefining, or embracing Islam as part of an increasingly diverse society and why?
Dr. Gohar SADDIK from UAEA lectured on Subverting the Fear of the Other in the Theories of Huntington and Fukuyama. He explained “While Huntington maintains that "civilizations are the ultimate human tribes and the clash of civilizations is tribal conflict on a global scale" Fukuyama, in the end of history theory, underlines the superiority and domination of western ideals and the inevitable collapse of the other ideologies. Further, Huntington states that the revival of non-western religions is the most important indication of anti-western sentiments in non-western countries emphasizing the role of religion in world conflicts which surpasses the role attributed to racial or ethnic differences. This paper explores the mutual dialogue between East and West from a historical perspective in order to dismantle the clash of civilizations narrative embedded in the works of Samuel Huntington and Francis Fukuyama. It argues that Fukuyama’s discourse which magnifies the cultural confrontation between East and West and Huntington’s allegation about the reluctance of Arab-Islamic communities to be assimilated into a globalized culture are originated in narratives of hostile Orientalism rooted in western imperialist policies and nineteenth-century reactionary thought which gave rise to the colonial project”.
Dr. Jamil BROWSON’s lecture - from UAEA - titled “Contemporary Culturalism, Identity & The Other: Post-structural psychologies and nationalist myths” scoped: “Post-structural theory claims we view our self only through negation — I am I because I am not him/her. My group —family, clan, ethno-national, religion, etc—we are who we are because we are not any other group. The other thus provides us with an identity, which we cannot manufacture without opposition/ negation. Group identity intertwines with culture, language, self as belonging. Herodotus described ethics as the behavior of a particular group, an ethnos, thus identified by its shared behavior, its ethics. But no culture is a closed system, rather a stratified bricollage of possibilities, shifting cores and peripheries. Modern countries with multi-ethnic populations face dilemmas over nationality, culture and identity. A French nationalist ideology accepts fully assimilated others, but rejects multiculturalism unless each ethno-cultural group keeps within its own territory. Its multi-culturalist opposition accepts other cultural identities as equal within a French polity. What then is French culture? Both political tendencies represent essentialist cultural views. If race no longer matters as much as culture, assimilated Africans may be accepted as French, whereas non-assimilating Arab-Muslim citizens seeking to implant their cultural-legal norms cannot be French. Cultural contradictions raise psychological and legal problems of identity. All citizens are equal under the law irrespective of cultural-religious identity, a principle of both the Enlightenment and Laicism. Local cultural identity may conflict with larger national agendas, but no separate group can follow its own laws within a nation. Pluralism must confront psychological needs for belonging and fear of exclusion from a core group. Identity crises results from alienation, rejection or inability to accept the paradox of tyranny that any group demands in exchange for providing the security of belonging—fear amidst a sea of doubt. Can anyone ever accomplish true individuality given internal and external pressures to belong? Can any individual or group ever truly accept the other as equal, neither one better than the other? But can any society develop sustainably without a pluralistic balance, reciprocity and mutual respect for rights and responsibilities among individuals, groups and the state?”
Pr. Manfred MAHLZAHN from UAEA lectured on Cold War and conjugal discord: a historic-pragmatic perspective. The starting point for his argument presented was the particular experience of the so-called Cold War as perceived from a German point of view. He remarked: “This includes the two Germanies' paradoxical perception of the respective Other on the basis of two simultaneous assumptions, namely, of ideological Otherness and cultural Oneness. This particular perception will be seen as embedded in a situational context marked by the relationship between two superpowers living in permanent mutual fear of each other. In this paper, I shall attempt to illustrate aspects of the underlying pathology and its manifestations by way of reference to visual images, and to the model of communication that was developed by Paul Watzlawick, Janet Beavin Bavelas and Don D. Jackson, precisely during the Cold War era. I will demonstrate the power of this model to integrate the analysis of global politics with the description of phenomena on the level of interpersonal relationships”.
Pr. Sadi LAKHDARI, from Université Paris-Sorbonne scoped The fear of the other and the impulse of death in Freud’s work. He added “The psychoanalytical approach allows addressing the problem of the Fear of the other and its multiple manifestations in an original way. After the experiences of WW I, Freud radically reformulated his theories in order to solve the problem of repetition relative to the impulse of war trauma neurosis cases. Any being, in order to continue existing, must eject internal impulses that cause his auto-destruction. The Other, considered as fundamentally a stranger, is rejected in line with archaic processes that go back to the oral age. He is spit, vomited, in order to project on him the destructive hatred outside the subject or the group. The defense mechanism is linked to the impulse of death; pure speculation without which, according to Freud, violence, war, fanaticism and intolerance characterizing all human sectarian groups cannot be explained. We will try to demonstrate how Freud articulates his theories in texts after 1919”.
Tarek SHAMMA from UAEA discussed a lecture titled Nothing beyond the Sky:
The Quest for the Self and the Imagining of the Other in The Sheltering Sky. His paper analyzed Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1990 film The Sheltering Sky, an adaptation of a novel of the same title by the American author Paul Bowels. He stated “As the couple struggle to penetrate into the depth of the Other, and their own psyches, they are overcome by feelings of mixed fascination and repulsion, reflected in highly ambivalent images of the Algerians. In the context of the narrative, this dichotomy is at root a projection onto the foreign of an internal psychological conflict: the desire to fulfill, and the attendant fear of, repressed fantasies. Thus, while the characters are drawn to explore their desires through the imagining of the Other, the intercultural encounter lays bare their inner selves, forcing them to confront what they have always feared and tried to repress. The fear of difference is essentially a fear of similarity—hence the need to emphasize (and exaggerate) the difference of the foreign. In this respect, the dynamics that underlie the characters’ imagining of different cultures (especially the dialectic of attraction and repulsion) can arguably be seen as operating, not only on Orientalist accounts, but in intercultural encounters in general, especially those marked by unequal power relations”.
Pr. Delphine MONTEFIORE Psychiatrist, Pitié-Salpêtrière in Paris lectured on Anxiety and social phobia, from the normal to the pathological. She remarked “Social anxiety has long been neglected and is still unknown to clinical experts as well as psychiatrists. Its introduction in psychiatric nosography is recent (DSM-III, 1980). Research shows that it’s a common and disabling disorder. It touches, in its most severe forms, 2 to 4% of the general population. It starts early on in life and progresses according to a chronic pattern with symptoms such as anticipatory anxiety, avoidance behavior and major suffering. Prognosis is affected by the frequency of comorbid disorders: agoraphobia, depression, alcohol addiction. This paper will address social anxiety on the dimensional mode. In fact there is a continuum going from benign social anxiety manifestations (fright, performance anxiety, shyness) to honest alteration of social functioning and the quality of life (non confrontational personality and social phobia). Biological, psychological and social factors potentially the source of these troubles will also be presented. Finally, I will address the chemical and specific psychotherapeutic treatments”.
Dr. Isabelle Boulze from Universite Montpellier 3 discussed Psychopathologic approach of the fear of the other in addictive behaviors. She said “Among the contemporary forms of uneasiness in culture, patients suffering from addictions often show a temporary fear of the other treated by a behavior (for instance taking toxic material). On the psychological level, behavior grants them artificial and temporary protection from links to others. We will describe and examine the nature and origin of the pathological fear of the other in addictive behaviors based on an analysis of the present environment which promotes an idea of performance, speed of communication and which paradoxically ends by isolating individuals and rendering them fearful”.
Dr. Michel Launay from Universite Montpellier 3 talked about The Fear of the other and the origin of culture: Psychological and anthropological perspectives. He explained “Individual problems as well as society problems, the fear of the other constitutes a new recurrent phenomenon of our era which is only amplified with globalization of the economy, increase of material and cultural goods exchange and population migration. Examined from a dual individual and collective angle, in light of the social psychology and anthropology work which supposes the creation of the subjects’ and the group’s identity and which, thus, brings forth the question of otherness and difference with regards to ethnocentricity of societies’ norms and values”.