Of the relation to the other: familiarity or indifference?

Abstract

This communication attempts to establish some emblematic landmarks of theoretical reflection about the relation to others, more precisely to others as foreigners. I will take two examples that must enable to think, equally, the difference between Brazil and Europe; and these two geographical denominations should be thought, they also, much more as theoretical constructions of a differential relation than as substantial territories. This is the hypothesis of “cordial” Man in Raízes do Brasil (1936) by Sérgio de Buarque Holanda and of “Essay about the Stranger” by Georg Simmel (Sozioligie, 1908). The confrontation of these two critical reflections allows a glimpse of outline of a relation to others which is not based either on forced integration or in hostile rejection, but on attempt to maintain alterity, with its risks and problems whose most secret origin is found in a renunciation of immutable and essential identity, that is, in recognition of their own alterity.