Date of Award

5-2017

Rights

© 2017 Austin Coco

Document Type

Thesis

Department

Political Science

First Advisor

Ali Abdullatif Ahmida

Abstract

This essay examines three cases of otherness: the Italian other in the 1920s, the Communist other during the Red Scare of the 1950s, and the Muslim other in post-2001. The similarities and differences of these cases will be analyzed through Richard Hofstadter’s analysis of the production of otherness for what he calls the paranoid style, Foucault’s analysis of power relations, and James Scott’s analysis of power relations and language. This essay will assess the theoretical methods behind “otherness” that Hofstadter, Foucault, and Scott use, the three cases of “otherness”, and the similarities and differences between the cases and how the theoretical mechanisms apply.

In this essay, “the other” refers to a group (be that group political, ethnic, racial, religious, or otherwise) that is socially, and in some cases politically, ostracized from the rest of a society, and “otherness” means the process by which “the other” is created and sustained. The cases chosen were intentionally diverse to demonstrate how broad the term of other can be, and is, applied, as well as to demonstrate that otherness is not a 21st century invention.

Comments

Senior thesis

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