The Changing Face of Alterity

Addressing a challenge and opportunity that is definitive of life in the 21st century, this book provides a range of possible solutions that serve to motivate and structure future research and debate around the concept of 'the other' in communication.

The figure of the 'other' is fundamental to the concept of communication. Online or offline, communication, which is commonly defined as the act of sending or imparting information to others, is only possible in the face of others. In fact, the reason we communicate is to interact with others—to talk to another, to share our thoughts and insights with them, or to respond to their needs and requests. No matter how it is structured or conceptualized, communication is involved with addressing the other and dealing with the ontological, epistemological, and ethical questions of otherness or alterity. But who or what can be other? Who or what can be the subject of communication? Is the other always and only another human? Or can the other in these communicative interactions be otherwise?

This book is about others (and other kinds of others). It concerns the current position and status of the other in the face of technological innovations that can, in one way or another distort, mask, or even deface the other. Ten innovative essays, written by an international team of experts, individually and in collaboration with each other, seek to diagnose the current situation with otherness, devise innovative solutions to the questions of alterity, and provide insight for students, teachers and researchers trying to make sense of the opportunities and challenges of the 21st century.

Acknowledgements / IntroductionDavid J. Gunkel, Ciro Marcondes Filho and Dieter Mersch / Part I: The Face of the Other / 1. Countenance—Mask—Avatar: The “Face” and the Technical Artifact, Dieter Mersch / 2. Digital Exchanges: Ghosts and Gifts, Mira Fliescher / 3. Performative Modalities of Otherness, Jörg Sternagel / Part II: Facing Others / 4. Alterity, Machines and Eros: A New Vision of Communication as a Happening, Ciro Marcondes Filho / 5. Game Over: About Illusion and Alterity, Maurício Liesen / 6. Facebook and Rolezinhos: Alterity, Communication and Visibility, Alexsandro Galeno / 7. (De)Facing Alterity in the Digital Age: “The Real Problem” in the Social Interaction of Digital Natives, Ann Hetzel Gunkel / Part III: Interfaces and Other Faces / 8. Alterity and Technology: Implications of Heidegger’s Phenomenology, Tales Tomaz / 9. Alterity ex Machina: The Encounter with Technology as an Epistemological-Ethical Drama, Mark Coeckelbergh / 10. Another Alterity: Rethinking Ethics in the Face of the Machine, David J. Gunkel / Index / Notes on Contributors