The Other's Double. The Anthropologist's Bracketed Self: Notes on Cultural Representation and Privileged Discourse

urgency as the Western liberalism of the sixties and seventies declined and the minorities and the postcolonial non-West demanded recognition of their own political presence. However, our subject, the Other or not-us seems to be as closely intertwined with our knowledge (cultural, historical, and political) of ourselves as of others living at other places and in other times.2 During most of this century, a period in which saw the rise of scientific temper and technological solutions, may ask whether really understood the cultural Other (or its double-self or ourselves) any better than did in the past. Despite our recent plentiful critical literature on the Other, might ask, Are any better in our comprehension and recognition of the historical and political placement of the Other as we (whether situated within the West or the non-West) continue to secure an advantageous politics of privilege for ourselves? If anthropology recognizes that the self is the Other's double, the anthropologist shows how, as he appropriates the Other to reconstitute his self, he learns to recognize an irreducible presence of the Other.3