Encountering the Other, that fundamental event

By Ryszard Kapuściński

This text is taken from the speech offered by the author on 17 June 2005 during his investiture as Doctor Honoris Causa at Ramón Llull University in Barcelona, Spain.

When I reflect on my travels around the world – journeys that have spanned many years – I sometimes feel that the borders and frontiers, the dangers and hardships inherent in these wanderings caused me less concern than the ever-present enigma of how each new encounter with Others would unfold, with these strange people I would meet along the way. I always knew that how these encounters unfolded would largely, if not entirely, determine what came next. Each of these journeys therefore presented me with a series of questions: how would it begin? How would it unfold? How would it end?

These questions are so ancient, dating back to such distant times, that they could be described as eternal. Encountering the Other, different human beings, has always been a fundamental and universal experience for our species. Archaeologists tell us that the most primitive human groups consisted of no more than thirty or, at most, fifty individuals. If these family tribes had been larger, it would have been difficult for them to move around. If they had been smaller, they would not have been able to defend themselves or fight for survival.

And then our little family tribe, in search of food, comes face to face with another family tribe. A crucial moment in the history of the world! A fabulous discovery! To realise that the world is inhabited by other human beings! Until then, a member of our small family and tribal community could live in the belief that, knowing his thirty, forty or fifty brothers and sisters, he knew all the inhabitants of the Earth… And suddenly, he discovers that this is not the case at all, that the world is home to other beings similar to him!

What to do in the face of such a revelation? How to react? What decision to make? To ferociously attack the strangers? To ignore them and go on their way? To get to know them and try to find common ground with them?

This need to choose between these options was imposed on our ancestors thousands of years ago. Today, it is imposed on us. With the same intensity. This choice has become essential and decisive. What attitude should we adopt towards the Other? How should we view them?

It can turn into a duel, a conflict, a war. Accounts of clashes of this nature fill every archive imaginable. And the countless battlefields and ruins scattered across the globe confirm this. This shows the failure of humankind, which has been unable or unwilling to find a way to get along with the Other. The literature of all countries, in all eras, has been inspired by this tragedy and this human weakness. It has made it one of its favourite themes, infinitely adaptable.

It may also happen that our family-tribe, whose footsteps we follow, instead of attacking and fighting, decides to isolate itself from others, to shut itself off, to barricade itself in. Over time, such an attitude results in constructions that obey a desire for entrenchment, such as the giant towers and gates of Babylon, the Roman limes, the Great Wall of China or the colossal fortifications of the Incas.

Fortunately, there is evidence scattered across the globe that encounters between human groups have had a third type of outcome. There is abundant evidence of cooperation. Remains of markets, sea and river ports, places where agoras and sanctuaries once stood, where the remains of ancient universities and academies can still be seen today. There are also traces of ancient trade routes, such as those for silk, amber, or the Saharan route for salt and gold.

These spaces were meeting places; where people came into contact and communicated, exchanged ideas and goods, sealed deeds of purchase and sale, concluded business deals, established unions and alliances, and set themselves identical goals based on common values. The Other then ceased to be synonymous with a hostile stranger and adversary, a mortal danger and the embodiment of Evil. Each individual possessed within themselves a part, however tiny, of this Other, or at least believed they did, and this reconciled them with all the people on Earth.

As a result, human beings have always had three different reactions to the Other: they could choose war, isolate themselves behind a wall, or engage in dialogue. Throughout history, humans have hesitated between these three options and, depending on their culture and the era in which they lived, have chosen one of the three. We see that they are still quite indecisive in their decisions; they do not always feel confident and do not always stand on firm ground.

When encounters with the Other result in confrontation, this generally leads to tragedy and war. But war only produces losers. Because the inability to get along with Others, to put oneself in their shoes, reveals the failure of human beings and raises questions about human intelligence.

The desire of some to build gigantic walls and dig deep ditches to isolate themselves from others has been christened, in our time, with the name of apartheid. This notion has been attributed to the detestable white regime, now defunct, of South Africa. But in truth, apartheid has been practised since time immemorial. To simplify greatly, it is a doctrine that its supporters describe as follows: ‘Everyone can live as they wish, provided that they do so far away from me if they do not belong to my race, my religion and my culture.’ If only that were all! The reality is that we are faced with a doctrine of inequality among humankind.

The myths and legends of many peoples reflect the belief that only ‘we’ – the members of our clan, our community – are human beings; all Others are subhuman. The doctrine of ancient China best illustrates this attitude: non-Chinese people were considered ‘the Devil’s excrement’ or, at best, poor wretches who had not had the good fortune to be born in China. As a result, these Others were represented as dogs, rats or reptiles. Apartheid has always been a doctrine of hatred, contempt and revulsion towards the Other, the strange stranger.

The image of the Other was very different in the era of anthropomorphic beliefs, when gods could take on human form and behave like people. In those days, one never knew whether the traveller or pilgrim coming to meet us was god or man. This indeterminacy, this astonishing ambivalence, is one of the sources of the culture of hospitality, which requires magnanimous treatment of the visitor; a visitor whose nature is not identifiable.

A 19th-century Polish “poète maudit”, Cyprian Norwid, wrote on this theme. In the introduction to his Odyssey, he reflects on the sources of the hospitality that protects Ulysses on his return to Ithaca. “In those places,” writes Norwid, ‘behind every beggar or foreign vagabond, one suspected a divine being. It was inconceivable, before welcoming him, to ask the visitor who he was; it was only after assuming his divine origin that one condescended to earthly questions, and this was called hospitality; and for this very reason, it was one of the most pious practices and virtues. The Greeks of Homer hardly knew the ‘lowest of men’! Man was always the highest, that is to say, divine.

Culture as understood by the Greeks, in the sense intended by Norwid, brings to light new meanings of things, meanings that are kind and benevolent. Doors and gates serve to keep the Other at bay, but they can also open before him, inviting him to pass through. The road has no reason to be a route where we must wait for the arrival of enemy troops; it can be the path by which, hidden under pilgrim’s clothes, one of our gods approaches our home.

Thanks to interpretations such as this, we begin to glimpse a world that is not only richer, but also more welcoming, with a better disposition towards our fellow human beings, a world in which we feel the need to go out and meet the Other.

Emmanuel Levinas calls the encounter with the Other an ‘event’; he even describes it as a ‘fundamental event’. According to him, it is the most important experience, the one that opens up the greatest horizons. Levinas belongs to the family of dialogical philosophers – such as Martin Buber, Ferdinand Ebner and Gabriel Marcel – who developed the idea of the Other as a unique and inimitable entity, based on positions opposed to two characteristic phenomena of the 20th century: mass society, which cancels out the singularity of the individual; and destructive and totalitarian ideologies.

These philosophers attempt to save what they consider to be the supreme value: the individual. They seek to preserve from massification and totalitarianism, which destroy all individual identity, me, you, the Other, the Others (to this end, they have disseminated this notion of the Other, with a capital O: to emphasise the difference between individuals and the difference in their individualising, unique and inalienable characteristics).

This school of thought has been of considerable importance; it elevated and saved the human being, elevated and saved the Other, in relation to whom – as Levinas puts it – I must place myself on an equal footing and maintain a dialogue; but I also have a duty to ‘be responsible for him’.

As for the attitude towards the Other – towards Others – these dialoguists reject war, which they consider to be a path leading to a single end: destruction. They also criticise indifference and retreating behind a wall. They advocate the necessity – the ethical duty – of open positions, rapprochement and goodwill.

Within this same school of thought emerged the great figure of anthropologist Bronislav Malinowski (1884-1942), who was very close to the positions advocated by the dialogists.

Malinowski’s challenge: how can we get closer to the Other when they are not a hypothetical or theoretical being, but a flesh-and-blood person who belongs to another ethnic group, speaks another language, has a different faith and value system, and has their own customs, traditions and culture?

In general, the notion of the Other has been defined from the point of view of the white man, the European. But when I walk through an Ethiopian village in the mountains today, a group of children run after me, laughing; they point at me and shout: ‘Ferenchi! Ferenchi!’ Which means, precisely, ‘other’, ‘foreigner’. This is a small example of the current de-hierarchisation of the world and its cultures. It is true that the Other appears different to me, but the same is true for him. To him, I am the Other.

In this sense, we are all in the same boat. All the inhabitants of our planet are Others to each other: me to them, them to me.

In Malinowski’s time (as in previous centuries), white Europeans left their continent with a single objective: conquest. They left their homes to take control of other territories, obtain slaves, trade or evangelise. Their expeditions often turned into bloodbaths, as in the case of the conquest of the Americas after Christopher Columbus, followed by that of the white colonists from the Old Continent, then the conquest of Africa, Australia, etc.

Malinowski travelled to the Pacific Islands with a completely different purpose: to get to know the Other; him and his neighbours, his customs and his language, to study his way of life. He wanted to see it with his own eyes and experience it first-hand. He wanted to accumulate experiences so that he could later report on what he had lived through.

A project that, at first glance, seems absolutely obvious to us nevertheless becomes revolutionary, ‘mondoclast’ (allow me this neologism), since it reveals a weakness – to varying degrees – or rather an intrinsic characteristic of all cultures: each of them has difficulty understanding the other.

For example, Malinowski, after arriving in the territory he was studying – the Trobriand Islands (now Kiriwina, in Papua New Guinea) – noted that the white people who had been living there for years not only knew nothing about the local population and its culture, but also had a false, arrogant and disdainful view of it.

Contrary to established colonial customs, Malinowski pitched his tent in the centre of a village and lived among the local population. The experience was far from pleasant. In his Journal, in the strict sense of the word, he recounts his difficulties, his distress, his despondency and his frequent bouts of depression.

Anyone who is torn away from their culture, whether voluntarily or not, pays a heavy price. This is why it is so important to have a clear and defined identity, as well as a firm conviction of the strength, value and maturity of that identity. Only then can a person calmly face another culture. Otherwise, they will tend to shut themselves away in their hiding place, isolating themselves, fearful of the world around them. All the more so because the Other is only a reflection of their own image, just as they themselves are for the Other – a reflection that unmasks them, lays them bare, things that, in general, we prefer to avoid.

It is important to note that, at a time when Malinowski’s native Europe was the scene of the First World War, the young anthropologist was focusing on the study of the culture of exchange. He was working on the contacts between the inhabitants of the Trobriand Islands and their common rites, research which he would present in his book The Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922), and from which he formulated his essential yet, unfortunately, little-observed thesis: ‘To be able to judge, one must be there.’

Malinowski also put forward another thesis, which was extremely daring for the time: “There are no superior or inferior cultures, only different cultures, each of which, in its own way, satisfies the needs and expectations of those who share it. ” For the ethnologist, individuals belonging to another ethnic group or culture are people whose behaviour – as is the case for each and every one of us – conceals and inspires dignity and respect for established values, traditions and customs.

Malinowski developed his work at the time of the emergence of mass society. Today, we are living in a period of transition between mass society and global society. Many factors are contributing to this transition: the digital revolution, the impressive development of communications, the unprecedented ease of transport, and also – related to all of this – changes in the mindsets of younger generations, in the field of culture in the broadest sense of the term.

How can all this change our attitude towards people from different cultures?

How will it influence my relationship with the Other? Answering these questions is essential, but we are talking about an ongoing phenomenon in which we ourselves are immersed. Levinas raised the question of the relationship between the Self and the Other within the framework of a single historical and ethnically homogeneous civilisation.

Malinowski studied Melanesian tribes at a time when they were still largely in their original state, untouched by subsequent contamination.

This is now extremely rare. Culture is becoming more hybrid, heterogeneous and mixed every day. Recently, in Dubai, I witnessed a revealing scene. A young girl was walking by the sea. She was undoubtedly Muslim. Her hair and entire head were covered with an Islamic veil tied so puritanically and tightly that not even her eyes were visible. But at the same time, she was wearing a very tight-fitting blouse and jeans…

Nowadays, there are schools of thought in disciplines such as philosophy, anthropology and literary criticism that pay particular attention to all these mechanisms of “hybridisation”, multiculturalism and cultural diversity. This is particularly evident in regions where the borders between states have also been borders between cultures (such as that between the United States and Mexico), as well as in megacities such as São Paulo, Singapore and New York, where there is a colourful mix of races and cultures.

We say that today’s world is multi-ethnic and multicultural, not because of an increase in the number of communities and cultures, but because they are speaking with an increasingly audible, independent and determined voice, demanding recognition of their true value and a place at the table of nations.

The second half of the 20th century was a time when two-thirds of the world’s population freed themselves from colonial rule and became citizens of independent states. Little by little, these people began to discover their own past, their culture, their imagination, their myths and legends, their roots and their identity. And once they had come to terms with these discoveries, they took legitimate pride in them.

These formerly colonised women and men now want to control their own destiny; they no longer tolerate being treated as objects, as extras, as passive victims of former foreign domination.

Inhabited for centuries by a handful of free men and huge masses of human beings reduced to slavery or serfdom, our planet has seen a proliferation of sovereign nations that have acquired a sense of their own identity and growing political importance as their numbers have increased. This phenomenon has often encountered immense difficulties, conflicts and tragedies, with their appalling toll of victims.

All this paves the way for a world so new that the experiences accumulated throughout history may not be enough to understand and navigate it.

In any case, we can describe it as a “planet of great opportunity”. But under certain conditions.

In this world to come, we will constantly encounter a new Other, which will gradually emerge from the chaos and confusion of our contemporary world. We must try to understand them and seek to engage in dialogue with them. These Others are born of the confluence of two currents that influence contemporary world culture: the current of liberal globalisation, which standardises our reality, and its opposite, the current that preserves our differences, our originality and our ‘irreproducibility “.

My experience of coexisting for many years with Others who are very different from us – white, Western, European – has taught me that a positive attitude towards another human being is the only way to strike a chord of shared humanity.

Who will this new Other be? How will our encounter unfold? What will we say to each other? In what language? Will we be able to listen to each other? Will we be able to understand each other? Will we both be able to follow what – in the words of Joseph Conrad – “speaks to our capacity for joy and wonder, and addresses the sense of mystery that surrounds our lives, our sense of goodness, beauty and pain, the feeling that binds us to all creation; and to the subtle but unshakeable conviction of the solidarity that unites the solitude of countless hearts: to that solidarity in dreams, in pleasure, in sadness, in passions, in illusions, in hope and fear, which brings every man closer to his neighbour and brings together all humanity, the dead and the living, and then the living and those who are not yet born?”