otherfrom the researcher by his/her different worldview, society, religion,
language, and culture. From an even wider perspective, to be located in
the world implies being in relationship to others. Some of these others are
familiar to you because they live with you in the same society, whereas
others are considered foreign or strange because they live in completely
different cultures. To live with others who possess language suggests that
communication between the self and others is possible. In order for com-
munication to occur, the distance, which poses a potential danger, separat-
ing the self from the other must be bridged by both parties for a researcher
to understand the religion of the other. The relationship between the self
and other is a concern to Western, Eastern, and especially postmodern
thinkers.
Some postmodern thinkers agree that the other exceeds my ability to
grasp it, a claim that they stress by using the term alterity to point to
radical otherness. The philosopher Emmanuel Levinas devotes consider-
able effort into understanding this radical otherness. Even though the
other may resemble us, it is still external to us, and we encounter it as a
mystery, which is identified with its alterity. Levinas stresses that the
other assists the self arrive at its own self-understanding that occurs
within a dialogical relationship. Nonetheless, the absolute otherness of
the other is called infinity by Levinas in the sense that it is more than we
can think. By thinking about the other, a thinker cannot extinguish or
exhaust it, which suggests the excessiveness of the other. By being con-
cerned with what overflows thinking, Levinas insists that we do not com-
promise the alterity of the other by thematizing it or interiorizing it. Since
the other is beyond totality, possesses no place, and cannot be understood
as a relation, the other is absolutely exterior to any totalizing intention of
thought. By stressing the singularity and exteriority of the other, Levinas
wants to protect it from being reduced to the same. He accomplishes this
goal by calling attention to the face of the other. The face is an aspect of
the other that cannot be conceptualized because of its overflowing nature.
An encounter with the face of the other represents an ethical epiphany
that obligates me and makes me responsible for the other. Nevertheless,
it is impossible to fully grasp the nature of the face because it withdraws
from me even as I encounter it.
Because of the fundamental and insuperable gap between the self and
other, Jacques Derrida, a leading postmodern philosopher, asserts that
their relationship represents both the possibility and impossibility of self-
identity. The difference between the self and other combines and sepa-
rates identity and difference. As a perpetual outsider, the other is always
exterior to me and can never become interiorized. The other hovers
around the margin of one’s life, and this feature helps one to grasp it as