Online FOCUS Symposium - Otherness, Identity, Individuality. Friday, 10th of November 2023 @6pm

20 Oct 2023

The process of othering involves categorising people as different from those of the dominant (hegemonic) social group. It is a discursive process that often creates an unhealthy, or disempowering, “us versus them” dynamic. The new power relationship can become a mechanism to justify, propagate or maintain discrimination, marginalisation and alienation.

The categorisation of social identities with a view to their rendering as a subaltern group is usually based on religion, gender identity, race, ethnicity, class, disability or sexual orientation. Othering has the potential to dehumanise those that do not or cannot conform as it exaggerates differences, whether real or imagined between participants in the political system. Its principal strategy is the normalisation of discourses of alterity, which it achieves in diverse ways.

Art and cinema have continuously examined questions around otherness as they relate to identity and individuality, and have sought to convey the damage and trauma of othering. They have also attempted to celebrate the strength and perseverance of social participants who have been othered and stigmatised. In this interdisciplinary symposium, hosted by FOCUS Forum on Film and Screen Media, our speakers explore the theme of otherness in relation to cinema, as it enters into dialogue with literature, sociology and philosophy. Our speakers situate their reflections on otherness within the contexts of Eastern Cinema, Subcultural Cinema and Cosmopolitan Cinema.