Paper short abstract:

The paper will analyze the status of different others in what is today often called the 'postmodern condition' on the theoretical level. The paper suggests how the perception of different others, in today's postmodern condition, has shifted towards 'biopolitical Other (others)'.

Paper long abstract:

The paper will analyze the status of different others in what is today often called the 'postmodern condition' on the theoretical level. The paper suggests how the perception of different others, in today's postmodern condition, has shifted towards 'biopolitical Other (others)'.

As it is commonly known, the markers of differences between 'us' and 'others' are implicit in collective identity processes and they also construct borders between insiders and outsiders. Throughout the modern era (and history) collective identities were primarily built through the negative relation towards the symbolically articulated Other (and concrete 'identified' others).

The standard postmodern view suggests that - in today's 'postmodern condition' - the modern binary divisions, such as those between Nature and Culture, Civilization and Barbarism, Us and Other have come to an end or that the boundaries between them have been blurred.

On the political level, the decline of modern political communities and blurred boundaries between them has as a consequence produced the decline of the symbolically articulated Other.

As a consequence, this paper suggests, there is a dominance of the 'postmodern' biopolitical Other on the level of the Lacanian Real.

The biopolitical Other is characterized by two paradoxical features which accompany one another. It is, at the same time, the threatening monstrous Other and the decomposed, victimized Other, the subject of pity and compassion.

The paper examines cases of violence without borders, wars and immigration explaining why the dominance of the biopolitical Other occurred and the possible alternatives.