Thinking Activity:The Scarlet Letter

Humans are a 'Social Animal.' Now the question is why Humans are Social animals. And the obvious answer is of course because humans used to live in community instead of Individual. We are born in society, develop our own identity as a part of society, learn everything from society and at last die in society. So, what is at the center is Society, what influenced more a particular human being is also society. So, We lived in a world where individuals are more part of the community instead of their own. And Every community in order to establish their own significance avoid disregarding the other community, avoid the other community and always try to prove their superiority over others. And exactly this is the process of "Othering."

Now the concept of Othering can be noticed in Individual as well in community. Whenever, the question of belongingness or question of existence raises the effect can be seen as marginalization of some people. 

Every human has fear of their existence. In order to sustain their presence people try to show the absence of others. We are battling to prove "I-self" as superior and for that there is born of "They." Because I don't have any existence without 'They'. These things work like the concept of Binary Opposition from Structuralism. What Binary Opposition manifests is that Everything on this earth has two fold significance. Without the absence of anything we can't prove the importance of Things properly.

'Others' is very complex and broad idea which cannot be understand in simplistic terms. Because the Others are the changing identity which transforms as the group or circumstances changes. But what remain there is the 'otherness.' As Zygmunt Bauman remarked rightly that….

"Woman is the other of man, animal is the other of human, stranger is the other of native, abnormality the other of norm, deviation the other of law-abiding, illness the other of health, insanity the other of reason, lay public the other of the expert, foreigner the other of state subject, enemy the other of friend (Bauman 1991)"