Imagine waking up to find yourself hanging off the ceiling of a room, except you are not hanging, you are merely walking, yet everything seems to be inverted; water pours upwards, bananas are red and apples blue. This room, Carroll-esque in its bizarre physics is completely alien to our understanding of reality. This room embodies the notion of ‘Other’, this room represents alterity.

Alterity is the state of being other, alien, unencountered and therefore widely different and unexpected. In Taussig’s ‘Mimesis and Alterity’ the term alterity is often used in relation to the views of one social ethnic (those who consider themselves civilised) encountering another, foreign way of life which they deem to be primitive, or savage. They chose to see these groups of people as the Other, an association that implies an incorrect way of life.

In the present day I feel that the notion alterity has become largely redundant. With the proliferation of hardware and globalisation we are exposed to, and intermingle with all walks of life. That which completely shocks us or is wholly alien to us is becoming harder and harder to find.

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