The Other by Ryszard Kapuscinksi

The Other by Ryszard Kapuscinski

In his book The Other, Ryszard Kapuscinski effectively delineates the importance and social implications of identity. The Other is a collection of Kapuscinski’s final lectures exploring diversity and multicultural patterns. In his short but extraordinary book, Kapuscinski explores what it means to be a European, non-European, to be the colonizer or the colonized, or just to have or to impose an identity. Kapuscinski distinguishes the commonality among mankind as well as the importance of the individual identity. The Other is a demonstration of the cultural essence of identity and the results from it. After sustenance and reproduction, society is the most basic of human needs. And whenever there is a formation of a group, there are those who are in and those who are out. Kapuscinski develops a fascinating discourse on our interactions with each other and social implications as a result of modernity as well as throughout history. Kapuscinski recognizes this dichotomy of inclusion and exclusion. Every individual that we “meet along the road and across the world’ is ‘in a way, twofold.” Kapuscinski begins his rhetorical process by establishing a universal characteristic, subtly connecting all of humanity past the barriers of race and geography. First, there is ‘‘a person like the rest of us” who has his “joys and sorrows, does not like to be hungry… or cold, feels pain as suffering and feels good fortune as satisfying and fulfilling.” But the Kapuscinski moves on to enunciate upon the second universal quality of humankind: the individual. This second person “overlaps with the first”. This person is a “bearer of racial features and … a culture, beliefs, and conviction.” These individual traits are specific to that individual. These are the contributing factors to an identity. These two factors, our individuality and our commonality, coexist with one another and are necessary for living within society. Few can deny the emotional pull of the nation, tribe, the linguistic community or the difference of peoples, races, languages, cuisines, traditions, and histories. Kapuscinski heavily cites Europe as a model for self-importance and narcissism. Critical of Eurocentrism, Kapuscinski states, “all civilizations have a tendency towards narcissism and the stronger the civilization the more clearly this tendency will appear.” This can be found in the mentality of the European colonizers as they first came to America, viewing themselves as superior to the “savages” that had already established a life here. This “narcissism” was one of the roots of the mistreatment of the Native Americans by the Europeans. Just because their way of life was different than that of the Europeans, the Native Americans were deemed inferior and subjected to all the atrocities committed by the colonizers and Caucasian Americans after that. This societal narcissism is a sociological result of the overindulgence of the individual and a prideful, overbearing self-importance. Kapuscinski’s final lecture pertained to the idea of multiculturalism. It is a fresh and perceptive discussion of what identity means today. With an overbearing modernity and a secular surge across the globe, identity has gone through extreme changes from individual to individual. Culture has always and will always be a defining feature of identity. It is vital to observe culture and how it has changed throughout the years. Sketching a rapid history of European visions of the rest of the world, Kapuscinski points out that “the idea of equality with the Other only occurs to the human mind very late on, many thousands of years after man first left traces of his presence on Earth.” In the networked 21st century, he says, we will encounter the Other in ways and with a frequency that could never have previously been imagined. Observing historical instances, such as the European confrontation with the Native Americans, it is difficult to tell whether or not this encounter will yield mutual respect or become a base of prejudice, hopefully the former. Ryszard Kapuscinski was an amazing journalist and speaker. These lectures touch upon the importance of culture and how it determines our relationships with one another. Kapuscinski reflects upon the implications of multiculturalism and identity in his series of lectures. The Other is a distillation of a lifetime of travel as Kapuscinski traces how the West has understood it’s non-European counterparts, or the Others.

Works Cited
Kapuscinski, Ryszard. The Other (New York: Verso, 2006)