How do we think the other? The other is alter but also alienus and allos ( everyone’s other like the Big Other of Jacques Lacan) . In some way the other is alien and is othered or alienated. We think other from the regimes of same. May be we have to think same from the regime of the other. We have the challenge to stop bathing by the light of one/same. We have the challenge to disenclose the one / same. This disenclosing of the one/ the same might enable us to understand that there is no same/ one that orders our thinking. All that we have is only others . One of the others is privileged and universalized as same and all others have to come under its order or sway. This is how the regime of the same rules our thinking and influences our culture, politics and religion.
In order to come to the other in the one/ same, we have to remove the veil/ barrier that masks the other as unique one and orders it as same. When we look at the uniqueness, we come close to the otherness of the one. But when we interpret the uniqueness as unicity/uniformity, we come to understand one through the sameness of its thick essentialist substantivness. Hence, we have the challenge to think the one in the non-substantive way as the Buddhist do. One thought substantively thinks of one as etant or thing and aligns it to being fully present. One then becomes fully arche-present In so doing one is set aside and acquires the kind of royalization that then rules over everything under the regime of sameness. Every other become then an alien of the one/ same.
Each of us also have allos/ other, the other, the other of the ego. Everything, then, is enclosed in the stable beingness of the one or the same. This regime binarizes everything with the one / same. Everything then is ordered as the other of the one/ same. One / or same becomes a benchmark that orders other through a degree of presence or absence of what is thought to be the measure of oneness or sameness. Every other is therefore enclosed under the regime of the same. One/ same calls every other into being under its regime. One is the arche-present that then orders other as shades of its presence/ sameness. By disenclosing the one/same, we try to open the one as merely an other and bring about a regime of the other, where one becomes the other of the other and not the other of the same.
Both the regimes, the regimes of the same and the regimes of the other are relation but they produce different modes of politics. The reigning political model is one that is derived from the regime of the same. Under this regime, the other becomes the other of the same that renders the other as an alien who can be othered and even eliminated . Thus, we can view the demand to dissolve the otherness into the sameness of the one. Today, these fascists tendency to dissolve the otherness into the sameness of the one is rising all over the world. The otherness is thus, enclosed into the sameness of the one. We can see how fundamentalist regimes like Hindutva in India are attempting to dissolve all shades of otherness into the sameness of Hinduism. Seen through the regime of the otherness, Hindutva itself will appear as mere other and is unrivalled other of every other shade of otherness in our country. But this is not visible because otherness is viewed under the regime of sameness. We therefore, have the challenge to dismantle the regime of sameness. To do this we have to disenclose one/ same and open its play rhizomatically on a horizontal plane and not hierarchized on a vertical scale.
This opening of closure or disenclosure become new order or regime of the other. It will open what Deleuze calls lines of flight. I like to think the regime of otherness through love as thought by Jesus Christ. The regime of the other is thus, a regime of love that validates and affirm all shades of otherness that carry the signature of Other of all others, the divine. Everything, therefore, does not have to come under the regime of same but under the regime of the other of the other and not under the regime of the other of the same. The regime of love or the regime of the other is non-dialectical and not oppositional. It is relational and horizontal ( non-hierarchical). Indeed, it disenclosed every other as other and not an other of the same. Thus, the politics of the regime of the other is not-oppositional but is positional where every otherness has its position or space . It is not closing into consensus but opens for dissensus. Consensus closes to a telos. It is a regime of the same. Dissensus stays open and cannot close to a telos. It is the regime of the other. It, thus remains disenclosed. It opens our thought. It take it beyond logos to the alogon , the limit of thought or the thinkable. It is, therefore, alogon-centric and overcomes logocentric thinking. It brings about a divestiture of our logocentric thinking. It keeps thinking in a disenclosing mode. Disenclosing mode of thinking remains in an ever opening mode of being. The regime of the same keeps all others being the curtain of the one/same. The regime of the other lets others bloom in rhizomatic mode and flourish without necessitating it to be ordered on a hierarchy on a vertical scale. The regime of the other belongs to the plenitude and the order of abundance while the regime of the same belongs to the market and is based on profit and loss. The order of abundance takes the regime of the other enables our thought to stay in an alogon mode close to the limit of the unthinkable. Hence, thought and reason has the challenge to be unclosed and therefore, disenclosing.
