Mask and Otherness between Recognition and Concealment: Notes on the Self and the You

Abstract

From Martin Heidegger to Emmanuel Lévinas, from Hannah Arendt to Paul Ricouer: the continental tradition of twentieth-century thought has built its narrative around the themes of otherness, crossing the theme of the mask that fulfills its function precisely in the dialectic identity/otherness (idem/alter to put it in technical terms). It is also true that when one thinks about what is a “mask” it could only be possible to wonder what lies behind it, what stands in the way. The mask itself is divisive and defensive, yet, at the same time, it exposes itself, acts (like an actor who moves freely on stage and, nevertheless, is forced to stick to the development of the script). And also about the “otherness” it could be said that it hides and reveals itself at the same time; it is the totally other and, at the same time, the overturned self (almost an “I” which is more and “other than” me, of Ricouerian memory). It is the foreigner, but also the welcome guest, as Lévinas attests; it is at the same time the refugee, the immigrant, the pilgrim or the wanderer (to use the Nietzsche of “Human Too much Human”).