Supplementarity and Surplus: Moving between the Dimensions of Otherness

Abstract

I start by attempting to clarify the ways in which Coelho and Figueiredo (2003) use the logic of supplementarity to conceptualize the discourses on intersubjectivity in terms of four dimensions of otherness. A new domain of application is proposed and the limits of the approach are pointed to. In the second section I critically examine the extent to which these four dimensions, and the movements of supplementarity between them, adequately capture the theories of intersubjectivity. The use of these dimensions seems, on the one hand, to obfuscate several interesting contradictions between the theoretical approaches within the dimensions, and, on the other hand, to artificially partition the theoretical traditions between the four dimensions. In the final section, Mead's account of intersubjectivity, and the constitution of subjectivity, is presented, and developed, as operating in the spaces between the proposed dimensions of otherness.