About the Author

Doris Bachmann-Medick

E-Mail: Doris.Bachmann-Medick@gcsc.uni-giessen.de

Website: http://bachmann-medick.de/

Doris Bachmann-Medick is a Senior Research Fellow at the International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC) at Justus Liebig University Giessen. She held numerous appointments as Visiting Professor at the universities of Graz, Göttingen, UC Irvine, Cincinnati, and Georgetown University (Washington, DC). Her main fields of research are cultural theory, Kulturwissenschaften, literary anthropology, and translation studies. Her recent publications include Cultural Turns: New Orientations in the Study of Culture (Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2016; in German 5th edition, Reinbek: Rowohlt, 2014 [2006]) and The Trans/National Study of Culture: A Translational Perspective (ed., Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2014).

Contributions by Author: Doris Bachmann-Medick

Issue 4
alterity
identity
media
newsreels
representation

Alterity — A Category of Practice and Analysis

Preliminary Remarks

“Media exist because there is alterity” — so reads the first sentence of an introduction to media theories. [1] We need media to ensure that the position of alterity (the different, the Other) can be articulated, because “[a]lterity means an ‘other’ that initially denies access, that requires a third party to guarantee its conveyance, symbolization, preservation, transfer or communication.” [2] At first, a position of alterity seems to resist being made accessible. […]