{"id":103,"date":"2026-07-30T20:46:41","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T01:46:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lacisreview.lacis.wisc.edu\/?p=103"},"modified":"2026-08-20T17:56:36","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T22:56:36","slug":"edge-duality-navigating-the-boundaries-between-i-and-other","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lacisreview.lacis.wisc.edu\/?p=103","title":{"rendered":"Edge Duality: Navigating the Boundaries Between \u201cI\u201d and \u201cOther\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Edge Duality: Navigating the Boundaries Between \u201cI\u201d and \u201cOther\u201d<\/h1><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Beatriz L. Botero<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Under the water in Panam\u00e1, with some fish and a starfish on the border of the sand. Photo by Beatriz L. Botero. 2021.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The most powerful border of all is built in the intricate dance between mother figure and newborn. This is where the concepts of \u201cI\u201d and \u201cother\u201d are born, where the roots and their psychic rhizomes connect and develop.<\/strong>1<\/a><\/sup> Process that never ends.

This first relationship is a closed dyad, perfect symbiosis. The person who feeds and the person who receives nutrition are one body. The infant introjects the mother’s body as part of the narcissism, the Totality. Only with a gradual process that weaves between recognition and differentiation can the infant understand independence and achieve a sense of self. This process of self-discovery is slow and is nourished by the mother’s reflection and response to the baby’s actions and emotions. This provides the basis for an emerging sense of identity and security; and very important: establishes the ability to trust.

The process goes through the \u201cmirror stage\u201d described by Jacques Lacan: at this moment, the baby perceives itself in front of the mirror, and the mother and father, with the enigmatic smile and their certainty of distance in front of the baby, that is, from their own thoughts, feelings and desires, helps the infant differentiate and understand that is a unique individual.2<\/a><\/sup> This distancing allows for meaningful connections with others.

The second fundamental border for the functioning of human beings in society is the one that separates reality from fiction. While we sleep every night, during REM cycles we enter the world of dreams. It is a universe with its own laws such as \u201cnon-contradiction\u201d where no one is surprised by the absurdities where the presence of the living and the dead or beings from different parts of the planet can cohabit in improbable spaces. For the adult to enter into this parallel world needs to use imagination and fantasy. In the infant we have play. The adult can get there, for example, through art. The artist, unlike the psychotic who can reach that universe from mental illness, can enter, and leave the imaginary and creative world at will.

The border between reality and fiction has been explored in different directions from literature and the arts. The distance of the triangle that is formed between the person who writes, the person who reads and the narrative that connects the third angle, must be understood as an edge in the form of a strip, a space that speaks of the internal and the external. Baroque art, for example, places its emphasis on flow and change; this fear of latent emptiness suggests that identities are not fixed, but evolve. The baroque explains very well the inextricable relationship between Latin America and its artistic representations. For Alejo Carpentier, America is a continent in which a \u201ccomplete inventory of its cosmogonies\u201d has not yet been established when he describes the importance of the baroque in Magical Realism (a mix between the wonderful and the real for Carpentier).

For Albert B\u00e9guin, European romanticism – a renewed form of the baroque – speaks of a lost of that Totality to which one must aspire. This requires a dissolution with nature. Hence the importance of taking care of it. Both art forms challenge the rigid separation between \u201cI\u201d and \u201cother\u201d and emphasize the interconnectedness of all things in union with the Whole.

There are other areas in which the border between the \u201cI\u201d and the \u201cother\u201d are important. Especially for the ideologies – imaginary constructions – in which we are immersed as Harari explains in Sapiens. Among them, the political sphere and postcolonial theories that speak of hierarchical power structures stand out.

In the political sphere, the concepts of “I” and “other” have been used to analyze power structures and social dynamics, for example, when thinking about human migrations, the “other” is often constructed as what opposite to the “I”, representing difference, abnormality and threat. This construction can lead to marginalization, discrimination, and even violence against those considered “other.” David Gerber in his work on migration portrays three problems that have to do with the rejection of the \u201cother\u201d: Anti-foreignerism, fear of job shortages for those who are already in a vulnerable position, and the middle class and high who want to maintain the status quo of their well-being. This desire to maintain what already exists can be seen in postcolonial theory, where the term \u201cother\u201d has been used to justify colonialist practices, a place where the colonized are portrayed as inferior and in need of civilization by the colonizer. Similarly, feminist scholars have examined how the concept of the \u201cother\u201d has been used to subjugate women, defining them as different from and inferior to men.

In the contemporary world, with the advent of artificial intelligence (AI), the boundaries between reality and fiction are becoming increasingly blurred. AI-powered technologies can create hyper-realistic simulations and create a false idea of reality. The idea of the multiverse with its enormous potential may allow a more holistic look at the human being.

With this dichotomy, philosophy points in other directions. Philosophers such as Emmanuel Levinas and the idea of \u201cFace\u201d or Byung-Chul Han (without being considered part of cosmopolitanism),3<\/a><\/sup> along with Martha Nussbaum and Kwame Anthony Appiah have challenged this narrow view of the \u201cI\u201d and the \u201cother\u201d by advocating an approach that emphasizes our shared humanity and moral obligations -human beings are members of a single community-. Cosmopolitanism, in this sense, requires recognition of the fundamental value and dignity of all individuals, regardless of their cultural origin, beliefs or identity. A global community is declared where individuals are not categorized into dichotomies between \u201cI\u201d and \u201cother,\u201d but are seen as interconnected members of a shared humanity. By embracing cosmopolitan ideals, we can move beyond the limitations of the \u201cI\u201d-\u201cother\u201d binary and foster a more just and equitable world.

These concepts must be evidenced in all possible areas, as they can open us to a broader and more nuanced understanding of our relationship with the \u201cother\u201d and that is precisely what we find in this issue of the LACIS REVIEW magazine.

There are groups of people who are interested in keeping the concepts of \u201cI\u201d and \u201cother\u201d separate, as demonstrated by the article from the collective research work led by Far\u00edas, which studies the way in which the right in Spain and Latin America (specific case of Peru) uses rhetorical forms to warn others to consider feminist ideas as important for gender equality in these countries.

Other works, on the contrary, explore the edges by blurring them, understanding the \u201cI\u201d in relation to \u201cothers\u201d including animals, plants, spiritual geological formations, lakes, rivers. The indigenous universe of Mexico (Aruxes in Beilin), or in Bolivia the existence of the ayllu<\/em> as McNabb explains it to us, or the Pacha<\/em> as it appears in Guzm\u00e1n’s text. They talk about the connectivity between the parts with the Whole.

The map whose edges were clear and delimited on the paper, offers new readers no longer an obtuse limit, but is expected to be a strip, or as Anzald\u00faa explains it, a third space<\/em> where differences intersect, so that you can navigate on the natural edge. This edge is deciphered, no longer on paper, but within an extension of land: a strip, with its own biology (Corzo). Those who live on the edge of the map are, to a certain extent, abandoned by the centralized governments that dedicate their forces to the big problems of the metropolises and leave the indigenous communities that inhabit those areas to their fate, as Chaparro’s article explain: exposing the precariousness of the place and the communities on the border.

On this same border of the map and control are the maroon communities, as read in the article on the subject in the Dominican Republic (Leonardo), but any space that invites human freedom could be included. This crossing the border allows us to think about the experience of the migrant, from the categories of \u201cI\u201d and \u201cother\u201d as we can read in the auto-ethnographic experience of people who come from Puerto Rico (Bird-Soto) or Mexico (Punguil), giving way to the ability to weave stories in the face of traumatic experience. Through the fabric that speaks of individual memory (Nelson) or group memory (Nace, Kallenborn) identity can be manufactured. Nelson exemplifies with his work and that of other weavers around the world the importance of honoring the past and Nace questions the reference to the market and consumption when using artisanal fabric from marginal communities.

If the space of the map can contain habitable space, – as Jorge Luis Borges knew well – time can also do so: the Greek classics continue to be present in contemporary literature as Nelsestuen explains, transcending time and space through the power of the word. In Lacanian psychoanalysis, as Marug\u00e1n explains, the word enunciates the missing subject but never completes the absence.

In some texts in LACIS REVIEW, there is a reconnection with the diffuse border of reality and fiction. Metafiction, or metatextuality, is rethought with genres such as cinema (Louie, Gonzalez-Espresati Clement, Mart\u00ednez) where the edge is essentially a space of creation. Translation also crosses the edge of language as it tries to replicate the feeling with symmetry, without thinking only about the exact words of literality and this is what the act of translating poetry does as it appears in the text of DiPriete and Alegr\u00eda.

Words and things also bring the symbology of our time, and here Brown’s work explains this edge from the production and use of tequila as a bridge between cultures. We know that the edge is necessary, because in the world no two things can be the same, says S\u00e1nchez Gumiel, when he approaches the analysis of the aesthetics of Jorge Luis Borges (intuiting the virtual world) and thus makes us see the transfer of this edge known in beings like Funes the Memorioso, or we could also say of Johanes Dalhmann in The South<\/em> or of Pierre Menard himself and his Don Quixote or even the same objects of Tl\u00f6n, Uqbar, Orbis, Tertius that operate under inconceivable laws.

We can also see this tension that the edge contains in writings about literature, specifically in what Ruiz-Mautino calls a \u201cPsycho-symbolic\u201d reality in the literature of the realistic Mexican writer Luisa Josefina Hern\u00e1ndez. Who wanted to break the schemes of women founded on the Catholic image of the Virgin Mary, but also on the tears of Mary Magdalene as shown in her work Pulla-Francia.

In the articles by Shulemburg and Rojas you can perceive a bit of optimism about this idea of the border between the \u201cI\u201d and the \u201cother\u201d, when the former says that literature has the power to \u201cstimulate a collective national reckoning in terms of navigating the frontier of hate and forgiveness\u201d and Rojas who says that it is necessary \u201cto rethink democratic norms to promote depolarization without stifling social change. We need to develop communication systems that harness the power of network communications without giving in to propaganda and misinformation,\u201d giving the examples of investigative journalism consortia such as Bellingcat.

Overall, I could say that this issue of LACIS REVIEW highlights the complex and dynamic nature of the boundary between \u201cI\u201d and \u201cother\u201d, emphasizing its fluidity and permeability in the face of the contemporary world and our changing understanding of identity. Today, a more nuanced approach to the concept of the \u201cother\u201d is required, one that recognizes our shared humanity and the interconnectedness of all beings.

I want to especially thank the editorial team Jamie De Moya-cotter, Addison Nace, Diego Alegr\u00eda, Andrea Guzm\u00e1n, Anneli Aliaga and Avi Weinstein. To LACIS for its unconditional support of good ideas.

Note: In this edition we tried to be flexible when requiring a single form of citation (MLA, APA, Chicago), this allowed us to admit different disciplines and the use of their own formatting.

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\"Professional<\/figure>
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About the Guest Editor<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Professor Beatriz L. Botero<\/strong> has a PhD in Contemporary Hispanic American Literature from the University of Wisconsin\u2013Madison and a PhD in Psychoanalysis in which she received a Summa cum laude from the Department of Psychology at the Autonomous University of Madrid Spain. She specializes in Latin American novels, psychoanalysis and cultural studies. She is the author of Identidad Imaginada: Novel\u00edstica Colombiana del Siglo XXI. (Pliegos<\/a> Editores, 2020) and editor of Women in Contemporary Latin American Novels. Psychoanalysis and Gender Violence. (Palgrave<\/a> Macmillan, 2018). Botero\u2019s research places special emphasis on identity, the body, and social conflict. Also has worked on these issues in relation to contemporary visual art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her last academic publication<\/a> was \u201cLatin American Violence Novels: Pain and the Gaze of Narrative.\u201d The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Psychoanalysis<\/em>, edited by Vera J. Camden, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2021, pp. 128\u2013144. Cambridge Companions to Literature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She also published Botero, B. L. (2023) Linterna, Luz radical: desde el dolor, el alivio y el consuelo<\/em>. 4W-WIT Antolog\u00eda Biling\u00fce<\/em>. Editorial Ultramarina. Sevilla, Espa\u00f1a.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beatriz is the winner of the 2023 CLASP <\/a>Junior Faculty Teaching Award<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more information please visit Professor Beatriz L. Botero (blbotero.wixsite.com)<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Bibliography<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Appiah Kwame Anthony. Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers<\/em>. Norton, 2006.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

B\u00e9guin, Albert. El alma rom\u00e1ntica y el sue\u00f1o<\/em>. Fondo de Cultura Econ\u00f3mica M\u00e9xico, 1996.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Borges, Jorge Luis. Ficciones<\/em>. Alianza Editorial,1997.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bowlby, John. El apego y la p\u00e9rdida<\/em>. Paid\u00f3s, 2012.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Byung-Chul Han. The Disappearance of Rituals: A Topology of the Present<\/em>. Cambridge Polity Press, 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carpentier, Alejo. El reino de este mundo<\/em>. Alianza, 2003.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus<\/em>. Bloomsbury Academic, 2013.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Freud, Sigmund. Tree Essays on Sexuality.<\/em> The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume VII. 1901-1905.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gerber, David. American Immigration<\/em>. Oxford UP, 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Harari, Yuval Noah. Sapiens: a Brief History of Humankind<\/em>. New York Harper, 2015.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Klein, Melanie. Narrative of a Child Analysis: The Conduct of the Psychaoanalysis of Children as seen in the treatment of a ten-year-old boy<\/em>. Institute of Psychoanalysis, 1975.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Laplanche, Jean. Nouveaux fondements pour la psychanalyse (New Foundations for Psychoanalysis)<\/em>. PUF, 1987.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

L\u00e9vinas, Emmanuel. Ethics and Infinity<\/em>. Duquesne UP, 1985.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mahler , Margareth., Pine, F and Bergman. The psychological birth of the human infant: Symbiosis and Individuation<\/em>. Basic Books. 1968.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nussbaum, Martha. The Cosmopolitan Tradition<\/em>. Harvard UP, 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mead, George. Mind, Self and Society<\/em>. U of Chicago P, 1934.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Piaget, Jean, and Barbel Inhelder. The Psychology of the Child<\/em>. Basic Books, 1972.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Notes<\/h3>\n\n\n
  1. In the sense of Deleuze and Guattari, which are non-linear constructions of networks that are rooted in culture. \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>
  2. Like Freud, Lacan, Piaget, Klein, Bowlby, Laplanche among others. \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li>
  3. Chul Han criticizes some things about globality such as consumerism and the loss of rituals. \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><\/ol><\/div>\n\n\n\n

    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Beatriz L. Botero The most powerful border of all is built in the intricate dance between mother figure and newborn. This is where the concepts of \u201cI\u201d and \u201cother\u201d are born, where the roots and their psychic rhizomes connect and develop. Process that never ends. This first relationship is a closed dyad, perfect symbiosis. The …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3828,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uw_seo_meta_title":"","_uw_seo_meta_description":"","_uw_seo_twitter_card_type":"summary_large_image","_uw_seo_meta_image":"","_uw_seo_meta_image_url":"","_uw_seo_meta_image_sizes":[],"_uw_seo_custom_meta_tags":[],"uw_external_link":"","footnotes":"[{\"id\":\"f8e4c865-376a-41fd-8ff1-6b29fecdc71e\",\"content\":\"In the sense of Deleuze and Guattari, which are non-linear constructions of networks that are rooted in culture.\"},{\"id\":\"1383dc0f-6029-4093-a22e-0658e8872381\",\"content\":\"Like Freud, Lacan, Piaget, Klein, Bowlby, Laplanche among others.\"},{\"id\":\"6427d2d7-41e4-4aba-b5c2-d2c0fb60bab8\",\"content\":\"Chul Han criticizes some things about globality such as consumerism and the loss of rituals.\"}]"},"categories":[38],"tags":[4],"class_list":["post-103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-issue-2-fall-winter-2023","tag-introduction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lacisreview.lacis.wisc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lacisreview.lacis.wisc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lacisreview.lacis.wisc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lacisreview.lacis.wisc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3828"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lacisreview.lacis.wisc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=103"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/lacisreview.lacis.wisc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":965,"href":"https:\/\/lacisreview.lacis.wisc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions\/965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lacisreview.lacis.wisc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lacisreview.lacis.wisc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lacisreview.lacis.wisc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}