Self and Other

One of the major themes of Mikhail Bakhtin's literary criticism is the relationship between self and other. Alberto Manguel has some interesting things to say about the necessity of the other for the definition of the self. In his book The City of Words, he uses the example of the story told in the Epic of Gilgamesh. This story dates from the 2nd millennium BCE and tells of the creation of the city of Uruk. It concerns the relationship between Gilgamesh, a part-divine (2/3 divine, 1/3 human) tyrant, and his mirror reflection, the wild man Enkidu (2/3 animal, 1/3 human). What becomes clear from the story is that Gilgamesh cannot exist as a viable 'self' without Enkidu - and vice versa; the one needs the other for self-definition. Where I believe Bakhtin - and Hoban - differ slightly from this is in the sense that the 'self' is not understood to be a closed-off, boundaried concept which only relates to the other insofar as the two crash against each other. It is instead an open, flexible notion which welcomes interaction (or perhaps recognises it as inevitable) with the other, regardless of whether the outcome is good or bad. I'm thinking in particular of the journey of Riddley Walker outside his fenced community, and the struggle Fremder Gorn has as his relationship to Helen and Izzy Gorn becomes evident. What do people think? All opinions welcome!