SELFHOOD AND RECOGNITION: Melanesian and Western Accounts of Relationality

摘要

In this dense study, Anita Galuschek examines "Western" and "Melanesian" concepts, perceptions, and practices of personhood largely through the lens of European philosophies of selfhood, recognition, and relationality. She pursues several concurrent agenda: an impressive critique, apart from any Melanesian component, of simplistic Western European concepts of the person as an atomistic "ego," leading to a strict subject-object distinction and possessive individualism; a sympathetic discussion of how "Melanesian personhood" (that is, personhood as fundamentally and foundationally relational rather than egoistical) might positively inform such a discussion; and, much more tentatively, a philosophical analysis of Melanesian personhood itself.