argues that "ethics is constituted as an inexorable affirmative response to different identities, not through an inability to understand or totalize the other." There is included a long article on alterity in the University of Chicago's Theories of Media: Keywords Glossary by Joshua Wexler. Wexler writes: "Given the various theorists formulations presented here, the mediation of alterity or otherness in the world provides a space for thinking about the complexities of self and other and the formation of identity." The concept of alterity is also being used in theology and in spiritual books meant for general readers. This is not out of place because, for believers in the Judeo-Christian tradition, God is the ultimate 'Other'. Alterity has also been used to describe the goal of many Christians, to become themselves deeply "other" than the usual norms of behavior and patterns of thought of the secular culture at large. Enzo Bianchi in Echoes of the Word expresses this well, "Meditation always seeks to open us to alterity, love and communion by guiding us toward the goal of having in ourselves the same attitude and will that were in Christ Jesus." Jadranka Skorin-Kapov in The Aesthetics of Desire and Surprise: Phenomenology and Speculation, relates alterity or otherness to newness and surprise, "The signification of the encounter with otherness is not in its novelty (or banal newness); on the contrary, newness has signification because it reveals otherness, because it allows the experience of otherness. Newness is related to surprise, it is a consequence of the encounter... Metaphysical desire is the acceptivity of irreducible otherness. Surprise is the consequence of the encounter. Between desire and surprise there is a pause, a void, a rupture, an immediacy that cannot be captured and presented." Anthropology In anthropology, alterity has been used by scholars such as Nicholas Dirks, Johannes Fabian, Michael Taussig and Pauline Turner Strong to refer to the construction of "cultural others". Musicology The term has gained further use in seemingly somewhat remote disciplines, e.g., historical musicology where it is employed by John Michael Cooper in a study of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Felix Mendelssohn. See also Abjection Decolonization Heterogeneity Heterophenomenology Imperialism Indeterminacy in philosophy Internationalism Nationalism Other Pedagogy Postcolonialism Secularism Self-consciousness Subjectivity Uncanny References Further reading Martin Buber (1937), I and Thou. Chan-Fai Cheung, Tze-Wan Kwan and Kwok-ying Lau (eds.), Identity and Alterity. Phenomenology and Cultural Traditions. Verlag Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2009