Veronica Allievi Feb 12, 2016:

Levinas works a lot the sameness and the otherness in his "Totality and Infinity" and the Britannica Encyclopaedia translates "le meme" as "Sameness"

Robert Carter Feb 12, 2016:

Does the reference to Heidegger exist in the ST? I agree with Adoración and Charles, unless there is an explicit reference to Heidegger in the source text, selfhood would undoubtedly make the most sense here.

BTW, that's a little harsh, Neil, glass houses and all that (punCtuation) :-)

Wendy Gosselin (asker) Feb 12, 2016:

Thank you all! THis artist's work revolves around deformed self-portraits, actually, so I think that some reference to the self might be best here.

Charles Davis Feb 12, 2016:

@Adoración I think "mismidad" normally does mean something closer to selfhood, and by default that is probably what we should assume it means here. It's just that when Heidegger's Selbigkeit (which certainly does mean sameness: selbig means same) is translated into Spanish, "mismidad" is the word translators use. So if there's good reason to believe that's what the author has in mind, then there's an argument for using "sameness". But if not, then I think we should forget about German and simply translate "mismidad" according to its usual meaning(s).

Adoración Bodoque Martínez Feb 12, 2016:

@ Charles You're right, Charles. It's hard to tell which term would be best suited here without any further context. I just feel that "selfhood" is the closest in meaning to "mismidad"; and it appears to fit the immediate context of the sentence quoted.

Charles Davis Feb 12, 2016:

Philosophical affiliation? The thing here is that if the author is using "mismidad" to render Heidegger's notion of Selbigkeit, then "sameness" is probably the word (some translators, as Robert says, use "self-sameness", but the difference seems to me very slight); selfhood would be closer to Eigentlichkeit (often rendered as "identity", sometimes as "ownliness", and in Spanish as ipseidad). However, we can't be certain of this on the basis of the passage quoted, and in Spanish philosophical language generally mismidad is "unicidad del ser", and the related meanings in the DRAE definition Adoración has quoted. So really in order to render this accurately we need to know whether this particular writer has nailed his/her colours to the Heideggerian mast, as it were. There's a lot of it about in writing about art these days, but as I say, we can't be sure. Does the rest of the text contain references to Heidegger or other Heideggerian language?

neilmac Feb 12, 2016:

Puntuation snafu Anything valid that might have been in the source text went out the window for me when I saw that unnecessary comma after Laura.