It's important to note that otherness is not merely an extreme form of difference.
In fact, as Baudrillard makes clear, the latter, difference, is the insidious simulation of otherness and its regulation within Western culture. In other words, we generate difference in order to mask our extermination of otherness and the subordination of its singular principle to the law of the Same via knowledge and representation:
"Our society is entirely dedicated to neutralising otherness, to destroying the other as a natural point of reference within a vast flood of asceptic communication and interaction, of illusory exchange and contact."
Otherness, reduced to mere difference, is made both tolerable and useful; it can be packaged and it can be traded (often under the brand name of diversity).
However, Baudrillard also insists on the indestructability of otherness, which, as the fundamental dynamic of the world, is ultimately greater than reason, morality, or universal humanism. Otherness - like evil - will always return when we least expect it and extract its revenge.
Now, whilst I still pretty much agree with this analysis - despite the fact it lends itself to romantic primitivism and seems designed to induce guilt - I have to admit I'm no longer as excited by the thought of radical altérité as I once was.
Indeed, at the risk of sounding insular and narcissistic or like a sudden convert to identity politics, it's become something of a relief (and a pleasure) to occasionaly meet a kindred spirit with similar interests and shared values, tastes and experiences; loving the alien is such hard work (the rewards uncertain, the consequences often fatal).
See: Jean Baudrillard, The Transparency of Evil, trans. James Benedict, (Verso Books, 1993). The line quoted is on p. 121.
