This book is concerned with the notion of the stranger—the foreigner, outsider, or alien in a country and society not their own—as well as the notion of strangeness within the self, a person’s deep sense of being, as distinct from outside appearance and their conscious idea of self.
Julia Kristeva begins with the personal and moves outward by examining world literature and philosophy. She discusses the foreigner in Greek tragedy, in the Bible, and in the literature of the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Enlightenment, and the twentieth century. By considering the legal status of foreigners throughout history, Kristeva offers a different perspective on our own civilization.
Table of Content
1. Toccata and Fugue for the Foreigner
2. The Greeks Among Barbarians, Suppliants, and Metics
3. The Chosen People and the Choice of Foreignness
4. Paul and Augustine: The Therapeutics of Exile and Pilgrimage
5. By What Right are Are You a Foreigner?
6. The Renaissance, ‘So Shapeless and Diverse in Composition’
7. On Foreigners and the Enlightenment
8. Might Not Universality Be… Our Own Foreignness?
9. In Practice…
Notes
Index
About the author
Julia Kristeva is professor emerita of linguistics at the Université de Paris VII. A renowned psychoanalyst, philosopher, and linguist, she has written dozens of books spanning semiotics, political theory, literary criticism, gender and sex, and cultural critique, as well as several novels and autobiographical works, published in English translation by Columbia University Press. Kristeva was the inaugural recipient of the Holberg International Memorial Prize in 2004 “for innovative explorations of questions on the intersection of language, culture, and literature.”
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