Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-ColonialityExamining the relationship between strangers, embodiment and community, Strange Encounters challenges the assumptions that the stranger is simply anybody we do not recognize and instead proposes that he or she is socially constructued as somebody we already know. Using feminist and postcolonial theory this book examines the impact of multiculturalism and globalization on embodiment and community whilst considering the ethical and political implication of its critique for post-colonial feminism. A diverse range of texts are analyzed which produce the figure of 'the stranger', showing that it has alternatively been expelled as the origin of danger - such as in neighbourhood watch, or celebrated as the origin of difference - as in multiculturalism. The author argues that both of these standpoints are problematic as they involve 'stranger fetishism'; they assume that the stranger 'has a life of its own'. |
Contents
| 1 | |
| 3 | |
PART I Encountering the stranger | 20 |
PART II Closer to home | 75 |
PART III Beyond stranger fetishism | 136 |
Notes | 182 |
| 192 | |
| 203 | |
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Common terms and phrases
alien allows already recognised argue assimilated assumed assumption Australian becomes Bell Bell’s bodily space boundaries Chapter close colonialism commodity fetishism concealed consider constitution consumer critique Dances with Wolves define defined differentiation document embodiment emphasis ethics ethnographic face familiar fantasy feminism feminist figure first Gayatri Spivak gendered global nomads globalisation hence identity implicated impossibility inhabit insofar involves knowledge labour Lancaster University Levinas Levinas’s lived metonymic migration move movement multicultural nation narrative nation space native Neighbourhood Watch object one’s ontology other’s particular passing philosophy political possible post-colonial post-colonial theory postmodern precisely produced proximity question recognised as strangers relation relationship responsibility sense simply skin social space speaking story strange bodies strange cultures strange encounters stranger danger stranger fetishism stranger’s body strangerhood suggests technique of knowledge theory third world touch transformation translation transnational feminism woman writing