Strange Encounters (Transformations) - Hardcover

Ahmed, Sara

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0415201845 ISBN 13: 9780415201841

Publisher: Routledge, 2000

Synopsis

Examining 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'.

About this title

About the Author:

Sara Ahmed has been a lecturer in the Institute for Women's Studies, Lancaster University, since 1994. She is currently Co-Director of the Institute. Her first book, Differences that Matter: Feminist Theory and Postmodernism was published by Cambridge University Press in 1998.

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0415201845
• ISBN 13: 9780415201841
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 228