i just started reading kristeva's strangers to ourselves once again, and this time it's making sense. i'm applying a kristevan reading (outside traditional logic, open to ambiguity) and it seems to work. it's a blend of psychoanalysis and social theory, a comment upon the dangers of nationalism as much as it looks at subjectivity as formed by otherness. the foreigner is in ourselves. there is no clear line between the foreigner (the outsider, the other, the stranger) and our own subjectivity. and yet, the foreigner is somewhat mobilised by its liminal status - neither here nor there, and unflinching in her/his non-commitment to place. the foreigner is me.
i see much of myself in the section titled Meeting. me in melbourne last year, me in sydney now. me as foreigner. the me explored in previous blogs.
"Meeting balances wondering. A crossroad of two othernesses, it welcomes the foreigner without tying him down, opening the host to his visitor without committing him. A mutual recognition, the meeting owes its success to its temporary nature, and it would be torn by conflicts if it were to be extended. The foreign believer is incorrigibly curious, eager for meetings: he is nourished by them, makes his way through them, forever unsatisfied..." (p11)
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