Making Strangers: Outsiders, Aliens and Foreigners

Studies on foreignness have increased substantially over the last two decades in response to what has been dubbed the `refugee crisis.¿ Yet, their focus has been generally on specific areas such as region, period, ethnic group or author. Predicated on the belief that this so-called `twenty-first century problem¿ is timeless, and as old as humanity itself, the proposed collection of essays shows cases based on both long-term historic perspectives and individual occurrences from around...
More Description

Studies on foreignness have increased substantially over the last two decades in response to what has been dubbed the `refugee crisis.¿ Yet, their focus has been generally on specific areas such as region, period, ethnic group or author. Predicated on the belief that this so-called `twenty-first century problem¿ is timeless, and as old as humanity itself, the proposed collection of essays shows cases based on both long-term historic perspectives and individual occurrences from around the world. Bringing together an international group of scholars from Australia, Asia, Europe and North America, it examines a variety of examples and strategies, mostly from world literatures, ranging from Spain¿s failed experience with consolidation as a nation-state-type entity during the Golden Age of Castile, to Shakespeare¿s rhetorical subversion of the language of fear and hate, to Mario Rigoni Stern¿s random status at the unpredictable Italian-Austrian borders, to Lawrence Durrell¿s complacent reluctance to notice the unmistakable reality of the other, to the French government¿s ongoing criminalization of hospitality, to Sandra Cisneros¿s attempt at straddling two countries and cultures while belonging to neither one, to experimentations with intercultural transfers by Gisèle Pineau. We are not born foreigners; we are made. The purpose of the book is to assert, as denoted by its title, this fundamental premise, and contend that the making of strangers is a deliberate and purposeful process, even though it may be born out of an uncontrollable and primal urge to survive. The ultimate expression of this phenomenon is the compulsive labeling of people along artificial categories such as race, gender, religion, birthplace, or nationality. A corollary purpose of the book is to help shed light worldwide on the current plight of immigrants, refugees and all those excluded within because of race, gender, national origin, religion and ethnicity. As illustrated by the examples examined in this book, humans have certainly evolved in many areas; dealing with the ¿other¿ might not have been one of those.