Kristeva suggests that the antidote to xenophobia, racism and other weapons against outsiders is to recognize that "the foreigner is within us." [<i>Strangers to Ourselves</i>] demonstrates [Kristeva’s] amazing command of history, politics, literature, linguistics, and psychology. . . . [and] argues powerfully for a radical examination of self, beginning with the realization that what is most fearful to us in the stranger may be the very quality we do not want to recognize in ourselves.
San Francisco Examiner-Chronicle
Kristeva’s most accessible book to date, of broad historical scope and deep personal passion. It is also a very wise book
Comparative Literature
[An] elegant account of the links between subjectivity and heteronomy.
Radical Philosophy
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.
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