Studies on foreignness have increased substantially over the last two decades in response to what has been dubbed the migration/refugee crisis. Yet, they have focused on specific areas such as regions, periods, ethnic groups, and authors. Predicated on the belief that this so-called 'twenty-first century problem' is in fact as old as humanity itself, this book analyzes cases based on both long-term historical perspectives and current 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 Spains failed experience with consolidation as a nation-state-type entity during the Golden Age of Castile, to Shakespeares rhetorical subversion of the language of fear and hate, to Mario Rigoni Sterns random status at the unpredictable Italian-Austrian borders, to Lawrence Durrells ambivalent approach to noticing the physically visible other, to the French governments ongoing criminalization of hospitality, to Sandra Cisneross attempt at straddling two countries and cultures while belonging to neither one, to the illusive legal limbo of the DREAMers in the United States.
We are not born foreigners; we are made. The purpose of the book is to assert, as denoted by the title, this fundamental premise, that is, the making of strangers is the result of a deliberate and purposeful act that has social, political, and linguistic implications. 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 one of the most pressing issues facing the world today: the place of 'the other' amid fear-mongering and unabashedly contemptuous acts and rhetoric toward 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. It is hoped that the book encourages reflection on how the arts, and especially world literatures, can help us navigate and think through the ever-present crisis: the place of the 'stranger' among us.
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Abbes Maazaoui
Part one: Languages of power
1. 'You must needs be strangers': stigma and sympathetic imagination in Shakespeares Sir Thomas More
Jeffrey R. Wilson, Harvard University, United States
2. (E)stranging the modern nation: transnationalism and bastard border crossings in the Duke of Rivass The Foundling Moor
Amanda Eaton McMenamin, Wilson College, United States
3. 'A Dream Deferred': DREAMers in Politics and the Arts
Beatriz Calvo-Peña, Barry University, United States
4. 'Crimes of solidarity': Frances contemporary crisis of hospitality
Abigail Taylor, University of Sydney, Australia
Part two: Alien geographies
5. Outcast, foreign worker, enemy: exile and suspended identity in Mario Rigoni Sterns Storia di Tönle (1978)
Marguerite Bordry, Université Paris-Sorbonne, France
6. In search of a home of ones own: Sandra Cisneros The House on Mango Street
Ezra S. Engling (ret.), Eastern Kentucky University, United States
7. Blind spots, tunnel vision, and the narratives of the immigrant and colonial subject
Laureano Corces, Fairleigh Dickinson University, United States
8. The Arab who wasnt there: alterity in Lawrence Durells Alexandria Quartet
Walid Romani, The Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada
9. The ethics of the ghostly: a ghost medium in J. M. Coetzees Life & Times of Michael K
Chia-Sui Lee, National Taiwan University, Taiwan
Part three: Troubled identities
10. Strangers, foreigners and aliens in Conan Doyles novels: from imperialistic appropriation to literary subversion
Amandine Guyot, Université Paris 13, France
11. A strange encounter of aesthetics and imperial politics in Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehns Poetry of the Taliban
Yubraj Aryal, University of Montreal, Canada / Central Normal China University, China
12. Aesthetics of alienation: the displacement/displacing narrative of In the Light of What We Know
Shastri Akella, University of Massachusetts (Amherst), United States
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