ABSTRACT
This chapter takes the form of a narrative interplay between a teacher's experiences of cultural Otherness within her early childhood teaching teams and Julia Kristeva's philosophical notions of the foreigner and the subject in process. As strangers to ourselves, the 'me' that Kristeva speaks of might indeed be any one of us. The chapter borrows the title from Kristeva's book Strangers to ourselves, as an entry point to think of the 'me' as a teacher in a teaching team in an early childhood setting. Through Lisabeth's experiences as a teacher it examines and offers a reconceptualisation of early childhood teachers' cultural Otherness, and of some of the social, material and temporal influences within the early childhood context. Kristeva's foreigner lens illustrates Lisabeth's diverse modalities of being and responding to the Other. While for Kristeva some live as nomads, escaping, in exile, some are permanently on tour, originating from different places.
