ABSTRACT
The stranger is a complex and multifaceted concept and cannot be confined solely to the experience of cultural otherness. There are many quite different understandings and theories of the stranger, and it has become a popular concept in the work of many writers. Moreover, it is an interdisciplinary concept that has appeared in the fields of psychoanalysis, phenomenology, sociology, existentialism and postcolonialism. A systematic and comprehensive study of these different perspectives is long overdue because scholars have conflated these different dimensions without acknowledging the distinctions or the overlap between them. We need to consider how and in what ways these different disciplines have engaged with the stranger and what they contribute to our understanding of it. The following discussion critically examines what or who constitutes the stranger and then focuses on different approaches and how they complement and differ from each other. Contrary to previous insights, this chapter shows that the category of the stranger is internally differentiated, multidimensional and multilayered. The multilayered dimension of the stranger is articulated in terms of the intra-subjective, the intersubjective and as a societal condition. In turn, these different levels of analysis have led to a reconceptualisation of the proximity/distance scheme underlying the so-called classical idea of strangeness. Later chapters demonstrate how these ideas are manifested in the work of key scholars on the stranger as well as how they can be applied to examine the cosmopolitan subject, the multicultural civil sphere and the cyborg stranger.
