ABSTRACT
Berger et al. (1973) have shown that the condition of the existential stranger has been universalised and that since the early 1970s this has been a recurrent theme in social theory. Yet, what distinguishes current approaches from previous accounts is that the former are less pessimistic about the experience of universal strangerhood. Instead of categorising the stranger as an individual figure, such as the foreigner, the state of strangeness has become a general experience. Dessewffy accepts the universalisation thesis when he notes that the curiosity we feel towards the exotic Other has turned into an ‘astonishment over our own personalities spilt into irreconcilable roles’ (1996, p. 600). Within this contemporary universalisation thesis is a growing critique of the ‘classical stranger’ as an explanatory category. Underlying this thesis is a consensus that we can identify a ‘classical’ version of the stranger in the work of Simmel, characterised by one who comes today and stays tomorrow. This version, according to its critics, is now redundant because it assumes that the stranger is entering a nation-state that is closed and sovereign and that the host identity is fixed and stable.
