ABSTRACT
The concept of the stranger is found across Bauman’s conceptions of solid and liquid modernity. Taking his starting point from Simmel, in solid modernity, the stranger is any individual who does not conform to the state’s plan for the modern society; a person who is seen to contradict the state’s understanding of how to lead a life. In contest, in postmodernity difference is celebrated and as such we are all strangers, and when all are strangers none of us are strangers. The postmodern fear is that we may lack the skills and resources to participate fully in the consumer market place; we may be people with bad taste rooted in personal failure and incompetence as a consumer. Such flawed consumers can be stigmatised as slimy; a form of strangerhood that is both contaminated and contaminating. Finally, in liquid modernity Bauman makes a distinction between the Other as the excluded flawed consumer who can potentially become homo sacer; a person who is poor, slimy and already judged as leading a life not worth living. Bauman’s liquid modern stranger is often a racial category, a person from far away who is an uninvited guest and whose presence is neither wanted nor desired.
