Description
Book SynopsisThe Concept of the Foreign investigates the diverse and consequential uses of the concept of the foreigna formidable and hitherto untheorized force in everyday discourse and practice. This highly original workwhose experimental nature moves beyond traditional academic boundsundertakes to theorize the meanings, deployments, and consequences of ''foreignness'', a term largely overlooked by academic debates. Innovative in format, the book comprises an introductory theoretical dialogue and seven essays, each authored by a scholar from a different disciplineanthropology, literary theory, psychology, philosophy, social work, history, and women''s studies-who investigate how his/her disciplines engage and define the concept of the foreign. Drawing out literal and metaphorical meanings of ''foreignness'' this wide-ranging volume offers much to scholars of postcolonial, gender, and cultural studies seeking new approaches to the study of alterity.
Trade ReviewThe idea of collecting a number of essays from specialists in various disciplines addressing the question of the foreign is a highly original one, and has resulted in an impressively varied and wide-ranging volume. . . . Many attempts at interdisciplinary collections fail to achieve this kind of cohesiveness combined with variety, and the editor is to be congratulated on her successful meeting of this challenge. . . .The book is genuinely original and genuinely interdiscipinary. -- Derek Attridge, The University of York, UK
Table of ContentsPart 1 Theoretical Dialogue Chapter 2 Instability and Discipline(s) Chapter 3 Belonging, Distance Chapter 4 The Pathologized, the Improper, and the Impure Chapter 5 The Present: Temporality and Materiality Part 6 Local Manifestations Chapter 7 The Exile of Anthropology Chapter 8 Foreign Bodies: Engendering Them and Us Chapter 9 Expedition into the Zone of Error: Of Literal and Literary Foreignness and J. M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians Chapter 10 Encountering Alien Otherness Chapter 11 Xenotropism: Expatriatism in Theories of Depth Psychology and Artistic Vocation Chapter 12 War to the Death: Nativism and Independence in Latin America Chapter 13 Changing Images and Similar Dynamics: Historical Patterning of Foreignness in the Social Work Profession
