Strangers to Ourselves

This book explores the notion of the “stranger”— the foreigner, outsider, or alien in a country and society not their own— as well as the notion of strangeness within the self-a person’s deep sense of being, as distinct from outside appearance and from their conscious idea of self.

As is customary with her work, Kristeva begins with the personal and moves outward through the lens of world literature and philosophy, She discusses the foreigner in Greek tragedy, in the Bible, and in the literature of the Middle Ages, Renaissance (in Dante, Machiavelli, Rabelais, Thomas Moore, and Montaigne), the Enlightenment (Montesquieu, Diderot), and into the twentieth century in the works of Camus, Nabokov, and others. Her insights into the problems of nationality, particularly with regard to France, are more timely and relevant in an increasingly integrated and fractious world.