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基本説明
New in paperback. Hardcover was published in 2001. What problems might foreigners solve for us? The book probes the symbolic politics of foreignness.
Full Description
What should we do about foreigners? Should we try to make them more like us or keep them at bay to protect our democracy, our culture, our well-being? This dilemma underlies age-old debates about immigration, citizenship, and national identity that are strikingly relevant today. In Democracy and the Foreigner, Bonnie Honig reverses the question: What problems might foreigners solve for us? Hers is not a conventional approach. Instead of lauding the achievements of individual foreigners, she probes a much larger issue--the symbolic politics of foreignness. In doing so she shows not only how our debates over foreignness help shore up our national or democratic identities, but how anxieties endemic to liberal democracy themselves animate ambivalence toward foreignness. Central to Honig's arguments are stories featuring "foreign-founders," in which the origins or revitalization of a people depend upon a foreigner's energy, virtue, insight, or law.
From such popular movies as The Wizard of Oz, Shane, and Strictly Ballroom to the biblical stories of Moses and Ruth to the myth of an immigrant America, from Rousseau to Freud, foreignness is represented not just as a threat but as a supplement for communities periodically requiring renewal. Why? Why do people tell stories in which their societies are dependent on strangers? One of Honig's most surprising conclusions is that an appreciation of the role of foreigners in (re)founding peoples works neither solely as a cosmopolitan nor a nationalist resource. For example, in America, nationalists see one archetypal foreign-founder--the naturalized immigrant--as reconfirming the allure of deeply held American values, whereas to cosmopolitans this immigrant represents the deeply transnational character of American democracy. Scholars and students of political theory, and all those concerned with the dilemmas democracy faces in accommodating difference, will find this book rich with valuable and stimulating insights.
Contents
Aknowledgments xiii Chapter 1. NATIVES AND FOREIGNERS: Switching the Question 1 Chapter 2. THE FOREIGNER AS FOUNDER 15 Dorothy and the Wizard 15 Rousseau's Lawgiver 18 Freud's Moses 25 Girard's Scapegoat 33 Democracy and Foreignness 38 Chapter 3. THE FOREIGNER AS IMMIGRANT 41 The Book of Ruth as a Foreign-Founder Text 41 Ruth 42 Immigration and Founding 45 Ozick's Ruth: Convert or Migrant? 48 Kristeva's Ruth: The Ideal Immigrant 55 Gender and the Foreign-Founder 58 Kristeva's Orpahs: Cosmopolitanism without Foreignness 62 Mourning, Membership, Agency, and Loss: Ruth's Lessons for Politics 67 Chapter 4. THE FOREIGNER AS CITIZEN 73 The Myth of an Immigrant America 73 Class Mobility as American Citizenship 80 Ethnic Bases of Social Democracy: Michael Walzer's Immigrant America 82 Foreign Brides, Family Ties, and New World Masculinity 86 Dramatizing Consent: The Universal Charms of American Democracy 92 Taking Liberties: Intimations of a Democratic Cosmopolitanism 98 Chapter 5. THE GENRES OF DEMOCRACY 107 Does Democracy Have a Genre? 108 Democracy's Romance: A Tale of Gothic Love 115 Notes 123 Bibliography 173 Index 199
