Strangers to Ourselves (Paperback)

by Professor Julia Kristeva (Author), Professor Leon S. Roudiez (Translator) "Foreigner: a choked up rage deep down in my throat, a black angel clouding transparency, opaque, unfathomable spur..." (more)
Key Phrases: uncanny strangeness, own foreignness, good savage, French Revolution, Rameau's Nephew, National Convention (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal
Kristeva, who teaches linguistics at the University of Paris and is also a practicing psychoanalyst, traces the concept of the "stranger" or "foreigner" in various cultures and periods from the Greeks to the present. This--albeit highly selective--excursion through intellectual/political history is influenced by Freud's notion of the alienation, or "splitting off," of the self that comes about as the result of the repression of feelings and the ideational content attached to them. It is the sense, Kristeva argues, that we are also "strangers to ourselves." This book is primarily for academic audiences and, though not an essential purchase, will delight advanced students and faculty in intellectual history, linguistics, philosophy, and psychology.
-Leon M. Brody, U.S. Office of Personnel , Management Lib., Washington , D.C.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review
[The book] demonstrates her amazing command of history, politics, literature, linguistics, and psychology [and] argues powerfully for a radical examination of self, beginning with the realization that what is most fearful to us in the stranger may be the very quality we do not want to recognize in ourselves. -- Review

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 230 pages
• Publisher: Columbia University Press (August 15, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0231071574
• ISBN-13: 978-0231071574
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #382,086 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in this category: (What's this?)

  #33 in

  Books > Gay & Lesbian > Literature & Fiction > Literary Criticism

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A difficult read, January 28, 2001

By	BMH (Ontario, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Strangers to Ourselves (Hardcover)

The most interesting sections of this work are the earliest chapters; Kristeva seems to run out of steam and stop abruptly once she begins to discuss foreignness and strangeness in contemporary culture. The writing is also very abstract (perhaps more so because it is a translation); this particular book is probably only interesting to a student of literature who is critically concerned with the figure of the Stranger in fiction and legends. I don't recommend picking this book up simply out of curiousity.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Understanding the 'Stranger' through Literature and Linguistics, February 17, 2009

By	BYF "Backyard Flix" (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews

From back cover:

"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 form 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 20th 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 "