Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality Book

"The stranger is always approaching..."

In encountering others, how do you know the stranger? Ahmed reminds us throughout the book that strangers are not merely those who we do not know, but those who are already recognised as not belonging, as more different than other bodies. Strange Encounters is a fascinating read that delves into how "we" recognise strangers, whether as a figure of danger, an object to fetishise/a commodity (to consume, to refine), or a subject of "celebrated" difference. This book emphasises that the stranger is the thing which makes the body, the neighbourhood, the nation itself. Ahmed also argues that the act of "welcoming," as much as expulsion, also produces the figure of the stranger - but a kind of foreignness that must be translated into terms "we" understand. There is so much more in here, so much about migration (as being felt on the skin), estranged encounters between strangers, and the unassimilable stranger. This was my second read through this book, and I truly feel, in a way, transformed by it.