Democracy and the Foreigner. By Bonnie Honig. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002. 204p. $24.95

Extract

Foundings depend upon foreigners, or more precisely, founding narratives often rely on the device of the outsider who appears as if from nowhere to bring order where previously there was none, to free a people from the unjust rule of a tyrant, and to act as lawgiver to the lawless. Democracy and the Foreigner addresses the paradoxical centrality of the foreigner to the political identity of nations and peoples. Reading classic works of political theory (Rousseau, Freud), contemporary debates about multiculturalism, liberal democracy, and immigration policy (Peter Schuck and Rogers Smith, Michael Walzer, Richard Rorty), late-modern social theory (Rene Girard, Julia Kristeva, William Connolly), biblical accounts of the origins of a chosen people (Exodus and Ruth), and twentieth-century films (The Wizard of Oz, Shane, Simply Ballroom), Bonnie Honig offers a rich and original meditation on the politics of home, migration, and democratic politics.