Description
This paper builds on the concept of the Stranger/strangeness to open up and question predominant binary conceptions of identity formation/Self and Other dynamics in poststructuralist IR that rest on an ontology based on structure characterised by ‘difference’, and the constant temptation to either turn difference into equivalence or expel it as ‘threatening otherness’. Contrary to these premises, our starting point is an understanding of the human condition characterised by relations and ambivalence. We invoke the Stranger as a figure embodying in-betweenness/ambivalence and engage with approaches that – instead of reading strangeness as a source of insecurity – stress the productive, integral role of ambivalence in the process of (collective) identity formation. While taking inspiration from the Derridian emphasis on the ethos of accepting undecidability and, in the first part of the paper, engaging with post-structuralist thinkers who – often only tacitly – have evoked productive understandings of ambivalence, the paper also seeks to address what has been criticised as a reification of eurocentrism in poststructuralist scholarship. It thus additionally draws from Global IR scholarship and ontologies beyond the Western philosophical orbit that invoke non-substantialist and non-dualist subject-object relationships. Finally, the paper then illustrates these theoretical insights by, for instance, looking at successful diplomacy/mediation as productive engagements with strangeness in empirical examples.
