A01=Bonnie Honig
Achieving Our Country
Activism
Adventurism
Ambivalence
Amy Gutmann
Author_Bonnie Honig
Barbara Johnson
Bildungsroman
Category=JBFH
Category=JPA
Category=JPHV
Citizenship
Citizenship of the United States
Civil society
Communitarianism
Cosmopolitanism
Cultural icon
Deliberation
Democracy
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Exclusion
Genre
George Kateb
Governance
Hannah Arendt
Ideology
Illegal immigration
Immigration
Individualism
Institution
Israelites
Jacques Derrida
Julia Kristeva
Lauren Berlant
Legislator
Legitimation
Liberal democracy
Liberalism
Michael Walzer
Modernity
Monotheism
Moses and Monotheism
Multiculturalism
Narrative
Nation state
Nationalism
Nationality
Origin story
Orpah
Patriarchy
Patriotism
Political culture
Political philosophy
Politics
Princeton University Press
Psychoanalysis
Racism
Sanford Levinson
Saskia Sassen
Scapegoating
Self-governance
Seyla Benhabib
Slavery
Social democracy
State of nature
Suggestion
Symptom
The Disuniting of America
The Social Contract
Theory
Uncertainty
Violence and the Sacred
Writing
Xenophilia
Xenophobia
Product details
- ISBN 9780691114767
- Weight: 340g
- Dimensions: 152 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 02 Feb 2003
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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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.
Bonnie Honig is Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University and Senior Research Fellow at the American Bar Foundation. She is author of "Political Theory and the Displacement of Politics" and editor of "Feminist Interpretations of Hannah Arendt".
