States of ambivalence: Recovering the concept of ‘the Stranger’ in International Relations

Felix Berenskötter,Nicola Nymalm

doi:10.1017/s0260210520000376

Abstract

AbstractThis article revisits and revives the concept of ‘the Stranger’ in theorising international relations by discussing how this figure appears and what role it plays in the politics of (collective) identity. It shows that this concept is central to poststructuralist logic discussing the political production of discourses of danger and to scholarship on ontological security but remains subdued in their analytical narratives. Making the concept of the Stranger explicit is important, we argue, because it directs attention to ambivalence as a source of anxiety and grasps the unsettling experiences that political strategies of conquest or conversion, including practices of securitisation, respond to. Against this backdrop, the article provides a nuanced reading of the Stanger as a form of otherness that captures ambiguity as a threat to modern conceptions of identity, and outlines three scenarios of how it may be encountered in interstate relations: the phenomenon of ‘rising powers’ from the perspective of the hegemon, the dissolution of enmity (overcoming an antagonistic relationship), and the dissolution of friendship (close allies drifting apart). Aware that recovering the concept is not simply an academic exercise but may feed into how the term is used in political discourse and how practitioners deal with ‘strange encounters’, we conclude by pointing to alternative readings of the Stranger/strangeness and the value of doing so.

Highlights

This article revisits and revives the concept of ‘the Stranger’ and ‘strangeness’ in theorising international relations by discussing how this figure appears and what role it plays in the politics of identity
The article provides a nuanced reading of the Stanger as a form of otherness that captures ambiguity as a threat to modern conceptions of identity, and outlines three scenarios of how it may be encountered in interstate relations: the phenomenon of ‘rising powers’ from the perspective of the hegemon, the dissolution of enmity, and the dissolution of friendship
We argue, the concept of the Stranger/strangeness is central to the theoretical logic of the security/identity nexus found in poststructuralist and ontological security scholarship, yet it is only sporadically discussed

Summary

Introduction

This article revisits and revives the concept of ‘the Stranger’ and ‘strangeness’ in theorising international relations by discussing how this figure appears and what role it plays in the politics of (collective) identity. 20 Felix Berenskötter and Nicola Nymalm figure appears more as a byline in the effort of reading ‘security’ as a thick signifier, Huysmans argues that the Stranger, understood as a figure representing ambiguity and triggering feelings of ambivalence, is a key concept in the modern logic of (in)security.3 Our article recovers this insight and places it at the centre of attention. The first part carves out the missing concept in poststructuralist and ontological security scholarship; the second part introduces the Stranger as a category of the Other or form of otherness that captures ambiguity as a threat to modern conceptions of identity; the third part outlines scenarios in which the Stranger emerges/is encountered in interstate relations; and the conclusion points to alternative readings of ‘strangeness’ and the political value of doing so

The conceptual gap

Ontological security theory

Enter the Stranger

The sociological approach

The phenomenological approach

Losing enemies and struggling with friends