The Sociological Significance of ‘The Stranger’

If wandering, considered as the liberation from every given point in space, is the conceptual opposite to being fixed to a given point, then the sociological form of “the stranger” presents the union of both. It discloses that spatial relations are the precondition and the marker of social relations. The stranger is therefore not the wanderer who comes today and goes tomorrow, but rather the one who comes today and stays tomorrow—the potential wanderer who, although he remains, has not quite overcome the freedom of coming and going. He is fixed within a certain spatial circle, but his position within is peculiarly determined by never belonging, and in introducing qualities to it that are not, and cannot be, native.

The fusion of nearness and remoteness transforms every interpersonal relation and thereby produces a unique system or constellation of relations: the distance within the stranger-relation signifies that the Near is far; but in being alien also signifies that the Far is near. Being a stranger constitutes a qualitatively determinate form of interaction. The inhabitants of Sirius are not strangers to us in the sociological sense; socially, they do not exist for us: they are beyond being far and near. The stranger by contrast exists—like the Poor or “internal enemies”—as an element of all groups, an element whose inherent position and membership involve exteriority and its opposite. We must now analyze how mutually repulsive and opposing elements compose a joint and interacting unity.

Throughout economic history, the stranger appears as the trader, the trader appears as the stranger. While the general rule of production is self-sufficiency, or while products are still exchanged within a relatively narrow circle, no group requires a middleman within. Traders are needed in order to introduce products from without. Since even the person who wanders to foreign lands to trade must himself abroad become a “stranger,” the trader type must be a stranger type. This position of the stranger is intensified in our consciousness if, instead of leaving, he stays put . . . living and trading in the role of a middleman. Even closed economies that serve local demand solely through agricultural and trade work will grant the trader an [imaginary and literal] place—this is because trade alone makes possible unlimited combinations, in which intelligence finds ever-wider extensions and ever-newer accessions. [ . . . ] Trade presents the most favorable opening for the stranger to insert himself as a supernumerary into an otherwise closed group where all economic positions are occupied. History offers as the classic illustration the European Jew. Neither in the physical sense, nor in a metaphorical has the stranger a permanent existence in space; he has no land, nor an ideal position within the social order. As a type, however, he has special sociological characteristics [that transform the whole]:

A. Mobility: The stranger’s mobility reveals the attractions and forms of character and meaning possible in interpersonal relations. By being restricted to trade (or pure finance), the stranger balances nearness and remoteness, placing himself in contact with every element of his group, but without any organic relation of kinship, locality, or profession.

B. Objectivity: Living outside the attitudes or biases of the group, the stranger has the attitude of the “objectivity” transcending separation and disinterestedness: objectivity fuses nearness and remoteness, concern and indifference. The Italian cities who invited judges from the outside, because no native was free of prejudice, are the archetype of objectivity.

C. Universal Confidant: The objectivity of the stranger prompts the most surprising disclosures and confessions. Secrets concealed from every intimate are brought to him, showing that objectivity is not a lack of sympathy . . . but one of its positive and particular modes that allows the full activity of a spirit [to register] individual and subjective peculiarities, revealing multiple dimensions of the same object.

D. Freedom from convention: Objectivity has its freedom, affording the stranger the ability to experience and address relations of nearness as though from a bird’s-eye view. This contains myriad dangerous possibilities. In every revolution, the old guard excoriates the external incitement of foreign emissaries and agitators; such opprobrium merely acknowledges the objective role of the stranger as the freer man, practically and theoretically. [ . . . ]

E. Abstract relations: Finally, the nearness and remoteness that fosters objectivity brings a general abstraction in all social relations. Individuals acquire general qualities only by sharing those of the stranger, [and] all personal relations whatsoever come to be so determined. . . . Similarities shared by the multitude are shared by relation to the stranger, and this becomes the dominant and fundamental way individual and personal elements are defined. The stranger is near insofar as we feel between him and ourselves similarities of nationality or social position, of profession or of general human nature. He appears far once these similarities seem beyond him and us, real because shared by multitudes.

Strangeness thus enters into even the most intimate relations. Erotic relations show a very decided aversion, in the stage of first passion, to being characterized in general terms. [ . . . ] [Romantic love is often about finding strangeness in the lover.] But there is also a strangeness that precludes accepting an all-encompassing, general quality. The relation of the Greeks to the Barbarians is signal; they excluded many general characteristics from the Other that they also viewed as peculiarly and typically human. But here the expression “the stranger” no longer possesses any particular meaning. The relation with him is a non-relation. This stranger is likely considered near and far at the same moment, simply because the foundation of the relation is now ascribed to a general human similarity. Between these two elements there occurs, however, a peculiar tension, since the consciousness of having only the absolutely general in common has the effect of emphasizing difference. The characteristics of strangers—varying by country, city, or race, etc.—are not perceived individually; rather the sense of alien extraction is perceived in the relation he has in common with members of his group. The strangers are perceived chiefly as the strangers of a certain type. Their remoteness is no less general than their nearness.