strangehood e sociologia do conhecimento

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Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics

Strangerhood without Boundaries: An Essay in the Sociology of KnowledgeAuthor(s): Tibor DessewffySource: Poetics Today, Vol. 17, No. 4, Creativity and Exile: European/American Perspectives II(Winter, 1996), pp. 599-615Published by: Duke University Press

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Strangerhoodwithout Boundaries:

AnEssay nthe Sociologyof Knowledge

TiborDessewffy

Sociology, ELTE)udapest

Abstract This essayseparatesthe two dimensionsof strangerhood.First,using his-

torical materials, the spatial wanderersare examined, and the reactions of the host

community and the cognitive processesof the strangerare elaborated.The second

part of the essay deals with psychological aspectsof the problemunder the circum-

stances of late/postmodernity. Identity politics and role explosion are discussed as

significantelements of the presentsituation. It is arguedthat this second meaning of

strangerhoodhas become the general condition of our time. The relation between

creativityand exile is illustratedby differentexamples, rangingfrom the Portuguese

poet FernandoPessoa to the AustriansociologistAlfredSchutz.

Strangerhoodmoves all of us, makingus spit in anger or swallow in desire,but in any case urging us to act. This effect is not as obvious as it mayseem. Why do the people of Balassagyarmat, a small town in Hungary,

get excited if Muslims buy the run-down hostel next door? Why are the

black players of visiting basketball teams welcomed in similar Hungariantowns? Let us first try to understandwhat makes the strangerso excitingfor us moderns.

The firstpossible explanation

would be the essential sameness of the

strangerand the modern man, who rediscovers or wishes to rediscover--

himself in this metaphor.The result of a thousand years'reflection on the

strangeris the recognition that in the "homelessness"of Geworfenheite all

become strangers. Instead of annihilating strangerhood we have turned

PoeticsToday17:4 (Winter 1996) Copyright ? 1996 by the Porter Institute for Poetics andSemiotics.








Dessewffy* Strangerhood ithoutBoundaries 601

tion, is maintained until the moment of integrationinto the group.As longas the newcomer is regardedas a stranger,he cannot be a naturaland fully

incorporated part of the community or a member of a historical nation or

state. Metaphorically speaking, he is not entitled to own the motherland,

and indeed he is often literally cut off from this opportunity.The mere

possibility of the stranger's stepping out can severelyupset the individual

who is bound to the soil. The stranger is a strange mixture of nearness

and distance, for although he lives close to us, we are always haunted bythe nightmare of infinity embodied in his personality. He is a menacinghurricane that can turn our everydaylife, peacefully babbling in its gently

sloping bed, into an overflowingcataract.To find an outlet for this psychological tension, the rejectingcommunity

can resort to a whole range of traditional and horrifying measures that

lead to the stranger'sisolation and annihilation.When, after the declared

End of History, you look at the colored map of wars raging on the earth,the smaller fires that stand for ethnic disturbances(the bigger ones mark

wars) will remind you of the firelit nights of your childhood scout camps:there are tiny fires all around, the dream of the pyromaniac scoutmaster

seeming to have come true. The conservative sages of the Western worldconsider these to be the ephemeral, localized, and repressedflames that

repel the danger of the all-devastating Great Conflagration.

Although the negative definition of the stranger is not universal, it

nevertheless seems to be used more often than should be acceptable, for in

this case there are no morally acceptable proportions.Even though peace-ful encounters with the stranger outnumber the flames dotting the map,we cannot be proud of the position the strangeroccupies in the civilization

of the turn of the millennium.Apart

from thefield of gastronomy,wherethe foreignflavors of Thai, Chinese, French,or Ethiopiancuisinesare irre-

sistiblytempting, the general tendency is still to rejectotherness.Whether

we takeup arms and set out for insane expeditionsof "ethniccleansing,"or

merely curse the primitive inhabitants of neighboring countries over our

beer, the logic of rejectionis at work. Even if the Korean stores arenot per-

manently on fire in Los Angeles, racial tension persists;and the absence

of street fights in Hungary does not mean that public opinion regarding

Gypsies is devoid of prejudice. As the Hungarian writer Peter

Esterhazyremarked:"Aslightly anti-Semitic person"is a nonsensical expression.Simmel, aJew living in Berlin, the restless,scintillatingmetropolisof the

beginning of the century,was himself an expert on strangerhood, thoughhis main concern was with the host community and its possible reactions.

Despite his admired intellect, Simmel was refused a professorshipin Ber-

lin, experiencingfirsthandthe disadvantagesofrootlessness and the vicissi-








602 PoeticsToday17:4

tudes of the outcast,but also calling attention to another,surprisingfeature

that arises from the "lack of a past." In times when battles between rival

clans are pushed to extremes, the stranger,so despised and stigmatizedupto this point, is the one to get hold of positions of trust, since he does not

have his hands tied by the past and is not enmeshed in local history.Lewis A. Coser (1974)cites several historical examples of the trust put

in such a stranger. Although it is not geographical foreignness he deals

with, his examples are still relevant: the careers of the numerous lovers of

Louis XIV and of his two successors to the throne prove that those who

came from far below could bathe longer in glamor and could count on a

more abundant allowance. As social strangers,they belonged only to the

king, so that the king, caught in webs of courtly intrigue, could place abso-

lute trust in them.

The best-known example is no doubt that of the Jews in the German

courts in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Excluded from politi-cal action (since they were not allowed to carry weapons) and restrained

in economic life (since they were not entitled to own land), the Jews could

give aid to the monarch that he could not accept from anyone else. After

being deprived of one-half of the notion of "man" as defined by the age,theJew became an almost human homunculus and, even more important,could live under the monarch'sprotection.

In certain historical situationsand social systems, the functional impor-tance of strangersgrowsand they become the pillarsof a given society.For

example, in the dynamic, conquering period of the Ottoman empire in the

fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when the sultans enlarged not only the

territory of the empire but also their own internal sphere of power, they

defeated their potential internal rivals by relying almost solelyon rene-

gade Christians.The military elite, the Janissaries, kidnapped or boughtas children, belonged only to the sultan and, through lack of families or

other forms of integration, remained ever strangersand fighters.The ad-

ministrativemanagersof the empire were recruitedfromthe most talented

childrenwho, afterbeing educated in the schools of the palace, became the

leaders of the court and provinces and the main supportersof the sultan

in defeating the oligarchies. Of the forty-eight military leaders central to

Ottoman

history

between 1453and 1623, only five had Turkishorigins.Annihilation and elevation to a distinguishedposition are the two poles

of possible relation to the stranger.To illuminate the diversityof possibili-ties between these poles and to see to what extent these solutions charac-

terize a given society, let us refer to a peculiar case of sexual strangerhood.If there is one cultural phenomenon that surely cannot be limited to the

Western world, it is the division of all human beings into two biological








Dessewffy * Strangerhood without Boundaries 603

sexes. Although this division defines a fundamental and rarelyquestioned

segment of our identity, it takes no account of such extreme cases as her-

maphrodites.This particular case of strangerhood, though rare, is more than just a

curiosity;it is a real cultural challenge responded to variously by different

cultures. Preciselybecause it involves categories of identity and worldview

that are of the greatest significance, it provides us with important infor-

mation on the social responsesto strangerhoodand otherness. As Clifford

Geertz (1983)points out in his essay on the cultural aspects of common

sense, we find a fascinatingcontrast in the views of hermaphroditismtaken

by differentsocieties. Based on the research of Robert Edgerton, Geertz'sessay deals with three different cultures: the American, the Navaho, and

the Pokot.

In the case of the Americans-and European thought is no different-

the first commonsense reaction is horrified paralysis. How is the sex to

be indicated on a birth certificate? Is military service relevant? Can such

a person marry? How can "it" choose the right public bathroom? Such

questions arise, and in our rational Westernculture this is the point where

the mind boggles and dread numbs all responses. But our reaction ofteninvolves undisguisedforms of pressureas well, mostly through parental in-

fluence. The "illegitimate"individual who does not fit into our schemes of

comprehension is pressuredto choose, to adopt either a male or a female

role, to become at last a normal "he" or "she"like the rest of us. In late

modernity, where social control is achieved by the tabulation of bodies,the organizing rules of the table and the demands of conceptual clarityare much more important than the flesh that completes the Order;the un-

wanted, unfitting parts have to be removed-literally.The Navaho's attitude toward hermaphroditism-or in Geertz's termi-

nology, intersexuality-is quite different. Forthe Navaho, too, of course,

intersexualityis strangeand abnormal, but rather than evokinghorrorand

distrust, it inspires respect and even reverence. In Navaho society, inter-

sexuality is the divine symbol of fertility,well-being, and wealth. Thus, the

hermaphrodite is divinely blessed, chosen to be both a man and a womanin one person. The Navaho often choose their leaders from among the

hermaphrodites to ensure the reproduction and wealth of thesociety.

"Ifthere were no more left, the horses, sheep, and Navaho would all go. Theyare leaders,just like PresidentRoosevelt"(ibid.: 82).

The third group, the Pokot tribe of Kenya, takes a middle position.Their attitude toward intersexuality is neutral: they are not horrified byhermaphrodites, but do not regard them highly either. The Pokot thinkthat even God could make a mistake when creating the world, and re-








604 Poetics Today 17:4

gard intersexuals as useless, like a botched pot. As one discards a broken

pot, so intersexed children are sometimes killed, not with hatred but in an

offhanded way. In this culture, the place of the intersexual is defined by"its" functional uselessness, being unable to give birth to a child; nor can

"it" enjoy what the Pokot say is the most pleasant thing in the world-

sex. They are often allowed to live, but are simply regarded as not Pokot.

Interestingly enough, the Pokot hermaphrodites are relatively well-to-do

since they have neither the obligation to supporta family nor the ordinarydrains of kinship on their wealth.

What concerns us in the cross-cultural study of intersexuality is not to

illustrateafresh the irrationalityof Westernrationality.More significantly,

through such an approachto the alien we can develop an important argu-ment against the ideas of vulgar materialism, which overestimate social

and economic factors. The example above urges us to devote particularattention to cultural-conceptual elements as organizersof social behavior.

"[Common sense] is what the mind has filled with presuppositions-thatsex is a disorganizingforce, that sex is a regenerativegift, that sex is a prac-tical pleasure,"Geertz concludes. "God may have made the intersexuals,

but man has made the rest"(ibid.: 84).It would be economic reductionism to explain the various forms of

racism and nationalism simply as the result of poverty, of a competitionfor limited resources, without considering the worldview, the "order of

things," involving space and time and the system of cultural presuppo-sitions in its complexity. In the rational culture of Western Europe, this

system of presuppositionsdoes not promote the tolerant acceptance of the

stranger.The modern nation-state has spectacularlyfailed in this sphere;

it is enough to remember the French or the German Volkishmodel,the

former laying stress upon equal rights at the expense of otherness, and

the latter upon blood, giving priority to the German people and ignoringstate borders.The East European intelligentsia, stunned by the horrorsof

the post-Yugoslaviancrisis, is inclined to self-chastisement,with good rea-

son. It is important to see that this is a nationalist war, and as such it arises

from the essence of modernity.While I disagreewith those who claim that

the Habermas-Lyotarddebate was settled in Sarajevo,surelythis war does

notspeak

in

praise

of

modernity.We can see that the system of presuppositionsthat unite to form a whole

culture largely determines the relation to the alien. Let us now reconstruct

this encounter the other way around, from the stranger's point of view.

At first sight, the stranger simply does not exist. If we enter an unknown

group or another country, theyare the strangers,while we are ourselves as









we have always been. A large number of interactions are necessary for us

to give up after a while our own former knowledge and self: not to regardthemas strangersbut to see ourselves and our own world as unusual in the

new environment.Yet,no matter how we define or name the new situation,

it will differfundamentally from our former everydaylives in one respect:the lack of custom. We can no longer rely on the routines that help us

through the labyrinth of everyday communication; the automatisms that

smoothly control our behavior are no longer operative. The newcomer,from the moment he realizes that he has fallen into a foreignenvironment,becomes tense and alert: he must begin to learn, and this learning is ac-

companied by a seriouspersonal crisis.I mentioned earlier how irritatingthe otherness of the strangercan be

for the host community, since it questions the community's conceptual

apparatus. On his part, the stranger-unless he is a conqueror,which is

another story-cannot expel the hosts but instead must go througha pur-

gatory of uncertainties. Forwhen, during the process of learning, he real-

izes the constructednature of the system of rules in the given culture, the

clarityand uniquenessof his own former culturecollapse as well. The soci-

ologists'favoriteexample in the case of kinshiprelationsbearsmentioning:the strangerwho learns that in a given community the incest prohibitionis extended even to the third cousin may come to doubt the eternal truth

of his own incest prohibition. Similarly,seeing that others eat heartily the

flesh of hare and camel, pig and swarmingthings, theJew is liable to doubt

the teachings of Mosaic law (in Leviticus),which pronounce these impureand repellent. After becoming acquainted with a culture built on rational

efficiency and profit making, we can still follow other patterns with the

traditionalfamily as a basis, but we may no longer believe that they repre-sent the "order of things,"the only possible way.The stranger's reactions to this dissonance of consciousness can vary

between the extremes of intransigent opposition and overcompensatingassimilation. Yet in most cases, the process of learning continues, thoughin a sense it is bound to fail. As Alfred Schutz says in "The Stranger:An

Essay in Social Psychology":

Tobe sure, romthestranger'sointofview, oo,the cultureof theapproached

grouphas itspeculiarhistory,andthishistory s evenaccessibleo him.Butithas neverbecomean integralpartof his biography, s did the historyof hishome group.Only the waysin which his fathersand grandfathersivedbe-comeforeveryoneelementsof his ownwayof life. Gravesandreminiscencescanneitherbe transferred orconquered.Thestranger.. maybewillingandable to share the presentandfuturewith the approached roup n vivid and









immediateexperience; nderall circumstances, owever,he remains xcluded

fromsuchexperiences f itspast.Seenfrom hepointof view oftheapproached

group,he is a manwithouthistory. (1976: 6-97)

The learning of the unlearnable means much more than the inaccessibilityof the past: it is the general existential experience of the stranger.The fab-

ric of culturekeeps frayinginstead of wrappingprotectivelyaroundus; the

possibility of making mistakes exists in even the most perfect action. Re-

member the foreignerwho speaksa language with absolute precision and

subtlety, and yet betrays himself by his own perfect pronunciation, for it

is the clumsiness and negligence in the use of the native tongue that are

impossible for a foreigner to learn. He is caught in an unavoidable trap.If his behavior deviates from cultural norms, he will be stigmatized as a

stranger; if, however, he wants to acquire them, he will lose naturalness

and ease through the act of learning.

CreativityandStrangerhood

It would be very difficult to speak in general terms about the reaction of

the personality to the experience of being a stranger.From the viewpointof social productivity, the experience of strangerhood can lead to either

exceptional creativityor apatheticpassivity.Most actual cases of stranger-hood range between these extremes.

Let us take one example from the field of the social sciences, involvinga member of an extraordinarilysuccessful generation that arrived in the

United States in the late 1920S and 1930s. Alfred Schutz (1899-1959) repre-

sents the type of personality that respondsto foreignnesswith an explosion

of creativity.This choice may be surprising,for Schiitz is known to have

published only one book duringhis lifetime and, what is more, not even in

the United States but in Austria before his emigration. However, consid-

ering the fact that, except for his last few years, Schutz workedas a banker

and a part-time teacher, spending an hour each day playing the pianoand writing essays in his spare time, the three-volume CollectedWorkspub-lished in the late 196os and the massive collection of manuscripts edited

by Thomas Luckmanare evidence of an exceptional productivity.His cre-

ativity is not merely or primarilyquantitative,but original and deep. Theunique place Schutz's writings occupy in sociology is perhaps due to the

fact that their authorremaineda stranger-not only in America but within

the discipline as well.

Schutz, born in Vienna, became Husserl's student and the prospectiveinheritor of his university chair.Under the threat of the Anschluss, how-









ever, he emigrated first to Paris, then the following year to the United

States, where he taught at the New School for Social Research until the

end of his life. His intellectual career illustrates the pathbreakingbraveryof the stranger.

It was Schutz who mixed Husserl's phenomenology with Weber's cog-nitive sociology, or simply turned the phenomenology of science of ideas

into sociology, the study of the transcendent, floating ego into the analy-sis of the individual social consciousness, thus discoveringand developinga new field: the phenomenologist sociology of knowledge.This approach,

radically different from the classical Europeanone, was also rather shock-

ing to the emerging canonical American sociology.On his arrival in America, Schutz wrote a study of mainstreamAmeri-

can sociology, titled "Parsons'Theory of Social Action." Following an

intellectually fascinating,but in its tone very dry correspondencewith Par-

sons, he decided against publication, because of the antagonism revealed

in the controversy. Given Parsons's authority in contemporary Ameri-

can social science, this affair did not help to integrate him into his new

home. Most importantly,neither was the structuralist,functionalist trend

in American sociology favorable to the new interpretative sociology ofSchutz.

In a certain sense, Schutz cannot be regarded as a lonely hero since

this peculiar intermingling of originality, intellectual achievement, toler-

ance, and nonparticipation characterizesother thinkers of his generationas well. The postwar history of the American social sciences could hardlyhave been written without the contributions of Hannah Arendt, Eric

Vogelin, Leo Strauss, and Franz Neumann in political theory, Karl Witt-

fogel, Paul Lazarsfeld,and Pitrim Sorokin(a refugee from Lenin'sRussia)in sociology, orWilhelm Reich, BrunoBettelheim, and Eric Frommin psy-

chology. Members of the same generation, they all produced significantoeuvres and, because of their originality, became "odd man (or woman)out" in their own professions.

To present the other extreme, that of apathetic passivity,let us consider

a case studied by ErikErikson,a classic figure- and reformer of histori-

cal psychology,and himself a German emigre of the generationmentioned

above. Observing the adaptation strategiesof the Sioux Indians, Eriksondivided the inhabitants of the reservations into two groups, the offended

resisters and the opportunisticresisters(in Riesman 1950:151).Sioux of the

first group were seen by whites as incorrigible and problematic, while the

diligent "opportunists" ried to impress the whites by "overachievement."

Eriksonprimarily studied the children of the reservationfor whom, alongwith the obligation of attending a "white school," assimilation into white









culture was a must. Cultural adaptation clashed with Sioux tradition and

knowledge.

As David Riesman has pointed out, this conflict "drains out the emo-

tional energies of the child, thus he seems to be lazy. Therefore both the

resisters and the seeming opportunists show indifference towards white

culture and white politics" (1950: 95). What seems to be the Indian's lazi-

ness and idleness is in fact a painful and self-destructivemitigation of the

trauma of strangerhood.We have to make it clear that this approach, stressingthe aspect of intel-

lectual achievement, does not deal with cultural values as such, but with

the chances of assimilation and cooperation with the dominant culture.Who could say that Native American textiles and carvings inspired by the

horrors of ostracism and genocide are inferior to Thomas Mann's "Mario

the Magician,"or Picasso's Guernica?romthe standpoint of Western cul-

turalvalues, however,it is fair to saythat not all forms of strangerhoodlead

to creativework.The intellect's longing for categorical assertion would be

more easily met if this statement were reversed:all creativework is a form

of strangerhood. So we must return to the theme that we put aside in the

beginning, that of the genuine anxiety and internalized experience of es-

trangement.The universal experience of strangerhoodin late modernity can be re-

constructed in the metaphors that attempt to describe the isolation, soli-

tude, and alienation of the individual toward the end of the millennium.

The common characteristicof these metaphors is the reinterpretationof

strangerhood by way of reversal.Viewing the strangeras a characterwithin

ordinary existence and thus as a metaphor for society as a whole, we step

out of the conceptual frameworkin which the stranger is seen as a new-comer or a minority confronting the majority.

ZygmuntBauman (1993)describesthe internally controlled character of

classic modernity by using the image of the pilgrim, who knows where he

comes from but, having a sacred cause in view, is even more certain about

his destination. The meaning of his life is not simply found in the enjoy-ment of moving, sightseeing, and discovering foreign lands. Although he

might not refuse these worldly pleasures, the real meaning of his journey

is to reach the Holy Place. In the late modernity of the present day, a newmetaphor of the wandereris needed to grasp the characterof society: that

of the tourist.The tourist has nothing sacred in view, only places listed in

a guidebook. The web of these places forms an imaginary world dazzling

him with the illusion of experience. For the tourist, the world is a sourceof

sensual pleasures,mouthwateringflavors,spectacularevents, and camera-

ready monuments: pure enjoyment without the slightest intention of par-









ticipation or the burdenof responsibility.It is freedom, in Simmel'sfamous

words, the freedom of the "physicallynear, spirituallydistant" alien from

the obligation of turning physical proximity into spiritual identification.

"Freedomfrom moral duty is paid for in advance;the packagetourkit con-

tains the preventivemedicine against pangs of conscience next to the pills

preventing air sickness.... Nowhere as much and as radically as in the

tourist mode is the uniquenessof the actor disavowed, erased, blotted out"

(Bauman 1993: 242). The tourist drowns the natives in numbers, makingthem all alike. The pleasures of the fantasy world, staked out by the busi-

ness professionalsof tourism and the dream factories of the media, can in

no way be disturbed;in an ideal state one's entire life would be a delirious

holiday. It would be an overstatementto say that in sociological terms the

entire world has turned into Nescafe-travelers,but as the ever rising star

of the tourism industryand the publicity of commercialized desires show,

the tourist has become a legitimate metaphor for our age.In this touristicworld there is not much possibility for creativework. Of

course,judging this statement trueor false depends upon what we mean bycreativework. It is enough to consider the world of science, that undoubt-

edly limited sphere of the intellect, to find strikingcounterarguments.To

horrifyhis readers, the mathematician and social historian Fokasz Nikosz

(1993) loves to point out that in the last three hundred years, the num-

ber of scientificjournals has doubled every fifteen years with monotonous

regularity.This process, leading up to the present, obviously contradicts

the statement above-provided, of course, we agree with the quantitativeview that identifies intellectual achievement with the length of the list of

publications. As I have pointed out in connection with Schutz's lifework,

it would be more correct to counterbalance quantity with the depth and

originalityof thought, although thisproposal is more a dreamthan a possi-

bility.But here, with fearsomepower over the text in my hands, by creative

workI mean only a contributionto the imaginaryconstruction of the intel-

lect and "addinga piece to the puzzle of the world."I do not think that this

definitionrequiresfurther elaboration:first,because it might be impossibleand second, because it is not of decisive importance. Our concern is not

with the nature of intellectual value but with the creationof those values, in

other words, not with the evaluation of results but with the process itself. Itis not importantwhether someone values Mozart'smusic more or less than

Salieri's; in the case of genuine creation, the creativeprocess is identical.

This sameness leads us back to strangerhoodin the touristicworld, for

the morality of a creative person is fundamentally different from that of a

tourist. Creativework, in the sense in which I use the word, can only be ac-

complished aftertaking responsibilityfor other people, for the world. The









much-emphasized solitude of creation stands opposed to tourism, even if

the created work is the tourist's apotheosis. Since the creator wishes to

speak about and to other people, she must first step on the walkway of re-

sponsibility to which the tourist consciously gives a wide berth. However,

the strangerhood of the creative person cannot be grasped only in rela-

tion to the tourist.The process of creation is nothing less than casting off

the roles and conventions that help us get along in our everydaylives. The

creatoris a lonely ropedancer,never seeing the end of the rope but feeling

it, knowing the direction and the right steps. Anyone who dares to tackle

the ropedance of creation becomes a stranger,even to himself.

It is not iterativityor reproducibilitybut the urge to step out of roles and

give up identities that makes FernandoPessoa, the Lusitanianmiracle, the

archetype of creation at the close of the millennium. As the Hungarian

poet Gyorgy Somly6 writes: "In Portuguese pessoameans person, man,

someone, anyone.... It is the most general and most abstract word for

human being, in which individual, genus, and species are integrated.The

original meaning of the Latinpersona-mask- also vibrates deep down in

it. If a nomen, which is really an omen, were ever to exist, then the name

of the most peculiarpoet of the century surelyis one" (1969:173;my trans-lation). Pessoa was born in 1888 in Lisbon but spent his youth in South

Africa; he spoke perfect English, and wrote his firstpoems in it. Since he

did not want to give up literary independence, he worked as a clerk,just

like Kafka. After returninghome he wrote poems in Portugueseuntil, on

March 8, 1914,something happened that is called a "Cartesianmoment"

in modern poetry.Wanting to play a joke on a friend, he tried to write a

poem in another persona. His attempt was nearly unsuccessfuluntil, one

day, "he stepped to a tall table .. ., put a piece of paper in front of him,and startedto write standing, as he usually did whenever he had the time.

And he wrote in some kind of a trance more than thirty poems in a row,

in the name of another poet who appearedfully armed within him"(ibid.:

176).The author of the poems, the resigned philosopher Alberto Careiro,

was soon followed by the epicurean Ricardo Reis, fond of antique forms,

and Alvaro Campos, the poet of free verse recalling Whitman's style and

devotion to civilization. These are not poems written under pseudonyms.

As Pessoasaid,

heonly gave

form to theheteronyms

that had long existed

in himself. "The personality broke into four parts and behold, these did

not become four quartersbut four different,entire personalitieswith their

own biographies, aesthetics, worldviews, styles, syntaxes, and moreover

with their own methods of writing"(ibid.: 177).The poet of modernist free

verse, Alvaro Campos, exchanged the tall table for the devil's piano, the

typewriter. Not only the ecstatic moments of creation, but also the con-

tinuous cohabitation with the otherness emerging from the depths of per-









sonality, define the essence of Pessoa'sexistence, as opposed to the tourist

society which molds the strangerinto a nameless, impersonal mass. "This

does not mean that 'nothing human can be alien' to a human being, but

that the human being is identical to anything human. The notion of 'not

alien' can soften the forming of judgments, can encourage forgivenessand

wriggling utofresponsibility;hilethe notionof 'identity'mphasizesheuniversal

responsibilityfeachandeveryman"(ibid.: 178;my emphasis).

Heroically guarding the integrity of personality by entirely giving it up

through this "explosionof the self,"Fernando Pessoa becomes a cult figurefor the next thousand years, in which the primary question of the increas-

ingly important politics of identity is: How can the unity of identity bemaintained in the flood of roles that has become our destiny?

MoralityandStrangerhood

Looking back from our not very promising situation on all the horrors of

the century, the greatest achievement of humanity may appear to be the

mere fact of survival,which earlier remainedunnoticed, natural.The most

archaic technique for enduring the horrorsis supposedly the division intoUs and Them, in which We, the good and innocent, not only regardhelp-

lessly the incomprehensible, horrible deeds committed by the evil Them,

but also free ourselves from any responsibility for the psychological bur-

dens of crime and the ghosts of punishment. This mechanism can work in

two directions. On the one hand, we tend to attach a positive ontologicalstatus to the notion of our own group, often definable only in contrast to

the stranger. Among the building blocks that make up the national iden-

tities of the small Central European countries, charming examples canbe found of this phenomenon. Lacking social welfare and effectiveness,

national identity can be based on such elements as the "plainness"of the

Great Hungarian Plain or the "patriotic spirit"of homemade spirits, the

idea of being a world power in sportsor of having blood ties with nonexis-

tent empires. The strangercan only come into this picture as a retarded,

primitive boor.

On the other hand, if "our"group has committed undeniable crimes,

we try to projectthem onto anothergroup;in addition to the victim Them,we create the evil Them, so that we can stay clean. A sad example is the

lack of shame and responsibilityamong Hungarians for the 1944 deporta-tion of HungarianJews and Gypsies. Gyorgy Csepeli's researchdescribes

it as one of the weak points of Hungarian national identity:

Hungariangendarmes oundedup, beforethe Hungarianpeople'seyes,hun-dredsof thousands f their ellowcitizens ntoghettos,and then crammedhem








612 Poetics Today17:4

intowagonscarryinghemtowardcertaindeath.The questionhas beenaskedin severalpollswho is to blame for thisunpardonablerime, n the opinionof

Hungarianpeopletoday.The majorityconsistentlynsistson disclaiming e-sponsibility,ayingthatNazi Germanyand the Germanarmy occupying he

countrywere to blame.They reject he opinionthat the Hungarian hurchesand Hungarianpublicopinioncouldhave done muchmore to preventthis

enormousnational hame romhappening.AdmiralHorthy,heRegentof the

country,who hadkepthispositionduring he Occupation, implyblamedFatein hismemoirs. (Forthcoming; ytranslation)

There are numerous anthropological data-consider, for example, the

structuralistresearch of Mary Douglas (1966)-that are evidently appli-cable to our century's culture of global modernity. Sociology, the science

par excellence of modernity, used the metaphor of glorious developmentas a set of blinders. "The history of class struggle,""the process of ratio-

nalization," "the process of civilization," "the conversion from Gemein-

schaft o Gesellschaft",nd "the development of organic solidarity"were all

infamous emblems manufactured by sociology, dependent on victorious

modernity, and proudly worn by those in the field. (From this point of

view, the pessimism of individual classic authors-especially Weber-andtheir personal attitudes toward modernization were irrelevant. What was

important was what modernity adopted from their worksto serve its own

myth.) Modernization's perception is morally that of a rise out of barba-

rism, and it sees the process of civilization as a step-by-step movement

from bad to good. In this schema, reincarnations of evil appear as the

intrusions of barbarity,as wounds left untreatedby the processof modern-

ization, which can be salved by the imposition of a more modern, more

civilized system. Perhapsthis explains the hysterical attempts to deny themodernizing featuresof the Stalinist regime.

The first event of earthshaking importance that interfered with this

sociological and historical-philosophical vision of modernity was the

Holocaust and its modern organizational, technological, administrative,

and industrial nature (Bauman 1988).The period following WorldWarII,

with its environmentalpollution, and above all the irrationalityof the arms

race and the nuclear arsenal left behind by the Cold War, have led to a

strengtheningof the environmental movement and a

rethinkingof values

that Inglehart (1977)has called the "silent revolution." Perhaps a better

term would be counterrevolution,or this revolution has led to a repressionof

modernity's revolutionarymutations and values, a refusal of the rational-

ization of growth and conquest. But even if, with the exception of a few

irredentist conservativesand lost utopians, very few people still see moder-

nity as a radiant angel, we are far from being free of its moral effects.The








Dessewffy? Strangerhood ithoutBoundaries 613

simple reversalof belief systemsis no help: the claim that evil is embodied

by modernism and "progress" s just as wrong as belief in the "goodness"

of modernism. Under the circumstances of our fin de millennium, those

who sail throughthe straitsinto the next millennium will not be those who

continually search for evil in all its guises outside, among "others,"among"them." It is historical philosophy, not history itself, that has come to an

end. We can no longer look to the simple workingof logic for the creatingforce of events. And certainlywe can no longer-for the sakeof history or

to change the spiritof the world--simply attempt to adjusthuman values.

All this, naturally,does not mean that "good"and "evil"will cease to

exist; it simply means that we cannot use the Us and Them schema any

longer, and must instead begin to think in terms of the dichotomy between

what is possible and what exists. This duality is less comforting than its

predecessor, for it bears little promise of psychic relief. It does not allow

us to step out of history by simply saying that the grand inquisitors, SS

campguards,or communist commandos were fanatically insane or rotten

with cynicism. On the contrary,this duality forces us to accept that those

capable of monstrous evil are not Them and do not belong to a separate

species, but are people like Us. To put it more precisely,they are what wemight have become under different circumstances.The sickening, ravingevil we see around us in time and space lies dormant within each of us.

Although the chances for the expansion of this worldview are ratherlow,there is one factor that supportsit: the identity politics closely linkedto the

problem of strangerhood.The way of living characteristic of late moder-

nity imposes more and more roles upon us. We have to learn various roles

we neverwanted to: we drive cars and, clumsy penmen that we are,we use

computers. These are not mere activities but compulsory roles: the com-puterusermust buy software,the car owner must talk to the mechanic. We

have to live up to different role expectations at political meetings, in our

families, at work, or playing football in a park.Because of the increase of cultural consumption and the globalization

of its structure,we have become members of various symbolic commu-

nities. This plurality of roles makes metamorphosis an everydaypersonal

experience. Even if sparedthe change into a monstrousinsect, we wake up

to find ourselves in new roles. This role explosion, in a sense undoubtedlyfrightening, is also promising in two respects. First, it is hard to imagine a

man playing all his roles with the same skill--being a wonderful father, a

brilliant artist, an excellent athlete, and a witty politician, yet at the same

time knowinghow to fix a leaky faucet. Forthis reasonwe all have to learn

the role of the loser as well. This recognition can lead to frustrationand

hatred,but also to empathyfor the weak. Second, realizingthe mosaic-like








614 Poetics Today 17:4

complexity of our own identities, the potential strangerin ourselves, mayenable us to pass over the dimension of differencethat constitutesstranger-

hood; recognizing the potential strangerin ourselves,we will then be ableto attach importance to similarities, the aspects of our identities throughwhich we can cooperate (Suleiman 1994). One might askwhether it is nec-

essary for a Serbian who meets a Croatian schoolmate to define himself

by his national identity, his first reaction being the impulse to kill. What

makes him choose this role from among the bulging bag of identity com-

ponents, ratherthan the part of the father playing with his daughters, the

tipsyjazz fan, the Volkswagenowner hunting for needed parts, the enthu-

siast recording on videotape the episodes of Miami Viceeach Wednesday,or the Madonna fan? All of these roles can be his as well as the other's.

Are we predestinedto kill or is there a possibilityfor us to breakaway from

modernity's violence-breeding division between Us and Them? For us,

guests in the carnival of roles of late modernity, the latterpossibilitymightnot be completely illusory.We cannot be certain whether the chances of a

positive attitude toward the strangerare greater today than in the last fin

de siecle, but the consequences surely are. This time we cannot afford to

miss the opportunity.

References

Bauman, Zygmunt

1988 "Sociology after the Holocaust" BritishJournalofSociology9: 496-97.

1993PostmodernthicsOxford:Blackwell).Coser,LewisA.

1974Greedynstitutions:atternsfUndividedommitmentNewYork:FreePress).

Csepeli,GyorgyforthcomingRegiondlistok--magyarsakutca.

Douglas,Mary1966Purity ndDangerLondon:RoutledgeandKeganPaul).

Geertz,Clifford

1983"CommonSenseas a CulturalSystem,"n LocalKnowledge,3-93 (NewYork:Basic

Books).

Ingelhart,Ronald

1977TheSilentRevolutionPrinceton,NJ:PrincetonUniversityPress).Nikosz,Fokasz

1993"Lattuk-ehogyjon'," ReplikaNovember 11-12): 2-21.

Riesman,David1950TheLonely rowdNewHaven,CT:YaleUniversityPress).

Schitz, Alfred

1976"TheStranger:An Essay n SocialPsychology,"n Collected orks,: 91-106(The

Hague:Martinus).Simmel,Georg

1964"The Stranger,"n TheSociologyf Georgimmel,ranslated nd editedby KurtH.

Wolff,402-7 (NewYork:FreePress).









Somly6, Gyorgy

1979 "Fernando Pessoa: The Four-Faced Poet," afterword to That AncientAngst[Hun-

garian] (Europa: Budapest).Suleiman, Susan R.

1994"The Politics of Postmodernism after the Wall;or,What Do We Do When the Ethnic

Cleansing Starts,"in RiskingWhoOneIs: Encounters ith Contemporaryrt andLiterature,

225-42 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).

strangehood e sociologia do conhecimento

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