Review of Sara Ahmed's "Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality" (London: Routledge, 2000)

Abstract

Routledge's Transformations series has produced a number of interesting volumes in recent years on post-colonial theory and feminism. Sara Ahmed's Strange Encounters is a welcome and stimulating contribution to this list. Whilst traditionally post-colonialism has concerned itself with the concept of 'The Other' in relationship to the ontological status of the subject, Ahmed focuses rather on the substantially more fluid concept of the 'stranger'. Through the prism of feminist and post-colonial discourses the book explores the tensions and contradictions implicit within the instrumentalisation of 'stangerness' in the production of embodiment and community.