流动的现代性中的陌生人危机——评鲍曼的《我们门口的陌生人》

A Review of Zygmunt Bauman’s Strangers at Our Door: Stranger in Crisis in the Liquid Modernity

《我们门口的陌生人》是鲍曼有感于欧洲难民危机之作,但更适合放在他长期关切的陌生人议题的大框架内进行讨论。著作展现了流动的现代性如何在全球范围内既制造出涌向西方世界的流离失所的难民,也制造出西方世界内部彷徨困顿的本土陌生人,使陌生人成为当代生存的典型现象。鲍曼指出陌生人危机是当代社会矛盾交汇的症候,各级治理术即便深入到生命政治的层面,也只能激化矛盾而非解决问题。陌生人危机的出路何在?鲍曼在著作中提示了多种途径,但无法提交集体实践意义上真正有效的方案,这也从一个侧面反映了当代批判理论的共同困境。

It would be more rewarding to read Zygmunt Bauman's Strangers at Our Door,written as a response to the refugee crisis in Europe,in the context of Bauman's evolving conceptualization of the stranger.Bauman demonstrates how the liquid modernity as the global force is turning both the refugees outside the door and the insiders in their own land into strangers to their fate.Since stranger crisis is the symptom of the disrupting social forces,all the current measures in governmentality,even if being implemented on the dimension of biopolitics,cannot address the crisis without further intensifying it.Bauman suggests several ways out of the crisis;however,these solutions are more visionary in nature,sharing with contemporary critical theories the predicament of how to empower collective action.