Being a Stranger

"Être étranger, disait George Tabori, "n'est pas mauvais". Effectivement: non seulement ce n'est pas mauvais, c'est en plus inévitable. Inévitable, car que l'on reste chez soi ou que l'on parte voir d'autres horizons, on doit prendre conscience tôt ou tard d'être des apatrides dans le monde qui nous est donné."

Imre Kertész, L'Holocauste comme culture, 2009, p. 147-148.

"In one of the youthful writings of Aristotle, the Protrepticus, the life of the thinker is compared to the life of the stranger. (...) Being a stranger, that is to say "not-feeling-at-home“, is today a condition common to many, an inescapable and shared condition. So then, those who do not feel at home, in order to get a sense of orientation and to protect themselves, must turn to the "common places", or the most general categories of the linguistic intellect; in this sense, strangers are always thinkers. (...) Those "without a home" have no choice but to behave like thinkers: not in order for them to learn something about biology or advanced mathematics, but because they turn to the most essential categories of the abstract intellect in order to protect themselves from the blows of random chance, in order to take refuge from contigency and from the unforseen."

Paolo Virno, Publicness of the Intellect. Non-State Public Sphere and the Multitude, p. 2-3.