Bonnie Honig examines the relationship between foreigners and democratic nations, proposing that foreigners may solve problems for regimes by legitimizing the law, resolving the paradox of democratic power, proving a nation's choice-worthiness, and enacting consent. However, these contributions are ambivalent, as they can paradoxically challenge and undermine the very nations which they have the potential of strengthening. Honig is ultimately optimistic about this contradiction, proposing that through ambivalence, foreigners can strengthen the democratic politics of a nation as well as encourage a "de-nationalization" of democracy. In order to justify this unresolved state of foreigners as the very thing which allows them to solve problems for nations, Honig promotes a gothic reading of political theory-one which would not seek harmonious resolutions but would leave room for suspicion and a re-examination of relationships. Thus she urges a constant re-negotiation of the relationship between nationals and foreigners, and concurrently the relationship between citizens and the state.

The argument's greatest strength is that it goes beyond a simple inclusion/exclusion binary in exploring the relationship between nations and the other, and is especially interesting when the author promotes an ambivalent understanding of this relationship. Ultimately, she believes that foreigners have much to give democracy by resolving certain conflicts between citizens and the state, while also sowing the seeds of suspicion that are healthy for a democratic regime.

Honig begins her analysis by examining a variety of myths about national foundation or liberation at the hands of foreigners. She asks: what work is done by these stories, and what effect do they have on democracy? She posits that these stories arise out of "anxieties endemic to liberal democracy" such as the paradox of democratic power, the alienness of the law, the need for a sense of choice-worthiness, and the distance of consent, all of which generate an ambivalence that is projected onto the foreigner (13). While this may be the case, her method is suspect, as she arrives at these conclusions by way of a seemingly haphazard review of mythologies that come from many different cultures under very different political systems in order to show how foreigners resolve contradictions that are perhaps endemic only to liberal nations. The transition from literary review to policy recommendation and then back to literary criticism is also a bit uncomfortable.

Texts which Honig analyzes include the films "The Wizard of Oz" and "Shane," as well as Rousseau's Social Contract and Freud's Moses and Monotheism. In these texts, it is precisely the founder's foreignness that enables them to liberate the nation, as they can objectively judge the needs of a people. The founder's foreignness also gives them the power to impose a new law, as this imposition is necessarily violent and paradoxical in a regime based upon consent. Through the primary imposition of law, the foreign lawgiver places the people in a non-arbitrary framework, and then leaves, ensuring that the violence is confined to that moment and does not remain within the new nation. However, the people that are liberated are infantilized in this story, indicating a paradox-how are these people to rule if they cannot liberate themselves?

Honig then examines the myth of the immigrant as founder in the Book of Ruth, proposing that Ruth's foreignness is what enables her to furnish the Israeli people with a rejuvenated and domesticated law. As Ruth chooses the Israelites as her people, she reinforces the chosen-ness of the Israelites and the legitimacy of Judaism. Her choice of the alien law that was violently imposed upon the Jews by the foreign Moses also domesticates this law. However, Ruth must always be problematic, as her foreignness can never be absolved if her choice of the Israelites is to have any meaning.

Honig then examines the archetype of the successful immigrant in American Exceptionalist literature. She understands these as myths which generate national rejuvenation, democratic legitimation, and non-violent domestication of the law. The immigrant re-enforces the choice-worthiness of America while domesticating the law by consenting to it, a choice which those born under its rule are denied but enact vicariously through the foreigner. However, in this contemporary situation the foreigner is also problematic. Some may become citizens out of desperation or greed, not because of a real dedication to American principals, giving rise to suspicion on part of the domestic populace as to the nation's own choice-worthiness.

Honig thus distinguishes between the "giving" and the "taking" foreigner, proposing that "taking" is the very thing that foreigners have to give democratic regimes. By "taking" from the nation, foreigners are "taking" rights rather than waiting for them to be granted, "a quintessentially democratic process (99)." This becomes a narrative of democracy and of de-nationalization in the context of universal rights.

This relationship between the taking foreigner who would strengthen democracy is not without its own ambiguities, which Honig explicitly does not resolve, instead suggesting a gothic reading of democratic theory. A gothic reading would press the reader to attend to the uncertainty of the relationship between a regime, a nation, and the foreigner without necessarily seeking a harmonious resolution. Instead, the reader examines what purposes the ambivalence serves through seeking to understand the dynamics of the relationship, which may indeed be fraught with troubling questions and paradoxes. This gothic understanding allows for contradictions rather than forcing the division of groups into binary oppositions, allowing for a healthy suspicion of power and a re-inauguration of democratic politics. While it is this advocacy of ambivalence which shines through at the end-pushing political theorists to embrace the contradictions posed by foreign presence as a means of rejuvenating the nation and democracy-it seems out of place in her book. Indeed, while she had been true to attending to the ambiguous relationship between foreigners and the nations which they presumably save, her instructions for reading political theory through this lens of ambiguity do not flow with the rest of the book, and the move towards literary criticism is less helpful than her earlier discussion of the "taking immigrant."

Ellennita Muetze Hellmer, The University of Chicago

Back to top