《我們門口的陌生人》是鮑曼有感于歐洲難民危機之作,但更適合放在他長期關切的陌生人議題的大框架內進行討論。著作展現了流動的現代性如何在全球范圍內既制造出涌向西方世界的流離失所的難民,也制造出西方世界內部彷徨困頓的本土陌生人,使陌生人成為當代生存的典型現象。鮑曼指出陌生人危機是當代社會矛盾交匯的癥候,各級治理術即便深入到生命政治的層面,也只能激化矛盾而非解決問題。陌生人危機的出路何在?鮑曼在著作中提示了多種途徑,但無法提交集體實踐意義上真正有效的方案,這也從一個側面反映了當代批判理論的共同困境。

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.