This article revisits and revives the concept of ‘the Stranger’ in theorising international relations by discussing how this figure appears and what role it plays in the politics of (collective) identity. It shows that this concept is central to poststructuralist logic discussing the political production of discourses of danger and to scholarship on ontological security but remains subdued in their analytical narratives. Making the concept of the Stranger explicit is important, we argue, because it directs attention to ambivalence as a source of anxiety and grasps the unsettling experiences that political strategies of conquest or conversion, including practices of securitisation, respond to. Against this backdrop, the article provides a nuanced reading of the Stanger as a form of otherness that captures ambiguity as a threat to modern conceptions of identity, and outlines three scenarios of how it may be encountered in interstate relations: the phenomenon of ‘rising powers’ from the perspective of the hegemon, the dissolution of enmity (overcoming an antagonistic relationship), and the dissolution of friendship (close allies drifting apart). Aware that recovering the concept is not simply an academic exercise but may feed into how the term is used in political discourse and how practitioners deal with ‘strange encounters’, we conclude by pointing to alternative readings of the Stranger/strangeness and the value of doing so.

中文翻译：

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矛盾状态：恢复国际关系中“陌生人”的概念

本文通过讨论“陌生人”是如何出现的以及它在（集体）身份政治中扮演的角色，重新审视并重提了“陌生人”在国际关系理论中的概念。它表明，这一概念对于讨论危险话语的政治生产的后结构主义逻辑和关于本体论安全的学术来说是核心，但在他们的分析叙述中仍然受到抑制。我们认为，将陌生人的概念明确化很重要，因为它将矛盾心理作为焦虑的根源，并抓住了征服或皈依的政治策略（包括证券化实践）所应对的令人不安的经历。在这样的背景下，这篇文章对 Stanger 作为一种他者形式进行了细致入微的解读，将模糊性视为对现代身份概念的威胁，并概述了它在国家间关系中如何遇到的三种情景： 从视角看“崛起的大国”现象霸权，敌意的解散（克服敌对关系），友谊的解散（亲密的盟友分道扬镳）。意识到恢复这个概念不仅仅是一种学术练习，而且可能会影响该术语在政治话语中的使用方式以及从业者如何处理“奇怪的遭遇”，我们最后指出了对陌生人/奇怪的替代阅读和做的价值所以。霸权视角下的“崛起大国”现象，敌意消散（克服敌对关系），友谊消散（亲密盟友分道扬镳）。意识到恢复这个概念不仅仅是一种学术练习，而且可能会影响该术语在政治话语中的使用方式以及从业者如何处理“奇怪的遭遇”，我们最后指出了对陌生人/奇怪的替代阅读和做的价值所以。霸权视角下的“崛起大国”现象，敌意消散（克服敌对关系），友谊消散（亲密盟友分道扬镳）。意识到恢复这个概念不仅仅是一种学术练习，而且可能会影响该术语在政治话语中的使用方式以及从业者如何处理“奇怪的遭遇”，我们最后指出了对陌生人/奇怪的替代阅读和做的价值所以。