In the context of debates on ontological risk, ‘border work’, and the transformative potentials of encounter, the paper offers a critical examination of the workings of discomfort to ask what is at stake in both its embrace and refusal. Focusing in particular on the deliberate production of discomfort and its perceived political, ethical, and pedagogical potential, the paper draws on ethnographic research on ‘staged encounter’ programmes, which are designed to push people out of their ‘comfort zone’ in order to address conflictual issues and forms of discrimination. Through such an account, the paper traces the different forms that discomfort takes – bodily, ontological, personal, collective – and examines their implications and differential affects as they variously open up and close down the possibility for social transformation.

在关于本体论风险，“边界工作”和遭遇变革潜力的辩论的背景下，本文对不适的工作方式进行了批判性研究，以询问其接受和拒绝的风险所在。该论文特别着重于故意产生的不适感及其可察觉的政治，伦理和教学潜力，该研究借鉴了“阶段性相遇”计划的人种学研究，旨在将人们赶出他们的“舒适区”，以解决冲突问题和歧视形式。通过这样的描述，本文追溯了不适感的不同形式-身体，本体论，个人，集体–并研究了它们的含义和不同的影响，因为它们以不同的方式打开和关闭了社会转型的可能性。