Of Hospitality: Anne Dufourmantelle Invites Jacques Derrida to Respond (Cultural Memory in the Present) - Softcover

Derrida, Jacques; Dufourmantelle, Anne

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0804734062 ISBN 13: 9780804734066

Publisher: Stanford University Press, 2000

Synopsis

These two lectures by Jacques Derrida, "Foreigner Question" and "Step of Hospitality/No Hospitality," derive from a series of seminars on "hospitality" conducted by Derrida in Paris, January 1996. His seminars, in France and in America, have become something of an institution over the years, the place where he presents the ongoing evolution of his thought in a remarkable combination of thoroughly mapped-out positions, sketches of new material, and exchanges with students and interlocutors.

As has become a pattern in Derrida's recent work, the form of this presentation is a self-conscious enactment of its content. The book consists of two texts on facing pages. "Invitation" by Anne Dufourmantelle appears on the left (an invitation that of course originates in a response), clarifying and inflecting Derrida's "response" on the right. The interaction between them not only enacts the "hospitality" under discussion, but preserves something of the rhythms of teaching.

The volume also characteristically combines careful readings of canonical texts and philosophical topics with attention to the most salient events in the contemporary world, using "hospitality" as a means of rethinking a range of political and ethical situations. "Hospitality" is viewed as a question of what arrives at the borders, in the initial surprise of contact with an other, a stranger, a foreigner. For example, Antigone is revisited in light of the question of impossible mourning; Oedipus at Colonus is read via concerns that also apply to teletechnology; the trial of Socrates is brought into conjunction with the televised funeral of François Mitterrand.

About this title

About the Author

Jacques Derrida was Director of Studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, and Professor of Humanities at the University of California, Irvine. Stanford has published eight of his books, most recently a joint publication of The Instant of My Death (Maurice Blanchot) and Demeure: Fiction and Testimony (Derrida). Anne Dufourmantelle is a philosopher and psychoanalyst in Paris and the author of La vocation prophétique de la philosophie.

From the Back Cover

"Of Hospitality provides us with a glimpse of Jacques Derrida as not only the brilliant thinker and writer readers have long admired but as the masterful lecturer and pedagogue his students have long known. . . . Of Hospitality should find a welcome audience not only among faithful readers of Derrida but among all those who are open enough to hear the knock at their borders or their doors."--L'Esprit Créateur
"Both lectures [in the book] deserve credit not only for representing a significant step in Derrida's reflection on ethics and politics but also for prompting us to begin our own deconstructive work and rethink our identity."--Symploke

From the Inside Flap

These two lectures by Jacques Derrida, "Foreigner Question" and "Step of Hospitality/No Hospitality," derive from a series of seminars on "hospitality" conducted by Derrida in Paris, January 1996. His seminars, in France and in America, have become something of an institution over the years, the place where he presents the ongoing evolution of his thought in a remarkable combination of thoroughly mapped-out positions, sketches of new material, and exchanges with students and interlocutors.
As has become a pattern in Derrida's recent work, the form of this presentation is a self-conscious enactment of its content. The book consists of two texts on facing pages. "Invitation" by Anne Dufourmantelle appears on the left (an invitation that of course originates in a response), clarifying and inflecting Derrida's "response" on the right. The interaction between them not only enacts the "hospitality" under discussion, but preserves something of the rhythms of teaching.
The volume also characteristically combines careful readings of canonical texts and philosophical topics with attention to the most salient events in the contemporary world, using "hospitality" as a means of rethinking a range of political and ethical situations. "Hospitality" is viewed as a question of what arrives at the borders, in the initial surprise of contact with an other, a stranger, a foreigner. For example, Antigone is revisited in light of the question of impossible mourning; Oedipus at Colonus is read via concerns that also apply to teletechnology; the trial of Socrates is brought into conjunction with the televised funeral of Francois Mitterrand.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

OF HOSPITALITY

By Anne Dufourmantelle, Rachel Bowlby

Stanford University Press

Copyright © 2000 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8047-3406-6

Contents

Translator's Note..........................................................
ix
INVITATION Anne Dufourmantelle............................................
2
FOREIGNER QUESTION Jacques Derrida........................................
3
STEP OF HOSPITALITY / NO HOSPITALITY Jacques Derrida......................
75
Notes......................................................................
157

Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Invitation

Anne Dufourmantelle

"An act of hospitality can only be poetic."—Jacques Derrida

It is Derrida's poetic hospitality that I would like toinvoke in these pages, including the difficulty of givingits due to the night—to that which, within a philosophicalkind of thinking, does not belong to the orderof the day, the visible, and memory. This is to try tocome close to a silence around which discourse is ordered,and that a poem sometimes discovers, but alwayspulls itself back from unveiling in the very movementof speech or writing. If a part of night is inscribed inlanguage, this is also language's moment of effacement.

This nocturnal side of speech could be called obsession.A forger can imitate a painter's brush stroke or awriter's style and make the difference between themimperceptible, but he will never be able to make hisown their obsession, what forces them to be alwaysgoing back toward that silence where the first imprintsare sealed. Derrida's obsession, in this philosophicalnarrative woven around that fine theme of hospitality,takes its time in drawing the contours of an impossible,illicit geography of proximity. A proximity that wouldnot be the opposite of an elsewhere come from outsideand surrounding it, but "close to the close," that unbearableorb of intimacy that melts into hate. If we cansay that murder and hate designate everything that excludescloseness, it is insofar as they ravage from withinan original relationship to alterity. The hostis respondsto hospitality in the way that the ghost recalls himself tothe living, not letting them forget. To the pacified reasonof Kant, Derrida opposes the primary haunting ofa subject prevented by alterity from closing itself off inits peacefulness.

When Derrida reads Sophocles, Joyce, Kant,Heidegger, Celan, Levinas, Blanchot, or Kafka, he notonly accompanies their texts, giving them a second echo,he "obsesses" them with the theme he is working on, andwhich thus acts like a photographic developer. Witnessthat moment where, in a seminar commentary on thefinal scenes of Oedipus at Colonus based on the ideaof the hospitality given to death and the dead, Derridastresses its absolute contemporaneity, while the necessityof that strange "visitation" of Sophocles' tragedy is imposedon his listeners. The summons he addresses todead or living authors to roam around with him on theedges of a theme doesn't make him turn his back on"the matters of urgency that assail us at this end-of-millennium,"as he puts it himself. On the contrary, hesupports confronting them.

There is in this seminar a precision that can beheard. And that comes, I think, from the intimateagreement of thought and speech—their rhythmicagreement—and from the thematic analysis which isthe obsession of philosophical reflection; but also fromDerrida's taking it to the limit when he works over aconcept up to the point of its turning back toward theenigma that bears it.

That is why it seemed important to us to convey afragment of the seminars without altering anything.In them you hear that singular rhythm of Derrida'sspoken reflecting; so different from the writing, ofwhich he is a patient artisan. And we thought it feasibleto single out two seminars because the whole problematicof hospitality was already present in that "enclave"(as a work is included in each of its fragments),as was also the spacing of measured violence and friendshipthat gives this thinking its uniqueness, its particulargenius.

Derrida has himself spoken of the difficulty of takingaccount of the open speech of the seminar as it relatesto hospitality. "What I don't want to say or cannot,the unsaid, the forbidden, what is passed over insilence, what is separated off ... —all these should beinterpreted," he stressed. "In these regions we rediscoverthe open question of the relationship between hospitalityand the question, in other words of a hospitality beginningwith the name, the question of the name, orelse opening up without question...." And also: "Onecould dream about what would be the lesson of someonewho didn't have the keys to his own knowledge,who didn't arrogate it to himself. He would give placeto the place, leaving the keys with the other to unlockthe words from their enclosure."

It is this "giving place to the place" that, I think, isthe promise kept by these words. They also make us understandthe question of place as being a fundamentalquestion, founding the history of our culture and unthoughtin it. It would be consenting to exile, in otherwords, to being in a relationship to place, to thedwelling, that is both native (I would say almost maternal),and yet in transit, if thinking occurred to thehuman. Derrida's meditations on burial, the name,memory, the madness that inhabits language, exile andthe threshold, are so many signs addressed to this questionof place, inviting the subject to recognize that he isfirst of all a guest.

Foreigner Question:Coming from Abroad / from the Foreigner

Question d'étranger: venue de l'étrangerFourth seminar (January 10, 1996)

Jacques Derrida

Isn't the question of the foreigner [l'étranger] aforeigner's question? Coming from the foreigner,from abroad [l'étranger]?

Before saying the question of the foreigner, perhapswe should also specify: question of the foreigner.How should we understand this difference ofaccent?

There is, we were saying, a question of the foreigner.It is urgent to embark on it—as such.

Of course. But before being a question to be dealtwith, before designating a concept, a theme, a problem,a program, the question of the foreigner is aquestion of the foreigner, addressed to the foreigner.As though the foreigner were first of all the one whoputs the first question or the one to whom you addressthe first question. As though the foreigner werebeing-in-question, the very question of being-in-question,the question-being or being-in-question ofthe question. But also the one who, putting the firstquestion, puts me in question. One thinks of thesituation of the third person and of justice, whichLevinas analyzes as "the birth of the question."

Before reopening this question of the questionfrom the place of the foreigner, and of its Greek situation,as we had said we would, let us limit ourselvesto a few remarks or a few readings by way ofepigraph.

Back to places we think are familiar: in many ofPlato's dialogues, it is often the Foreigner (xenos)who questions. He carries and puts the question.We think first of the Sophist. It is the Foreignerwho, by putting forward the unbearable question,the parricide question, contests the thesis of Parmenides,puts in question the logos of our fatherParmenides, ton tou patros Parmenidou logon. TheForeigner shakes up the threatening dogmatism ofthe paternal logos: the being that is, and the nonbeingthat is not. As though the Foreigner had tobegin by contesting the authority of the chief, thefather, the master of the family, the "master of thehouse," of the power of hospitality, of the hosti-petswhich we have talked about at such length [in earlierseminars].

The Foreigner of the Sophist here resemblessomeone who basically has to account for possibilityof sophistry. It is as though the Foreigner wereappearing under an aspect that makes you think ofa sophist, of someone whom the city or the State isgoing to treat as a sophist: someone who doesn'tspeak like the rest, someone who speaks an oddsort of language. But the Xenos asks not to be takenfor a parricide. "I will beg one more thing of you,"says the Xenos to Theaetetus, "which is not tothink of me as a parricide." "What do you mean?"Theaetetus then asks. The Foreigner: "It is that inorder to defend ourselves, we will necessarily have toput to the test the thesis (logon) of our father Parmenidesand, forcibly, establish that non-beingsomehow is, and that being, in its turn, in a certainway is not."

This is the fearful question, the revolutionary hypothesisof the Foreigner. He defends himself againstthe accusation of parricide by denial. He would notdream of defending himself against it if he did notfeel deep down that really he is one, a parricide, virtuallya parricide, and that to say "non-being is" remainsa challenge to Parmenides' paternal logic, achallenge coming from the foreigner. Like any parricide,this one takes place in the family: a foreignercan be a parricide only when he is in some sensewithin the family. In a minute we will recover someimplications of this family scene and this generationaldifference, indicated by every allusion to thefather. Theaetetus's response here is weakened bytranslation. It registers well the truly polemical, evenbellicose character of what is more than a debate("debate" is the conventional translation forTheaetetus's response) when he says Phainetai totoiouton diamacheteon en tois logois: it is obvious, itappears obvious, it certainly seems that that is whereone has to fight, diamacheteon, engage in a heatedcombat, or that is where one has to carry war intologoi, into arguments, into discourses, into the logos;and not, as it is peacefully, pacifically put in theDies translation: "There, obviously, is where wemust have the debate" (241d). No, more seriously:"It does seem that that is where there must be armedwar, or combat, in discourses or in arguments." Thewar internal to the logos, that is the foreigner's question,the double question, the altercation of fatherand parricide. It is also the place where the questionof the foreigner as a question of hospitality is articulatedwith the question of being. We know that areference to the Sophist opens [Heidegger's] Sein undZeit as its epigraph.

We ought to reconstitute practically the wholecontext, if that were possible, and at any rate rereadwhat follows, the sequence that links to the Foreigner'sreply. It evokes at once blindness and madness,a strange alliance of blindness with madness.

Blindness first of all. To Theaetetus's response ("Itseems obvious, phainetai, that we must have a wararound that"), the Foreigner replies in his turn, toraise the stakes: "It is obvious, even to a blind person."He says it in the form of a rhetorical question; it isthe simulacrum of a question: "How would this notbe obvious and, as one says, obvious even to a blindperson, kai to legomenon dè touto tuphlo?"

Now for madness. The Xenos says he is too weakfor this kind of combat, for the refutation of the paternalthesis, in view of a possible parricide; he doesnot have the necessary confidence in himself. Howindeed could he have, a parricide Foreigner, so a foreignson? Let me insist on the blinding and maddeningobviousness: a "foreign son," for a parricidecan only be a son. In truth, with the question he isgetting ready to put, on the being of non-being, theForeigner fears that he will be treated as mad(manikos). He is afraid of being taken for a son-foreigner-madman:"I am therefore fearful that whatI have said may give you the opportunity of lookingon me as someone deranged," says the translation(literally, mad, manikos, a nutter, a maniac), "who isupside down all over (para poda metaballon emautonano kai kato), a crazy person who reverses everythingfrom head to toe, from top to bottom, whoputs all his feet on his head, inside out, who walkson his head)."

The Foreigner carries and puts the fearful question,he sees or foresees himself, he knows he is alreadyput into question by the paternal and reasonableauthority of the logos. The paternal authority ofthe logos gets ready to disarm him, to treat him asmad, and this at the very moment when his question,the question of the Foreigner, only seems tocontest in order then to remind people of whatought to be obvious even to the blind!

That the Foreigner here figures, virtually, a parricideson, both blind and super-seeing, seeing in theblind place of the blind person—here is somethingthat is not foreign to a certain Oedipus we will seecrossing the border in a moment. For it will be aquestion of the arrival of Oedipus, this will be thequestion, from the arrival of this blind Foreignerleaning on Antigone—who sees for him. It is Oedipus,upon his arrival in the city, whom we will summonto appear when the time comes.

In the meantime, to stay a little bit longer withPlato, we could also have reread the Statesman.There again a Foreigner takes the initiative with thefearful, even intolerable question. The Foreigner ismoreover warmly welcomed, apparently, he is givenasylum, he has the right to hospitality; Socrates' firstwords, from the first sentence of the dialogue, are tothank Theodorus for having introduced him toTheaetetus, certainly, but also, at the same time, theForeigner ("hama kai tes tou xenou"). And the questionthat the Foreigner will address to them to openthis great debate, which will also be a great combat,is nothing less than the question of the statesman, ofman as a political being. Better, the question of thepolitical person, of the statesman, after the questionof the sophist. For the dialogue the Statesman (Politicos)would come, in time and in logic, in thechrono-logic of Plato's oeuvre and discourse, afterthe Sophist. Now the Foreigner's leading question inthe Statesman, after the question of the sophist, isjust that—the question of the statesman. The Xenossays (258b): "Well then, after the sophist, it's thestatesman (the political man, ton politikon andra)that we are going to have to seek out (diazètein). Sotell me, should we classify him among those whoknow (ton epistemonon)?" Yes, replies the youngSocrates, the other Socrates. The Foreigner concludesfrom this that it is therefore necessary tobegin by distinguishing between forms of knowlegeas we were doing, he says, when we studied the previouscharacter, in other words the sophist.

Sometimes the foreigner is Socrates himself,Socrates the disturbing man of question and irony(which is to say, of question, another meaning of theword "irony"), the man of the midwifely question.Socrates himself has the characteristics of the foreigner,he represents, he figures the foreigner, heplays the foreigner he is not. In particular he does itin what is for us an extremely interesting scene—ofwhich Henri Joly reminds us at the start of the fineposthumous book I recommended you read: Laquestion des étrangers [The Question of Foreigners](Paris: Vrin, 1992).

In The Apology of Socrates (17d), at the very beginningof his defense, Socrates addresses his fellowcitizens and Athenian judges. He defends himselfagainst the accusation of being a kind of sophist orskillful speaker. He announces that he is going to saywhat is right and true, certainly, against the liarswho are accusing him, but without rhetorical elegance,without flowery use of language. He declaresthat he is "foreign" to the language of the courts, tothe tribune of the tribunals: he doesn't know how tospeak this courtroom language, this legal rhetoric ofaccusation, defense, and pleading; he doesn't havethe skill, he is like a foreigner. (Among the seriousproblems we are dealing with here is that of the foreignerwho, inept at speaking the language, alwaysrisks being without defense before the law of thecountry that welcomes or expels him; the foreigneris first of all foreign to the legal language in whichthe duty of hospitality is formulated, the right toasylum, its limits, norms, policing, etc. He has to askfor hospitality in a language which by definition isnot his own, the one imposed on him by the masterof the house, the host, the king, the lord, the authorities,the nation, the State, the father, etc. Thispersonage imposes on him translation into theirown language, and that's the first act of violence.That is where the question of hospitality begins:must we ask the foreigner to understand us, to speakour language, in all the senses of this term, in all itspossible extensions, before being able and so as to beable to welcome him into our country? If he was alreadyspeaking our language, with all that that implies,if we already shared everything that is sharedwith a language, would the foreigner still be a foreignerand could we speak of asylum or hospitalityin regard to him? This is the paradox that we aregoing to see become clearer.)

(Continues...)

(Continues...)

Excerpted from OF HOSPITALITY by Anne Dufourmantelle, Rachel Bowlby. Copyright © 2000 by Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. Excerpted by permission of STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0804734062
• ISBN 13: 9780804734066
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 176