Of Hospitality

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OF HOSPITALITY

A nne Dufourmantelle

invites

Jacques Derrida

to respon d

Translated by

Rachel Bowlby

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

STANFORD, CALIFORNIA 2000



Invitation

A nne Duf ourmantelle

"An act of hospitality can only be poetic."

—Jacques Derrida

Foreigner Question:

Coming from Abroad / from the Foreigner

Q u es t i o n cre t ran g er : ven u e d e re t ra n g er 'Fourth seminar (January JO, 1996)

Jacques Derrida

It is D errida' s poe t i c hosp i t al i ty t ha t I w ou l d l i k e t oi nvok e i n these pages , i nc lud i ng t he d i f f i cu l t y o f g i v i ngi t s due to the n ight— to that which, wi th in a phi lo-s o p h i c a l k i n d o f t h i n k i n g , d o e s n o t b e l o n g t o t h e o r d e r of the day , the vis ible, and m em ory. Th is is to try toc o m e c l o s e t o a s il e n c e a ro u n d w h i c h d i s c o u r s e i s o r-de r e t Z and t h a t a p oe m s om e t im e s d i s c ov e r s , bu t a lw ay s

p u ll s it s e lf b ac k f ro m u n v e il in g in th e v e ry m o v e m e n t of sp eech or w riting. If a part of night is inscribed inl anguage , th i s is a l so language 's m om e n t o f e f f ac e m e n t .

T h i s noc t urna l s i de o f speech cou l d be ca l l ed obses -s io n . A fo rg er ca n im i tat e a pa in t er' s b ru sh s t ro k e o r aw riter's s ty le and mak e the di f ference betw een themim perceptible, but he wil l never be able to m ake hisow n their obsession, what forces them to be alway sgo i ng back t ow ard t ha t s i l ence w here t he f i rs t im pr i n t sare se aled. De rrida's ob session,' in this ph ilosophicaln a rr at iv e w o v e n a ro u n d t h a t f i n e t h e m e o f h o s p i t al it y ,

t ak es i t s ti m e i n d raw i ng t he con t ours o f an i m poss i b l e ,i ll ic i t g e o g ra p h y o f p r o x i m i ty . A p r o x i m i ty t h a t w o u l d

Isn't the question of the foreigner [Utranged a

foreigner's question? Coming from the foreigner,

from abroad [ re t ra n g ed ?Before saying the question of the foreigner, per-

haps we should also specify: question of the for-

eigner. How should we understand this difference of

accent?

There is, we were saying, a question of the for-

eigner. It is urgent to embark on it—as such.

Of course. But before being a question to be dealt

with, before designating a concept, a theme, a prob-lem, a program, the question of the foreigner is a

question ofthe foreigner, addressed to the foreigner.

As though the foreigner were first of all t h e o ne w h oputs the first question or t he one t o whom you ad-

dress the first question.ts though the foreigner were

being-in-question, the very question of being-in-

question, the question-being or being-in-question of

the question. But also the one who, putting the firstquestion, puts me in questionjOne thinks of the



A.D.-INVITATION

n o t be t he oppos i te o f an e l sew her e c om e f r om o u t s ide

and surrounding it, but "dose to the close ," that un-

bear ab le or b o f i n t im ac y t ha t m e l t s in to ha t e . If w e c ansay that murder and hate designate everything that ex-

cludes closeness , i t is inso far as they ravage f rom w i th in

an or iginal relat ionship to al ter ioc T he h ost i s 2 responds

to hosp i ta l it y in the w ay that the ghost recal ls h im sel f to

the living, not letting them forget. To the pacified rea-

son of Kant, Derrida opposes the primary haunting of

a su b j ec t p reven t ed b y a l te r it y f ro m c lo s ing i t s e l f o f f i ni t s peaceAlness .

4

J.D.-FOREIGNER QUESTION

situation of the third person and of justice, which

Levinas analyzes as "the birth of the question."

Before reopening this question of the questionfrom the place of the foreigner, and of its Greek sit-

uation, as we had said we would, let us limit our-

selves to a few remarks or a few readings by way of

epigraph.Back to places we think are familiar: in many of

Plato's dialogues, it is often the Foreigner (xenos)

w—ho questions. He carries and puts the question.

We think first of the Sophist. It is the Foreigner

who, by putting forward the unbearable question,

the parricide question, contests the thesis of Par-

menides, puts in question the logos of our father

Parmenides, ton tou patros Parmenidou logon. The ,Foreigner shakes up the threatening do

gmatism of

tr --a 3---,

ern-27;4W. ihTe—E—Jeing_that is, and the non-

5

. . . . . . .p

eing

—

Chdt is not.

--

A.s tilough the Foreigner ica

—d to

Cerrilay—

C.—orite'siiiii the authority of the chief, the

father, the master of the family, the "master of the

house," of the power of hospitality, of the hosti -pets

which we have talked about at such length [in ear-

lier seminars].

The Foreigner of the Sophist here resembles

someone who basically has to account for possibil-

ity of sophistry. It is as though the Foreigner wereappearing under an aspect that makes you think of

a sophist, of someone whom the city or the State is

going to treat as a sophist: someone who doesn't

(

speak like the rest, someone who speaks an odd

sort of language. But the Xenos asks not to be taken

for a parricide. "I will beg one more thing of you,"

says the Xenos to Theaetetus, "which is not to

think of me as a parricide." "What do you mean?"

5



A.D.-INVITATION

W hen D errida reads Sop hocles , Joy ce , Kant , H e id e g g e r, C e la n , L e v i n as , B la n c h o t, o r K af k a, h e n o t on ly accom panies the i r tex t s , g iv ing them a second echo ,

h e " o b s e s s e s " th e m w i th t h e t h e m e h e i s w o r k i n g o n , an d w h ich t h us ac ts l ik e a p h o tograp h i c deve l op er . W i tnes sthat m om ent where, in a seminar com m entary on the

f in al s c e n e s o f O e d ip u s at Colonus b a s e d o n the id e ao f t he h o s p i ta li t y g i v e n to d e a th a n d the d e a d , D e r r id as t resses i t s absolu te contemp oranei ty , w h i le the necess i tyo f t h a t s t range " v i s it a ti on" o f S o p h oc l e s ' t ragedy i s im -

pose d on his li st eners . T he su m m ons he ad dress es to

6


Theaetetus then asks. The Foreigner: "It is tha t in

order to defend ourselves, we will necessarily have to

put to the test the thesis ( l ogon)of our father Par-

menides and, forcibly, establish that non-being

somehow is, and that being, in its turn, in a certain

way is not."

This is the fearful question, the revolutionary hy-

pothesis of the Foreigner. He defends himself against

the accusation of parricide by denial. He would not

dream of defending himself against it if he did not

feel deep down that really he is one, a parricide, vir-tually a parricide, and that to say "non-being is" re-

mains a challenge to Parmenides' paternal logic, achallenge coming from the foreigner. Like any par-

ricide, this one takes place in the family: a foreigner

can be a parricide only when he is in some sense

within the family. In a minute we will recover some

implications of this family scene and this gene ra-

tional difference, indicated by every allusion to thefather. Theaetetus's response here is weakened bytranslation. It registers well the truly polemical, even

bellicose character of what is more than a debate

("debate" is the conventional translation for

Theaetetus's response) when he says Phainetai tot o io u to n d ia m a c h e te o n e n to i s l o g o i s : it is obvious, it

appears obvious, it certainly seems that that is where

one has to fight, diamacheteon, engage in a heatedcombat, or that is where one has to carry war into

oi, into arguments, into discourses, into the l o g o s ;and not, as it is peacefully, pacifically put in the

Dies translation: "There, obviously, is where we

must have the debate" (2.41d). No, more seriously:

"It does seem that that is where there must be armed

war, or combat, in discourses or in arguments." The

7



A.D.-INVITATION

dead or liv ing authors to roam around w ith h im on the

e d g e s o f a t h e m e d o e s n 't m a k e h i m t u rn h i s b ac k o n

"the m at ters of urgen cy that assai l us at this end-of -m illennium ," as he puts i t h im self On the contrary , hesupports confront ing them .

There is in this seminar a precision that can beheard. And that comes, I think, from the intimate

agreement of thought and speech— their rhythmic

agreem en t— and f rom the t hem at ic analy s i s which i sthe obsession o f philosoph ical reflection; but also from

D erri d a's ta k in g it to th e lim it w h en he w o rk s ov e r a

8


war–internal to the l ogos , that is the foreigner's ques-

tion, the double question, the altercation of father

parricide. It is also the place where the questionof the foreigner as a question of hospitality is artic-

ulated with the question of being. We know that a

reference to the Sophist opens [Heidegger's] Sein und

Zdt as its epigraph.

We ought to reconstitute practically the w hole

context, if that were possible, and at any rate reread

what follows, the sequence that links to the For-

gigneis reply. It evokes ar_once b l in d n e s s a n d m a d -ness , a strange alliance of blindness with madness.

B li ndn ess first of all. To Theaetetus's response ("It

seems obvious, phainetai, that we must have a war

around that"), the Foreigner replies in his turn, to

raise the stakes: "It is obvious, ev en to a blind person."

He says it in the form of a rhetorical question; it is

the simulacrum of a question: "How would this not

be obvious and, as one says, obvious even to a blindperson, k a i to l egom enon dè t ou to t vh lo?"

Now for madness . The Xenos says he is too weak

for this kind of combat, for the refutation of the pa-

ternal thesis, in view of a possible parricide; he does

not have the necessary confidence in himself. How

indeed could he have, a parricide Foreigner, so a f o r-

eign son? Let me insist on the blinding and mad-

dening obviousness: 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, the

Foreigner fears that he will be treated as mad

( m a n i k o s ) . He is afraid of being taken for a son-

foreigner-madman: "I am therefore fearful that what

I have said may give you the opportunity of looking

on me as someone deranged," says the translation

9



A.D.—INVITATION

c o n c e p t u p t o t h e p o i n t o f i t s tu r n i n g b a c k t o w a rd t h een ig m a tha t b ea rs i t .

T h a t i s w h y i t s e e m e d i m p o rt an t to u s t o c o n v e y a f rag m en t of th e sem in ars w ithout al te ring an y th in g . In th em y ou hear th at sin gu lar rhy th m o f D errida'sspok en re f lect ing; so d i f f eren t f rom the w r it ing, o f w h i c h h e i s a p a ti e n t ar ti s an . A n d w e t h o u g h t i t f e a s i -b l e t o s ing l e ou t t w o sem i nars because t he w ho l e p rob-l em a t ic o f h o sp i t a l it y w a s a lrea d y presen t in t ha t " en -c l ave" ( as a w ork i s i nc l uded i n each o f i t s f ragm ent s ) ,

as was a lso the spacing o f measured v io lence and fr i end-

J.D.—FOREIGNER QUESTION

iterally, mad, m a n i k o s , a nutter, a maniac), "who is

upside down all over (para poda metaballon emauton

,znOkai kat ), a crazy person who reverses every-thing from head to toe, from top to bottom, who

puts all his feet on his head, inside out, who walks

op his head)."The Foreigner carries and puts the fearful ques-

don, he sees or foresees himself, he knows he is al-

ready put into question by the paternal and reason-

able authority of the l o g o s .The paternal authority of

the logos gets ready to disarm him, to treat him as

mad, and this at the very moment when his ques-

tion, the question o f the Foreigner, only seems to

contest in order then to remind people of what

ought to be obvious even to the blind!

That the Foreigner here figures, virtually, a parri-

cide son, both blind and super-seeing, seeing in the

blind place of the blind person— here is somethingthat is not foreign to a certain Oedipus we will see

crossing the border in a moment. For it will be a

question of the arrival of O edipus, this will be th e

question, from the arrival of this blind Foreigner

leaning on Antigone—who sees for him. It is Oedi-

pus, upon his arrival in the city, whom we will sum-

mon to 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 the

fearful, even intolerable question. The Foreigner is

moreover warmly welcomed, apparently, he is given

asylum, he has the right to hospitality; Socrates' first

words, from the first sentence of the dialogue, are to

thank Theodorus for having introduced him to

Theaetetus, certainly, but also, at the same time, the

I0II



A.D.-INVITATION

ship that gives this think ing i ts uniquene ss , i ts partic-ular genius.

D errid a ha s hi m se lf spok en o f th e d if f ic u lt y o f tak -ing account o f the open speech o f the sem inar as i t re-lates to hospitality. " W hat I don ' t w ant to say or can-not , the unsaid, the forbidden, w hat is passed ov er insi lence, what i s separated o f f . . . — all these should beinterpreted,"he stressed "In these regions we rediscover

the open question of the relationship between hospital-ity and the question, in other words of a hospitality be-

g i n n i n g w i t h t he n am e , the q ues t i on o f t he n ame , o r

12


Foreigner ("hama kai tes tou xenou") . And the ques-

tion that the Foreigner will address to them to open

this great debate, which will also be a great combat,is nothing less than the question of the statesman, of

man as a political being. Better, the question of the

political person, of the statesman, after the question

of the sophist. For the dialogue the Statesman (Politi-

cos) would come, in time and in logic, in the

chrono-logic of Plato's oeuvre and discourse, after

the Sophist . Nowshe Foreigner's leading question in

the Sta tesman, after the question of the sophist, is just that—the question of the statesman. The Xenos

says (258b): "Well then, after the sophist, it's the

statesman (the political man, ton pol i t i kon andra)

that we are going to have to seek out (diazetein) . So

tell me, should we classify him among those who

know ( ton epis temonon)?" Yes, replies the young

Socrates, the other Socrates. The Foreigner con-

cludes from this that it is therefore necessary to

begin by distinguishing between forms of knowlege

as we were doing, he says, when we studied the pre-

vious character, 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 the

word "irony"), the man of the midwifely question.Socrates himself has the characteristics of the for-

eigner, he represents, he figures the foreigner, he

p la y s the foreigner he is not. In particular he does it

in what is for us an extremely interesting scene—of

which Henri Joly reminds us at the start of the fine

posthumous book I recommended you read: L aques t ion des e t rangers [T he Q ues t ion o f Fore igners]

(Paris: Vrin, 1992).

13



A.D.-INVITATION

e l s e o p e n i n g u p w i th o u t q u e s t i o n . . . ." A n d a l s o : " O n ec o u l d d re a m a b o u t w h a t w o u l d b e th e l e s s o n o f s o m e -

one w ho didn 't have the k eys to hi s own k nowledge,w h o d i d n ' t a rr o g a te i t to h i m s e l f H e w o u l d g i v e p l a c et o t h e p l a c e , le a v i n g t h e k e y s w i th t h e o t h e r t o u n l o c k t h e w o r d s f r o m t h e i r e n c l o s u re . "

I t is th is " g iv in g p la c e to th e p la c e " th at , I th in k , ist h e p ro m i se k e p t b y t h e se w o rd s . T h e y a ls o m a k e u s u n -d e r s t an d t h e q u e s t i o n o f p l a c e a s b e in g a f u n d a m e n t a lquest ion, founding the history of our culture and un-

t h o u g h t i n i t . I t w o u l d b e c o n s e n t i n g t o e x i l e , in o t h e r


In T h e A p o lo g y o f S o c r at es (17d), at the very be-

inning of his defense, Socrates addresses his fellow

itizens and Athenian judges. He defends himself against the accusation of being a kind of sophist or

skillful speaker. He announces that he is going to say

what is right and true, certainly, against the liars

who are accusing him, but without rhetorical ele-

gance, without flowery use of language. He declares

that he is "foreign" to the language of the courts, to

the tribune of the tribunals: he doesn't know how to

speak this courtroom language, this legal rhetoric of accusation, defense, and pleading; he doesn't have

the skill, he is l ike a foreigner. (Among the serious

problems we are dealing with here is that of the for-

eigner who, inept at speaking the language, always

risks being without defense before the law of the

country that welcomes or expels him; the foreigner

is first of all foreign to the legal language in which

the duty of hospitality is formulated, the right to

asylum, its limits, norms, policing, etc. He has to ask

for hospitality in a language which by definition is

not his own, the one imposed on him by the master

of the house, the host, the king, the lord, the au-

thorities, the nation, the State, the father, etc. This

personage imposes on him translation into their

o n 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 speak

our language, in all the senses of this term, in all its

possible extensions, before being able and so as to be

able to welcome him into our countryjf he was al-

ready speaking our language, with all that that im-

plies, if we already shared everything that is shared

with a language, would the foreigner still'

be a for-

'5



A.D.-INVITATION

w ords , to be ing in a re la t ionship to p lace , to thedw ell ing, that is both native (I w ould say almost m a-ternal), and yet in transit, i f thinking occurred to thehum an. Derrida 's m edi tat ions on b ur ial, the nam e,m e m o r y , t h e m a d n e s s t h a t i n h a b it s l an g u a g e , e x i l e a n d t he t h resho l d , are so m any s i gns add res sed t o t h i s ques -t i on o f p l ace , inv i t ing t he su b jec t t o r ecogn i ze t ha t he i s

f ir s t o f all a g u e s t.

16


eigner and could we speak of asylum or hospitality

in regard to him? This is the paradox that we are

oing to see become clearer.)

What does Socrates say at the moment when,

let's not forget it, he is playing for his life and is soon

going to lose it in this game? What does he say in

presenting himself as l i k e a foreigner, at once as' t hough he were a foreigner (as a fiction) and inas-m u c h as in effect he does become the foreigner by

language (a condition that he is even going to lay

claim to, whatever he says about it, by a skillfulcourtroom denial), a foreigner accused in a language

he says he doesn't speak, a defendant requ ired to

justify himself , in the language of the other, before

the law and the judges of the city? He thus addresses

his fellow citizens, the Athenian judges, whom hesometimes calls "Athenians." They speak as (or like)

judges , the c itizens who speak in the name of their

citizenship. Socrates turns the situation on its head:he asks them to treat him like a foreigner for whom

marks of respect can be demanded, a foreigner be-

cause of his age and a foreigner because of his lan-

guage, the only language he is used to; it is either

that of philosophy, or everyday language, popular

language (as opposed to the clever language of

the judges or of sophistry, of rhetoric and juridical

jargon):

No, what you will hear will be a straightforward speechin the first words that occur to me, confident as I am of the justice of my cause, and I do not want any of you toexpect anything different. It would hardly be suitable,gentlemen, for a man of my age to address you in the

artificial language of a schoolboy orator. One thing, how-

ever, I do most earnestly beg and entreat of you. If you

17



A.D.-INVITATION

Movements of speaking

I t is d if f ic u lt to h e ar so m e th in g o f th e ri g h tn e s s o f aw a y o f s p e a k i n g w i t h o u t t ak i n g t h e m e a s u re o f i ts s t e p ,w hich is to say i ts rhythm , and the t im e necessary tosay i t . "The h ow of t ruth is precise ly t ruth ," w roteKierkegaard. 3

I w i ll t hus concen t ra t e on l i s ten i ng t o t he part ic ular "how " of D errid a's th in k in g, rat her t han ont h e s t e ri le e x e r c iz e o f c o m m e n t ar y . " T h e p h i lo s o p h e r needs a doub l e heari ng , " ins i s t ed N i e t z sche , " i n t he way

1 8


hear me defending myself in the same language which it

has been my habit to use, both in the market square next

to the stalls—where many of you have heard me—and

elsewhere, do not be surprised, and do not interrupt. Letme remind you of my position. This is my first appear-

ance in a court of law, at the age of seventy, and so I am

a complete foreigner to the language of this place [a com-

plete foreigner is atechnos oun xenos echo tes enthade lexeos:

atechnos, with an omega, means "simply, completely, ab-

solutely," and this is why it is correct to translate it as "a

complete foreigner"; but that means "simply, absolutely,completely" because it means first of all "simply, without

artifice, without techne, very close to atechnos, with ashort o, which does mean, precisely, inexperienced, with-

out technique, inept, without savoir-faire: I am simplyforeign, purely and simply a foreigner with no aptitude,

without recourse or resources]. Now if I were really a

foreigner [ei to anti xenos etugkanon on], you would nat-

urally excuse me if I spoke in the accent and dialect inwhich I had been brought up [the accent is phone; the

dialect or idiolect is tropos, the trope, the turning, the

turns of rhetoric that suit an idiom; in short, ways of

speaking].'

This passage teaches us something else. Joly re-

minds us of it, as does Benveniste, whom I'll be

quoting in a moment: at Athens, the foreigner had

some rights. He saw he had a recognized right of ac-

cess to the courts, since Socrates assumes it: ti'f I

were a foreigner, here in the court, he says, Youwould tolerate not only my accent, my voice, my

elocution, but the turns of phrase in my sponta-

neous, original, idiomatic rhetoric. There is thus al

foreigners' right, a right of hospitality for foreigners

, . . ,)at Athen Vs . hat is the subtlety of Socratic rhetoric,

of Socrate the Athenian's plea? It consists of com-

plaining at not even being treated as a foreigner: if

19



A.D.-INVITATION

that one m ight have the gi f i of second sight, in other w or ds t h e mos t s ub t l e o f e a rs . " W h a t N i e t z s c h e re q u i re d

f o r h is w o rk w as a f o rm o f at te n ti o n se n s it iv e to th e b o d yo f t h e w o r d s . " 0 m a n , y o u h i g h e r m a n , t ak e c a r e ! T h i sspeech i s for de l i cate ears , for y our ears: What does thedeep midnight declare? "4

W e m u s t le a rn t o p e r c e iv ew h a t is a lm o s t in a u d i b le . A d d e d N i e tz s c h e , " F o r w h a t one lacks access to f rom ex per ience one w i l l have no ear .

N ow le t us im ag in e an ex tre m e case . . . th e f irs t lan-guage f o r a ne w s e r ie s o f e x p e r ie nc e s . In t h a t c a s e , si m-

20


I were foreign, you would accept with more toler-

ance that I don't speak as you do, that I have my

own idiom, my way of speaking that is so far from

being technical, so far from juridical, a way that is

at once more popular and more philosophical. That

the foreigner, the x e n o s , is not simply the absolute

other, the barbarian, the savage absolutely excluded

and heterogeneous—this is Benveniste's point as

well, same article as before, when he starts on Greek

institutions, after the generalities and the paradox-

ical filiation of hos t is , which we have said a lot aboutin the last few seminars. Following the logic of this

argument we were discussing last time on the sub-

ject of the reciprocity and equality of " for" in ex-

change (I won't go back over it). Benveniste em-

phasizes that "the same institution exists in the

Greek world under another name: x e n o s indicates -

relations of the same type between men linked by a

pact which implies precise obligations also extend-ing to their descendants."2

This last point—we take its measure right away—

is critical. This pact, this contract of hospitality that

links to the foreigner and which rec i p roca l l y links

the foreigner, it's a question of knowing whether it

counts beyond the individual and if it also extends

to the family, to the generation, to the genealogy. It

is not, here, although the things are connected, a

question of the classical problem of the right to na-

tionality or citizenship as a b irthrigh t— in some

places linked to the land and in others to blood . It

is not only a question of the link between birth and

nationality; it is not only a question of the citizen-

ship offered to someone who had none previously,

but of the right granted to the foreigner as such, to

21



A.D.-INVITATION

p ly n o th in g w il l b e h ear d , b u t th e re w il l b e th e ac oi ll us i on t ha t wh ere no t h i ng i s heard no t h i ng i s t her

T h e f i r s t i mp r e ss i on y ou d r aw f i - om l is t e n i ng t os e m i nar i s o f h e ar ing a m us i c al s c or e be i ng p lay e d t m a k e s t h e v e r y m o v e m e n t o f t h in k i n g a u d ib l e. I t i f w e w e r e th e a u d i e n c e f o r t h e th i n k i n g o f a t h o u g ht h e v e r y m o m e n t o f i ts u t te ra n c e . S o m e o n e w h o p a t , .

op h i ze s ou t loud i n t h is w ay doe s no t unw i nd a sm oouniv ocal thread; he show s the tears in i t . He le

22

-FOREIGNER QUESTION

per rema ining a foreigner, and to his or herto the family, to the descenda nts.

ilial or genealogical right applying to

one generat ion enables us to think aboutnot, basically, a question of the ex tension

. or the "pact" (to use Benv eniste's term;to insist on the reciprocity of the com mit-foreigner doesn't only have a right, he or

as reciproca lly, obligations, as is often re-enever there is a wish to reproach him for

ior); it is not a question of a straightfor-sion of an individual right, of opening'family and subsequen t generations a rightplace granted to the individual. No, thatat lets us reflect upon the fact that, from

t to hospitality comm its a house-.descent, a family, a fam ilial or ethnic

.a.familial or ethnic group3 Precisely

inscribed in a right, a custom, an e thosicbke i t , this objective morality that weng about last time presuppo ses the social

status of the contracting pa rties, that it

them to be called by their names, toaa.,:s, to be subjects in law, to be questioned

to have crimes imputed to them, to beoasible, to be equipped with nameable

es, ancl ,proper names. A proper name is

ted to pause for a moment on this sig-we would have to note once again acontradiction: this right to hospitality

foreigner "as a fam ily," represented andhis or her family name, is at once what

lospitality possible, or the hospitable rela-

23



A.D.--INVITATION

r oom fo r a s ton i s h m e n t , f o r w h a t b re ak s r e f l e c t ion i n t h ese i zure o f f ear.

W h y f e a r? T h e w o r d se e m s t o o v i o le n t ju s t to s a y

"wh at astonishes." A nd y et that is certainly w hat i t a b o u t , n o t a f e a r p r o d u c e d b y t h e d e v a s ta ti n g o r d o m -i na t ing e f f ec t o f t he sp eech i t s e l f ; bu t t ha t space o f t heunk now able that the speech apprehends and bef orew hi ch i t s t ops us shor t f or a m o m ent , s cared . j us t as , ina m usical score, the m arkings f or silences m ake themelodic line enter into dialogue with the silence that sus t a ins i t , so ph i l osoph i ca l speech e sp ouses t he p rec i se

24


tionship to the foreigner possible, but by the same!

token what limits and prohibits it. Because hospi-

tality, in this situation, is not offered to an anony-

mous new arrival and someone who has neither

name, nor patronym, nor family, nor social status,

and who is therefore treated not as a foreigner but as

another barbarian. We have alluded to this: the dif-

ference, one of the subtle end sometimes ungrasp-

able, differences between the foreigner and the al)-

, sobite_other is that the latter cannot have a name or

a4amily name;-the absolute or unconditional hos-pitality I would like to offer him or her presupposes

a break with hospitality in the ordinary sense, with

con-ditional hospitaliy, with the right to or pact of

hospitalityjn saying this, once more, we are taking

account of an irreducible pervertibility. The law of

hospitality, the express law that governs the general

concept of hospitality, appears as a paradoxical law,

pervertible or perverting. It seems to dictate thatabsolute hospitality should break with the law of

hospitality as right or duty, w ith the "pact" of hos-

itality. To put it in different terms asolute_ hospi-

tality requires that I open up my home and that I

give not only to the foreigner (provided with a fam-

ily name, with the social status o r b e i n g a foreigner,_ _

etc.), but to the absolute, unknown, anonymous

other, and that I g i v e p l ac e to them, that I let themcome, that I let them arrive, and take place in the

place I offer them, without asking of them either

reciprocity (entering into a pact) or even their

nameahe law of absolute hospitality commands a

break with hospitality by right, with law or justice as

rights. Just hospitality breaks with hospitality by

right; not that it condemns or is opposed to it, and

25

- - - 1 -



A.D.-INVITATION

l o g i c o f rea so n in g , a l l t he b e t t er , a t t he r i g h t m o m en t ,t o t rea t i ts o b v io u sn ess h a rsh l y . I t is cu s to m a ry t o c a l lt h i s m o m e n t " a p o r ia " : th e u n d e c i d a b le c r o s s i n g o f t h ew a y s .

W h e n w e e n t e r a n u n k n o w n p l ac e , th e e m o t io n e x - p e ri e n c e d is al m o s t al w ay s th at o f an in d e f in ab le an x -i e ty . T h e r e th e n be g i n s t h e s low w or k o f t ami ng t h e un -know n, and gradual ly the unease fades away A new

f am il ia ri ty s u c c e e d s th e f e ar p ro v o k e d in u s b y th e ir -rup t ion o f t he " w ho l l y o t her . " If t he bod y ' s m o s t archa icinstinctual reactions are caught up in an en coun ter


it can on the contrary set and maintain it in a per-

petual progressive movement; but it is as strangely

heterogeneous to it as justice is heterogeneous to

the law to which it is yet so close, from which in

truth it is indissociable.

Now the foreigner, the x en o s of whom Socrates

says "him at least you would respect, you would tol-

erate his accent and his idiom," or the one of w hom

Benveniste says that he enters into a pact, this for-

eigner who has the right to hospitality in the cos-

mopolitan tradition which will find its most power-ful form in Kant and the text we have read and

reread [Perpetual Peace] , this foreigner, then, is some!

un,e_yvith whom, to receive him, you begin by ask- -

inglis name; you enjoin him to state and to guar-:

antee his identity, as you would a witness before acourt. This is someone to whom you put a question

and address a demand, the first demand, the mini-

mal demand being: "What is your name?" or then"In telling me what your name is, in responding to

this request, you are responding on your own behalf,

you are responsible before the law and before your

hosts, you are a subject in law."That, following one of the directions it takes, is

the question of the foreigner as the question of the

question. Does hospitality consist in interrogating

the new arrival? Does it begin with the question ad-'I

.ressed to the newcomer (which seems very human

and sometimes loving, assuming that hospitality

should be linked to love—an enigma that we will

leave in reserve for the moment): what is your name?

tell me your name, what should I call you, I who am

calling on you, I who want to call you by your

name?

-

What am I going to call you? It is also what26



A.D.-INVITATION

w i th w ha t i t does no t imm ediately recognize in the

rea l, ho w co u l d t ho u g h t rea ll y c l a im to a pprehen d t heo t h e r , t h e w h o l l y o t h e r , w i t h ou t ast

o n i sh m e n t ? T h o u g h t

i s i n e s sence a fo rce o f m as t e ry . I t i s con t i nua l ly br ing-ing the unknow n back to the k now n, breaking up i tsm y s t ery t o po s ses s i t, shed l i gh t on i t. N am e i t .

S o w h a t h ap p e n s w h e n o u r e y e s h a lt o n t h e w o rd s :" h

ospitality, prox im ity enc lave, hate, foreigner . . ."?Even f f o r an in s tan t we f i n d som e "e l sew here" int h e m , t h e y a re s o o n a s s im i la te d t o a l a n d s c a p e m a rk e d by the sea l o f our habitus o f t h i n k in g a n d o u r m e m o ry .

28


we sometimes tenderly ask children and those weove. Or else does hospitality begin with the un-1

questioning welcome, in a double effacement, the

effacemen t of the question and the nam e? is it more, jy st and more lo vin g to ques tion or not to ques tion?to cal l by the name or w ithout the name? to give orto learn a name already given? D oes one give hospi-tality to a subject? to an identifiable subject? to asubject identifiable by name? to a legal subject? Or

is_hospitality t en d ered , i s it g i v e n to the other before!are identified, even befo re they are (posited as

or supposed to be) a subjec t, legal subject a nd sub-. e,ct namea ble by their family name, etc.?

e qu stion_o , ospit so t e-ques-1don of the question; but by the same token the

question Qf t e subject and e name as hypothesis

of descent.When Benven

is nothing fortuit x e n ia . He inscribes tsay in the pa ct, in theof that name. Basicallforeigner before or ochange w ith a grouline of descent. H rodotus sa that Polycrates hadconcluded a x enr (pact) w ith i asis and that they

sent each other presents: xenien nethek ato (verbfor pact: they oncluded, like a pac a x e n ia ) p e m -

pon dora k ai hom enos al la par 'ek e iv

in sendingand receivin ifts, reciprocally, from e ch other. If we reread B veniste we would find ot examples

of the same type. To have done with this pigraph,let us just r call a Socratic common place. He too oc-

cupies, els here, that position of foreigner, and in-

ucrt4•

te want to define the x e n os , there

us i his beginning from then o s in the x e n ia , which is to S)

ntract or collective allianceere is no x e n os , there is no Al)

the x enia, this pact or ex- ne more precise, with a

29



A.D.-INVITATION

CHORUS: So they are both your offspring. . .

OEDIPUS: And also their father 's sisters. ..

CHORUS: You did. . . .

gift from the city

able one, I shouldOEDIPUS: I did not do. . . . I received

when I had done it a favor that, mis

hexer have accepted.

CHORUS: And then, unhappy on You murdered.. ..

OEDIPUS:What are you sayin What do you want to

know?

CHORUS: . . . your father?. . You killed.

OEDIPUS: I did kill, but. . there is some justice on my

side. . . . I was driven m by a destructive power when

Lmurdered and destroy d, but in law I am innocent. It

was in ignorance that I ame to this.6


T he m y t h i ca l charac t e r i n S oph oc l e s ' A n t i gone cap -t i v a te s u s b e c aus e s h e k e e p s h e r s e l f c lo s e t o t h e o r i g in s ."She is one of those who love, not one of those w ho

ha t e , " w ro t e Pa t oO k a , bu t t h is l ove i s no t C hr i s tl i k e . I t s i g n i f i e s " lo v e a s f o r e i g n t o th e h u m a n c o n d i t io n , d e -r iv i n g f r o m t h e p o r t io n o f n i g h t w h i c h i s t h e p o r t io n o f t h e gods . "8

12 the confrontat ion betw een Creon and

A n ti g o n e , P ato o k a s h o w s th a t th e f o rc e o f la w re p re -sented b y C rean i s real ly a response to fear , for it i s "on

f e ar th at th e sp h e re o f d ay d e p e n d s , th e S ta te as h e c o n -ceives it ." This fear under its final mask is the fear of

42

eseus takes pity on the blind

forgotten, he says, that he toogner" (562) and put his life at risk

" (563). L ike the oath to come, the

s an alliance between two foreigners.

long epigraph, let us begin again.

Is intimately associated with, and al-

emains familiarly linked to the notion of

as host or as enem (an am ivalence that

been meditating or premeditating at length

this point), we had not yet broached th

e notion of "foreigner" for itself:

What soes oreigner" mea o is foreign?

Who is the foreign man, who is the foreign woman?

What is meant by "going abroad," "coming from

abroad"? We had merely stressed that, if at least we

have to give it a determinate scope, a normal usage,

43

When he arrives,

man. He has not"grew up as a for

"in a foreign la

exchange mak

After this

Although i

though it

the hos t iwe hay

up t

s ran



A.D.-INVITATION

death. "Thus Creon himself testes, without r ealizingi t , to h i s de

p e n d e n c e in re la ti o n to th e o th e r, in re la ti o nt o the law o f N igh t. A n d as A n t igon e e

m b o d i e s th e

l a w , t he p o r t io n o f n ig h t , i t i s po in t l es s t o t hrea ten he r w ith death. He re Patook a i s w rit ing agains t w hat has assoc ia ted our consc

i ous ne s s w i t h th e mono p o l i z i n g

of a meaning it thought it could make use of "Sop h oc le s ' An t i gone r epresent s the r e m i n d e r o f a ti n yhope , a r e m i nde r th a t C r e on . 's w ay o

f th in k in g has com - p le te ly h id d e n in u s : th e f ac t th at m an d o e s n o t b e lo n gt o h im se l f t ha t h is m eaning i s no t Meaning , t hat

44


as it is used most often, sensu s t r ic to , when the con-

text does not specify it more (the normal meaning is

almost always the most "narrow" meaning, obvi-

ously), etranger is understood on the basis of the

cirmcumscribed field of e thos or ethics, of habitat or

time spent as e thos , of S i t t l i chk e i t , of objective moral-

ity, especially in the three instances determined by

law and Hegel's philosophy of law: the f am ily , bour-

geo i s or c i v i l so c i e t y , and the State (or the nation-

state). We had elaborated and interrogated these

limits at length, and we asked ourselves a certainnumber of questions—stemming from but also on

the subject of interpretations of Ben .yeniste, espe-

cially based on the two Latin derivations: the for-

eigner (hostis) welcomed as guest or as enemy.

Hospitality, hostility, hos tp i ta l i t y . As always, the Ben-

veniste readings had seemed to us as valuable as

they were problematic—let's not go back to that

here.Today, and on that basis, let us broach more di-

rectly the meaning of etranger, this time from the

"Greek world" (to presuppose provisionally its unity

or self-identity), but always by doing our best, since

it isn't an easy thing, to multiply the two-way jour-

neys, a to-and-fro between the matters of urgency

that assail us at this end-of-millennium, and the tra-

dition from which we receive the concepts, the

vocabulary, the axioms that are elementary and pre-

sumed natural or untouchable. It is often techno-

political-scientific mutation that obliges us to de-

construct; really, such mutation itself deconstructs

what are claimed as these naturally obvious things or

these untouchable axioms. For instance, from the

Latin or Greek tradition that we have just mentioned.

45



A.D.-INVITATION

h um an me an i ng c ome s t o an e nd a s s oon a s one re ac h e st he shore o f N i gh t , and t ha t N i gh t i s no t a no t h i ngness ,but be longs to w hat 'i s ' in the proper sense of thet e r m .

N ig ht, f or Patook a, is "t he openin g onto w hat dis -turbs ." I t asks us to go through the exp er ience o f the lossof m eaning, an experience from w hich flows the au-thent icity of phi losophical thinking . W hen De rridare f e r s to Pa t oO k a 's r e f l ec t ions on t he exp er ience o f t he

f ront in W orld W ar I, w hat he is lay in g hold of is th e f it rt h e s t e d g e o f th e c o n c e p t o f h

ospitality . 1 1 In the ex-

46


So we were trying, the other day, to translate into

our hospitality problematic what it is that turns up,

what comes our way by e-mail or the Internet.

Among the innumerable signs of mutation that ac-company the development of e-mail and the Inter-

net—I mean everything that these names stand for—

let us first privilege those that completely transform

the structure of so-called public space. We have just

been speaking about the x e n os and x en ia in Greece,

and about Oedipus and Antigone as x e n o i address-

ing x e n o i who speak to them, in return, reciprocally,

a s x e n o i — and we'll be doing so again, later. But howcould Sophocles' semantics, for example, have held

up in a public space structured by the telephone, the

fax, e-mail, and the Internet, by all those other pros-

thetic apparatuses of television and telephonic blind-

ness? What we were wondering the other day was

what the intervention of a State (it happened the

other day in Germany) or a State chorus seeking to

ban or censure so-called "pornographic" communi-

cations on an Internet site can mean nowadays. Not

Klossovvski's L o is d e Phospitalite [Laws of Hospitality],

but some texts and images distributed on the Inter-

net. The German government banned two hundred

pornographic sites ( L e c a n a rd e n c h a i n e points out in

this connection that some censors who detected the

pornographic connotations of the word "breast"blocked access to a forum where patients with breast

cancer were innocently in dialogue). Let me not take

sides right now on the validity of these forms of cen-

sorship and their principles, but rather analyze, as a

beginning, the facts of _a_problem. &wadays, a re-

flection on hospitality presupposes, among other

things, the possibility of a rigorous delimitation of

47



A.D.-INVITATION

p e ri e n c e o f th e f ro n t, w ri te s th e C z e c h p h il o so p h e r, th eadversary i s no longer the same, he i s "our accom plice int he d i s t urbance o f t he day . S o i t i s here t ha t t he aby s sa ld o m a in o f p r ay e r f o r th e e n e m y o p e n s u p : t h e s o li d ar -i t y o f t h e s h ak e n . "12 T o d i e s o t h a t a t ru t h o f t h e q u e s -t ioning of m eaning m ay survive, and not to give that ac t t he ar rogance o f a r e sponse , i s t o r ender t o n i gh t i t sr ea li t y ; the o ppo s i t e o f an abd i ca t i on .

It is in th is "n octu rn al" sense th at I w ould li k e tospeak o f t he r e l at i on be t w een reason and obse s s i on: inother wo rds , " the open ing on to w hat d i s turbs ."

48


thresholds or frontiers: between the familial and the

non-familial, between the foreign and the non-

foreign, the citizen and the non-citizen, but first of

all between the private and the public, private andpublic law, scan principle, private mail in the clas-

sic form (the letter, the postcard, etc.) has to circu-

late without control within a country or from one

country to another. It must be neither read nor in-

tercepted. The same is true, in principle, for the

phone, the fax, e-mail, and naturally for the Internet.

censorship, telephone tapping, interceptions, in

principle represent either crimes or acts authorizedonly for reasons of State, of a State responsible for

the integrity of the territory, for sovereignty, for se-

curity and national defense. So what happens when

a State intervenes not only for surveillance but toban private communications, on the pretext that

they are pornographic, which, up to now, hasn't been

a danger to public security or the integrity of na-

tional territory?,

I assume, without knowing enough

about it, that the argument by wh ich this state in-

tervention claims to be justified is the a llegation that

the space of the Internet is in fact not private but!

Public, and above all has a public accessibility (na-

tionally or internationally) greatly exceeding, in its

usage, in its resources, that of "porn" links by phone

or video network. And even more greatly exceedingthe readership of Sade, of L ois de l'h ospital it e and

other similar works that are in a way self-censoring,

because their number of readers is automatically re-

duced by the "competence" they require. At any rate,

what is at issue, and is by the same token "de-

ranged," deformed, is once again the trace of a fron-

tier between the public and the non-public, between

49



A.D.-INVITATION

Obs e s s i on , w h e n i t w or k s f r om t h e i n s i de o f t h ough t , o r rat her i f t hough t has eno ugh force t o l e t i t se l fbe sh aped b y i t, m a k e s t h o u g h t c r e at iv e i n t h e w a y t h a t a w o r k o f a r t i n a u g u ra t es a respo n se t o t he m a ter ia l t ha t ho l d s i t t h a t w a s u n k n o w n u n t i l t h e n . I t is o u t o f t h e n i g h t t h a t " w ha t o b s es s e s " ca n c o m e to b e s po ke n .

W hen an utterance give s the "night" its portion, it m ak e s u s h e ar th e w or ds d if f e r e n t l y . So , t o s p e ak o f " t h enear , the ex i led , the fore ig-ner , the v i s i tor , be ing a t hom ein the other's place" prevents concepts like `self and other" or `

! s ubject and object" from presenting them -


public or political space and individual or famil-

ial-home. The frontier turns out to be caught in

a juridico-political turbulence, in the process of

destructuration-restructuration, challenging existinglaw and established norms. From the moment when

a public authority, a State, this or that State power,

gives itself or is recognized as having the right to

control, monitor, ban exchanges that those doing

the exchanging deem private, but that the State can

intercept since these private exchanges cross public

space and become available there, then every ele-

ment of hospitality gets disrupted. My "at home"was also constituted by the field of access via my tele-

phone line (through which I can give my time, myword, my friendship, my love, my help, to whom-

ever I wish, and so invite whomever I wish to come

into my home, first in my ear, when I wish, at any

time of the day or night, whether the other is my

across-the-fence neighbor, a fellow citizen, or any

other friend or person I don't know at the other endof the world). Now if my "home," in principle invi-

olable, is also constituted, and in a more and more

essential, interior way, by my phone line, but also by

my e-mail, but also by my fax, but also by my access

to the Internet, then the intervention of the State

becomes a v iolation of the inviolable, in the place

where inviolable immunity remains the condition of

hospitality.The possibilities we are thus invoking are not

more abstract or improbable than phone tapping.

These phone tappings are practiced not only by po-

lice forces or State security services. In Germany, a

few weeks ago, I was reading a news item in a daily

paper about some appliances for sale on the open

50



A.D.-INVITATION

s e l v e s u n d e r a per m anently dual law. W hat Derri dage t s us t o u

nders t and i s t ha t t he opp os i t e o f ne arnes s i snot elsew here but another f igure of n

earness . A nd I t h i n k t h i s g e o g r a p h y l e a d s t hroughout the sem inar to

ther

eve lat ion of the quest ion "W here?" as being theques t ion o f m an. A ques t ion w hich , li ke tha t o f theS p h i n x , i s a d d re s s e d t o a m a n o n t h e m o v e , w h o h a s n oo t h e r p l ac e o f h i s o w n t h a n t h a t o f b e i n g o n t h e w a y ,bound f or a d

estination that is unk now n to him, but p re c e d e s h im w it h it s sh ad o w

T h e q ue s t i on "W h e r e ?" i s age le ss , t ransi t ive , i t g iv es

52


ket (some 20,000of them had already been sold

hen the German law started to get worried). These

ppliances would make it possible not just to eaves-

Orop on any phone conversation across a wideerimeter (500 meters in circumference, I believe),

ut even to record them, which opens up unprece-

dented options for private spying and blackmail. All

these techno-scientific possibilities threaten the in-

teriority of the home ("we are no longer at home!")

and really the very integrity of the self, of ipseity.

These possibilities are experienced as threats bearing

down on the particular territory of one's own and onthe law of private property. They are obviously be-

hind all the purifying reactions and feelings of re-

sentmenfWherever the "home" is violated, wher-

ever at any rate a violation is felt as such, you can

foresee a privatizing and even familialist reaction, by

widening the ethnocentric and nationalist, and thus

xenophobic, circle: not directed against the foreigner

as such, but, paradoxically, against the anonymous

technological power (foreign to the language or the

religion, as much as to the family and the nation),

which threatens, with the "home," the traditional

conditions of hospitality. The perversion and per-

vertibility of this law (which is also a law of hospi-

tality) is that one can become virtually xenophobic

in order to protect or claim to protect one's own hos-pitality, the own home that makes possible one's

own hospitality. (Remember as well the xenotrans-

plantation we were talking about last time.) I want

to be master at home ( i p se , po t i s , po t en s , head of

house, we have seen all that), to be able to receive

whomever I like there. Anyone who encroaches on

my "at home," on my ipseity, on my power of hos-

5 3



A.D.-INVITATION

as e s sen t i a l the r e l a t ion t o p l ace , t o dw e l l ing , t o p l ace -l e s snes s , and i n it s ve ry func t i on re fu ses t houg h t in i tsc o m p r e h e n d i n g r e la t io n t o t h e o b j e c t . T h e o n l y t ru t h i s

that of the running f erret in the children's rhym e, at ru th f o u nd o u t b y i t s m o v e m e n t and nam e d b y t h etrace.

13

I t s no t so m uch about de f in ing , exp la ining ,unders t and ing , a s con t end ing w i th t he ob jec t o f t h o u g h t b y d i s c o v e r i n g i n t h i s c o n f r o n t a ti o n t h e t e rr i-t o ry w here t he qu es t i on i s i nscri bed: i ts r igh t nes s .

T h i s i s why " t he border , the l i m i t , the t h resho l d , t hes t ep bey ond t h i s th resho l d" r e t urn so o f t en i n D erri da 's

54


pitality, on my sovereignty as host, I start to regard

as an undesirable foreigner, and virtually as an

enemy. This other becomes a hostile subject, and I

Lk becoming their hostage.Paradoxical and corrupting law: it depends on

this constant collusion between traditional hospi-

tality, hospitality in the ordinary sense, and pow er.

This collusion is also power in its f in it ude , which is

to say the necessity, for the host, for the one who re-

ceives, of choosing, electing, filtering, selecting their

invitees, visitors, or guests, those to whom they de-

cide to rant asylum, the right of visiting, or hospi-to rant

o hospitality, in the classic sense, w ithout

/sovereignty of oneself over one's home, but since

t there is also no hospitality without finitude, sover-eignty can only be exercised by filtering, choosing,

and thus by excluding and doing violeriDInjustice,

\ Xcertain injustice, and even a certain perjury, begins

right away, from the very threshold of the right to

hospitality. This collusion between the violence of power or the force of law ( G e w a l t ) on one side, and

hospitality on the other, seems to depend, in an ab-

solutely radical way, on hospitality being inscribed

in the form of a right, this kind of inscription we

have said a lot about in the course of previous sem-

inars. But since this right, whether private or famil-

ial, can only be exercised and guaranteed by the

mediation of a public right or State right, the per-

version is unleashed from the inside. For the State

cannot guarantee or claim to guarantee the private

domain (for it is a domain), other than by control-

ling it and trying to penetrate it to be sure of it. Of

course, in controlling it, which can appear negative

and repressive, it can claim, by the same token, to

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A.D.-INVITATION

l an g u a g e , a s t h o u g h t h e i m p o s s i b il it y o f m a rk i n g o u t as t ab le t e r ri t ory w here t hough t cou l d be e s t ab li shed w as

p ro v o c at iv e o f th o u g h t it se lf " T o o f f e r h o s p it a li ty ," h ew ond ers , " i s i t nece s sary t o s t ar t f rom t he cer t a in ex i s -t ence o f a dw el l ing , or is i t ra ther only s tar ting from thed i s l oca ti on o f t he she l t e r le s s , t he hom e l es s , t hat t he au-t hen t i c i t y o f ho sp i t a li t y can open u p? Perhaps on l y t heo n e w h o e n d u r e s t h e e x p e r ie n c e o f b e i n g d e p r iv e d o f ahom e can o f f e r hosp i t a li t y . "

"W here?" say s that the first question is not that of the subjec t as " ipse , " but more radical ly that o f the very

56


protect it, to enable communication, to extend in-

formation and openness. The painful paradox stems

from this coextensiveness between the democratiza-

tion of information and the scope of the police andpolitics: as the powers of the police and politiciza-

tion are extended, so communication, permeabil-

ity, and democratic openness extend their space

and their phenomenality, their appearing in broad

daylight.

The blessing of visibility and daylight is also what

the police and politics demand. Even the so-called

secret police and politics, a particular police and aparticular politics that often, and with good reason,

present themselves as being the police and politics in

their entirety. This was always the case, but today the

accelerated deployment of particular technologies

increases more rapidly than ever the scope and

power of what is called private sociality, far beyond

the territory of measurable-surveyable space, where

it has never been possible to keep it anyway. So

today, through the phone, the fax, e-mail, and the

Internet, etc., this private sociality is tending to ex-

tend its antennae beyond national-state territory at

the speed of light. Therefore the State, suddenly

smaller, weaker than these non-State private powers,

both infra- and supra-state—the classical State, or

the cooperation of classical States—makes excessiveefforts to catch and monitor, contain and reappro-

priate to itself the very thing that is escaping it as fast

as possible. This sometimes takes the form of a re-

arrangement of the law, of new legal texts, but also

of new police ambitions attempting to adapt to the

new powers of communication and information, in

other words also to new spaces of hospitality.

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A.D•-INVITATION

m o v e m e n t o f t h e q u e s ti o n o u t o f w h i c h t h e s u b je c t h a p - pens. It tra nsl ates th e in ab il it y to hav e a lan d of one 'sow n, s ince t he ques t i on i s t urned back t o t he very p l ace

f io m w h ic h o n e th o u g h t o n e w as su re o f b e in g ab le to

begin to speak. I t puts the quest ion of the beginning,or rather of the im possibil i ty of the b eginning, of anuncontested f irst origin where the logos w o u ld b ei n scr ib ed

B ut one can also catch onese lf in th e v ert ig o of ak i n d o f w a n d e r in g , as if c u t t in g o n e s e l f o f f f r o m m a t e -rial roots (v ia the Internet and othe r distance tec h-

5 8


Phone tapping remains almost impossible to con-

trol; it is increasing every day even if, technologi-

cally, it cuts a somewhat archaic figure. Nowadays it

is e-mail that is monitored. Recently, in New York,

a German engineer engaged in trafficking in elec-

tronic material was arrested. It was possible to arrest

him only by intercepting transmissions by fax and

electronic mail. This was done for reasons that no

one would have dared to contest, probably, since

they are those of the secret services and drug squads

operating between Hong Kong, Las Vegas, and New

York. Apparently this German engineer was more-over a specialist on the subject of monitoring equip-

ment intended, among other things, to interfere

with the police's phone tappings. Subscribers to

CompuServe received in their electronic mailboxes

offers of equipment making it possible to intercept

communications, to track them, to pick up conver-

sations, and also to identify phone numbers. An-

other of these toys makes it possible to clone cellu-lar phones by duplicating the features of a mobile.

You then intercept the portable phone number and

its serial number with a scanner (the one that was for

sale in Germany), you get yourself to be taken for

someone else, the subscriber gets the b ills, and no

trace of the parasite can be found. Let's say "parasite"

because what this directs us to open up is indeed the

general problematic of relationships between para-

sitism and hospitality. How can we distinguish be-

tween a guest and a parasite? In principle, the dif-

ference is straightforward, but for that you need a

law; hospitality, reception, the welcome offered have_

to be submitted to a basic and limiting jurisdiction.

Not all new arrivals are received as guests if they

5 9



A.D.-INVITATION

nologies ) , in o ther words "r io longer having to cross thedis tance tha t separa tes us f rom the threshold," as

D errid a f orm ulate s it , gav e us a su sp ended m ean in g.

F or con t em p orary w ander ing i s capab l e o f be i ng a sub-tle lure. It 's a wandering that in reality dooms us tobrutal and b arbaric assignations ben eath w hich, as

D e rr id a s tr e sse s , ap p e ar s th e re tu rn o f n at io n al is m s an d A n d am e n ta li s m s in th e ir m o s t b lo o d y m an if e s tat io n s .

N o w h o sp it al it y c an o n ly b e o f f e re d h e re an d n o w ,som epl ace . H osp i tal it y g ives a s un thought , in i t s" n i gh t , " t h i s d i f f i cu l t , am bi va l en t r e l at i on t o p l ace . A s

6o


don't have the benefit of the right to hospitality or

the right of asylum, etc. Without this right, a new

arrival can only be introduced "in my home," in

the host's "at home," as a parasite, a guest w ho iswrong, illegitimate, clandestine, liable to expulsion

or arrest.But current technologic

al developments are re-

structuring space in such a way that what constitutes

a space of controlled and circumscribed property is

just what opens it to in trusion. That, once again, is

not absolutely new: in order to constitute the space

of a habitable house and a home, you also need anopening, a door and windows, you have to give up

a passage to the outside world Pt-ranger]. There is

no house or interior without a door or windows.

The monad of home has to be hospitable in order to

ipse , itself at home, habitable at-home in the re-

lation of the self to itself. But what has a lways been

structured like this is nowadays multiplying both

the home and the accessibility of home in propor-tions and modalities that are absolutely unprece-

dented. Whence the profound homogeneity be-

tween the devices of the private, clandestine,

non-state network, and those of the police network

of state surveillance. Their shared technology makes

it impossible for the two spaces and the two types of

structure to be mutually impermeable.Let's take another American example. There now

exists something called a "lifetime phone," which

saves 99 different combinations of two numbers in

the memory of one phone. It is on the market

($1,900), sold by the company of this Bowitz person

(the German engineer), but illegal and used by drug

traffickers, kidnappers, etc. Well, a federal agent got

6 1

Documents

Of Hospitality