OF HOSPITALITY

Anne Duf ourmantelle

inv ites
Jacques Derrida
to respond
Translated by
Rachel Bowlby
STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
STANFORD, CALIFORNIA 2000
Invitation
Anne Duf ourmantelle
"An act of hospitality can only be poetic."
Jacques Derrida
Foreigner Question:
Coming from Abroad / from the Foreigner
Q uestion cretrang er: v enue de retrang er
'Fourth seminar (January JO, 1996)
Jacques Derrida
It is Derrida's poetic h ospitality th at I w ould lik e to
inv ok e in th ese pag es, including th e dif f iculty of g iv ing
its due to th e nig h t to th at w h ich , w ith in a ph ilo-
soph ical k ind of th ink ing , does not b elong to th e order
of th e day , th e v isib le, and memory . T h is is to try to
come close to a silence around w h ich discourse is or-
deretZ and th at a poem sometimes discov ers, b ut alw ay s
pulls itself b ack f rom unv eiling in th e v ery mov ement
of speech or w riting . If a part of nig h t is inscrib ed in
lang uag e, th is is also lang uag e's moment of ef f acement.
T h is nocturnal side of speech could b e called ob ses-
sion. A f org er can imitate a painter's b rush strok e or a
w riter's sty le and mak e th e dif f erence b etw een th em
imperceptib le, b ut h e w ill nev er b e ab le to mak e h is
ow n th eir ob session, w h at f orces th em to b e alw ay s
g oing b ack tow ard th at silence w h ere th e f irst imprints
are sealed. Derrida's ob session, ' in th is ph ilosoph ical
narrativ e w ov en around th at f ine th eme of h ospitality ,
tak es its time in draw ing th e contours of an impossib le,
illicit g eog raph y of prox imity . A prox imity th at w ould
Isn't the question of the foreigner [Utrang ed a
foreigner's question? Coming from the foreigner,
from abroad [retrang ed?
Before saying th e 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 itas 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 th e one w h o
puts the first question or th e one to w h om 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 first
question, puts me in questionjOne thinks of the
A.D.-INVITATION
not b e th e opposite of an elsew h ere come f rom outside
and surrounding it, b ut "dose to th e close, " th at un-
b earab le orb of intimacy th at melts into h ate. If w e can
say th at murder and h ate desig nate ev ery th ing th at ex -
cludes closeness, it is insof ar as th ey rav ag e f rom w ith in
an orig inal relationsh ip to alterioc T h e h ostis
2
responds
to h ospitality in th e w ay th at th e g h ost recalls h imself to
th e liv ing , not letting th em f org et. T o th e pacif ied rea-
son of Kant, Derrida opposes th e primary h aunting of
a sub ject prev ented b y alterity f rom closing itself of f in
its 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 question
from 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 (x enos)
w

ho questions. He carries and puts the question.

We think first of the Soph ist. It is the Foreigner
who, by putting forward the unbearable question,
the parricide question, contests the thesis of Par-
menides, puts in question the log os of our father
Parmenides, ton tou patros Parmenidou log on. The
,
Foreigner shakes up the threatening do
g
matism of
tr
--
a3
---
,

ern
-
27;4W. ihTe

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 h osti -pets
which we have talked about at such length [in ear-
lier seminars].
The Foreigner of the Soph ist here resembles
someone who basically has to account for possibil-
ity of sophistry. It is as though the Foreigner were
appearing 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 h en Derrida reads Soph ocles, Joy ce, Kant,
H eideg g er, C elan, L ev i nas, B lanch ot, or Kaf k a, h e not
only accompanies th eir tex ts, g iv ing th em a second ech o,
h e "ob sesses" th em w ith th e th eme h e is w ork ing on, and
w h ich th us acts lik e a ph otog raph ic dev eloper. W itness
th at moment w h ere, in a seminar commentary on th e
f inal scenes of Oedipus
at Colonus b ased on th e idea
of th e h ospitality g iv en to death and th e dead, Derrida
stresses its ab solute contemporaneity , w h ile th e necessity
of th at strang e "v isitation" of Soph ocles' trag edy is im-
posed on h is listeners. T h e summons h e addresses to
6
J.D. -FOREIGNER QUESTION
Theaetetus then asks. The Foreigner: "It is that in
order to defend ourselves, we will necessarily have to
put to the test the thesis (log on) 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, a
challenge 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 genera-
tional difference, indicated by every allusion to the
father. Theaetetus's response here is weakened by
translation. 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 Ph ainetai to
toiouton diamach eteon en tois log ois: it is obvious, it
appears obvious, it certainly seems that that is where
one has to fight, diamach eteon, engage in a heated
combat, or that is where one has to carry war into
oi, into arguments, into discourses, into the log os;
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 auth ors to roam around w ith h im on th e
edg es of a th eme doesn't mak e h im turn h is b ack on
"th e matters of urg ency th at assail us at th is end-of -
millennium, " as h e puts it h imself On th e contrary , h e
supports conf ronting th em.
T h ere is in th is seminar a precision th at can b e
h eard. And th at comes, I th ink , f rom th e intimate
ag reement of th oug h t and speech th eir rh y th mic
ag reement and f rom th e th ematic analy sis w h ich is
th e ob session of ph ilosoph ical ref lection; b ut also f rom
Derrida's tak ing it to th e limit w h en h e w ork s ov er a
8
J.D. -FOREIGNER QUESTION
warinternal to the log os, that is the foreigner's ques-
tion, the double question, the altercation of father
parricide. It is also the place where the question
of the foreigner as a question of hospitality is artic-
ulated with the question of being. We know that a
reference to the Soph ist opens [Heidegger's] Sein und
Z dt
as its epigraph.
We ought to reconstitute practically the whole
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 lindness and mad-
ness, a strange alliance of blindness with madness.
B lindness first of all. To Theaetetus's response ("It
seems obvious, ph ainetai, 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 b lind 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 blind
person, k ai to leg omenon d touto tv h 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 or-
eig n son? Let me insist on the blinding and mad-
dening obviousness: a "foreign son, " for a parricide
can only be a son. In truth, with the question he is
getting ready to put, on the being of non-being, the
Foreigner fears that he will be treated as mad
(manik os). 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
concept up to th e point of its turning b ack tow ard th e
enig ma th at b ears it.
T h at is w h y it seemed important to us to conv ey a
f rag ment of th e seminars w ith out altering any th ing .
In th em y ou h ear th at sing ular rh y th m of Derrida's
spok en ref lecting ; so dif f erent f rom th e w riting , of
w h ich h e is a patient artisan. And w e th oug h t it f easi-
b le to sing le out tw o seminars b ecause th e w h ole prob -
lematic of h ospitality w as already present in th at "en-
clav e" (as a w ork is included in each of its f rag ments),
as w as also th e spacing of measured v iolence and f riend-
J.D. FOREIGNER QUESTION
iterally, mad, manik os, a nutter, a maniac), "who is
upside down all over
(para poda metab allon emauton
, znO k ai k at ),
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 log os. The paternal authority of
the log os
gets ready to disarm him, to treat him as
mad, and this at the very moment when his ques-
tion, the question of 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 personhere is something
that 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 Oedipus, this will be
th e
question, from the arrival of this blind Foreigner
leaning on Antigonewho 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 with
Plato, 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
I0
II
A.D.-INVITATION
sh ip th at g iv es th is th ink ing its uniqueness, its partic-
ular g enius.
Derrida h as h imself spok en of th e dif f iculty of tak -
ing account of th e open speech of th e seminar as it re-
lates to h ospitality . "
W h at I don't w ant to say or can-
not, th e unsaid, th e f orb idden, w h at is passed ov er in
silence, w h at is separated of f . . . all th ese sh ould b e
interpreted, "h e stressed "In th ese reg ions w e rediscov er
th e open question of th e relationsh ip b etw een h ospital-
ity and th e question, in oth er w ords of a h ospitality b e-
g inning w ith th e name, th e question of th e name, or
12
J.D. -FOREIGNER QUESTION
Foreigner ("h ama k ai tes tou x enou"). 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, af ter 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 Soph ist. Nowshe Foreigner's leading question in
the Statesman, after the question of the sophist, is
just thatthe question of the statesman. The Xenos
says (258 b): "Well then, after the sophist, it's the
statesman (the political man, ton politik on andra)
that we are going to have to seek out (diazetein). So
tell me, should we classify him among those who
know (ton epistemonon)?" 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
play s the foreigner he is not. In particular he does it
in what is for us an extremely interesting sceneof
which Henri Joly reminds us at the start of the fine
posthumous book I recommended you read: L a
question des etrang ers [T h e Q uestion of Foreig ners]
(Paris: Vrin, 1992).
13
A.D.-INVITATION
else opening up w ith out question. . . ." And also: "One
could dream ab out w h at w ould b e th e lesson of some-
one w h o didn't h av e th e k ey s to h is ow n k now ledg e,
w h o didn't arrog ate it to h imself H e w ould g iv e place
to th e place, leav ing th e k ey s w ith th e oth er to unlock
th e w ords f rom th eir enclosure."
It is th is "g iv ing place to th e place" th at, I th ink , is
th e promise k ept b y th ese w ords. T h ey also mak e us un-
derstand th e question of place as b eing a f undamental
question, f ounding th e h istory of our culture and un-
th oug h t in it. It w ould b e consenting to ex ile, in oth er
J.D.-FOREIGNER QUESTION
In T h e Apolog y of Socrates (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 lik e 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 b eing in a relationsh ip to place, to th e
dw elling , th at is b oth nativ e (I w ould say almost ma-
ternal), and y et in transit, if th ink ing occurred to th e
h uman. Derrida's meditations on b urial, th e name,
memory , th e madness th at inh ab its lang uag e, ex ile and
th e th resh old, are so many sig ns addressed to th is ques-
tion of place, inv iting th e sub ject to recog nize th at h e is
f irst of all a g uest.
16
J.D. -FOREIGNER QUESTION
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 lik e a foreigner, at once as
'th oug h he were a foreigner (as a fiction) and inas-
much 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 skillful
courtroom denial), a foreigner accused in a language
he says he doesn't speak, a defendant required 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 he
sometimes calls "Athenians." They speak as (or like)
judges, the citizens 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 speech
in 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 to
expect 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
It is dif f icult to h ear someth ing of th e rig h tness of a
w ay of speak ing w ith out tak ing th e measure of its step,
w h ich is to say its rh y th m, and th e time necessary to
say it. "T h e h ow of truth is precisely truth , " w rote
Kierk eg aard.
3
I w ill th us concentrate on listening to th e
particular "h ow " of Derrida's th ink ing , rath er th an on
th e sterile ex ercize of commentary . "T h e ph ilosoph er
needs a doub le h earing , "insisted N ietzsch e, "in th e w ay
18
J.D. -FOREIGNER QUESTION
hear me defending myself in the same language which it
has been my habit to use, both in the market square next
to the stallswhere many of you have heard meand
elsewhere, do not be surprised, and do not interrupt. Let
me 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 atech nos oun x enos ech o tes enth ade lex eos:
atech nos, 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 tech ne, very close to atech nos, with a
short o, which does mean, precisely, inexperienced, with-
out technique, inept, without savoir-faire: I am simply
foreign, purely and simply a foreigner with no aptitude,
without recourse or resources]. Now if I were really a
foreigner [ei to anti x enos etug k anon on], you would nat-
urally excuse me if I spoke in the accent and dialect in
which I had been brought up [the accent is ph one; 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, You
would 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 V s. 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
th at one mig h t h av e th e g if i of second sig h t, in oth er
w ords th e most sub tle of ears."
W h at N ietzsch e required
f or h is w ork w as a f orm of attention sensitiv e to th e b ody
of th e w ords. "0 man, y ou h ig h er man, tak e care! T h is
speech is f or delicate ears, f or y our ears:
What does the
deep midnight declare? "
4

W e must learn to perceiv e
w h at is almost inaudib le. Added N ietzsch e, "For w h at
one lack s access to f rom ex perience one w ill h av e no ear.
N ow let us imag ine an ex treme case . . . th e f irst lan-
g uag e f or a new series of ex periences. In th at case, sim-
20
J.D. -FOREIGNER QUESTION
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 enos, is not simply the absolute
other, the barbarian, the savage absolutely excluded
and heterogeneousthis 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 h ostis, which we have said a lot about
in 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 enos 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 pointwe take its measure right away
is critical. This pact, this contract of hospitality that
links to the foreigner and which reciprocally 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 irth rig h 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
ply noth ing w ill b e h eard, b ut th ere w ill b e th e aco
illusion th at w h ere noth ing is h eard noth ing is th er
T h e f irst impression y ou draw f i-om listening to
seminar is of h earing a musical score b eing play ed t
mak es th e v ery mov ement of th ink ing audib le. It
if w e w ere th e audience f or th e th ink ing of a th oug h
th e v ery moment of its utterance. Someone w h o pat
, .
oph izes out loud in th is w ay does not unw ind a smoo
univ ocal th read; h e sh ow s th e tears in it. H e le
22
-FOREIGNER QUESTION
per remaining a foreigner, and to his or her
to the family, to the descendants.
ilial or genealogical right applying to
one generation enables us to think about
not, basically, a question of the extension
. or the "pact" (to use Benveniste's term;
to insist on the reciprocity of the commit-
foreigner doesn't only have a right, he or
as reciprocally, 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 subsequent generations a right
place granted to the individual. No, that
at lets us reflect upon the fact that, from
t to hospitality commits a house-
.descent, a family, a familial or ethnic
.a.familial or ethnic group3 Precisely
inscribed in a right, a custom, an eth os
icb k eit, this objective morality that we
ng about last time presupposes the social
status
of the contracting parties, that it
them to be called by their names, to
aa.,:s, to be subjects in law, to be questioned
to have crimes imputed to them, to be
oasible, 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 a
contradiction: this right to hospitality
foreigner "as a family," represented and
his or her family name, is at once what
lospitality possible, or the hospitable rela-
23
A.D.--INVITATION
room f or astonish ment, f or w h at b reak s ref lection in th e
seizure of f ear.
W h y f ear? T h e w ord seems too v iolent just to say
"w h at astonish es." And y et th at is certainly w h at it
ab out, not a f ear produced b y th e dev astating or dom-
inating ef f ect of th e speech itself ; b ut th at space of th e
unk now ab le th at th e speech appreh ends and b ef ore
w h ich it stops us sh ort f or a moment, scared. just as, in
a musical score, th e mark ing s f or silences mak e th e
melodic line enter into dialog ue w ith th e silence th at
sustains it, so ph ilosoph ical speech espouses th e precise
24
J.D. -FOREIGNER QUESTION
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 that
absolute hospitality should break with the law of
hospitality as right or duty, with 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 orbeing a foreigner,
_ _
etc.), but to the absolute, unknown, anonymous
other, and that I g iv e place to them, that I let them
come, 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
log ic of reasoning , all th e b etter, at th e rig h t moment,
to treat its ob v iousness h arsh ly . It is customary to call
th is moment "aporia": th e undecidab le crossing of th e
w ay s.
W h en w e enter an unk now n place, th e emotion ex -
perienced is almost alw ay s th at of an indef inab le anx -
iety . T h ere th en b eg ins th e slow w ork of taming th e un-
k now n, and g radually th e unease f ades aw ay A new
f amiliarity succeeds th e f ear prov ok ed in us b y th e ir-
ruption of th e "w h olly oth er."If th e b ody 's most arch aic
instinctual reactions are caug h t up in an encounter
J.D.
-FOREIGNER QUESTION
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 enos of whom Socrates
says "him at least you would respect, you would tol-
erate his accent and his idiom," or the one of whom
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 a
court. 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 lovean 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 what
26
A.D.-INVITATION
w ith w h at it does not
im
mediately recog nize in th e
real, h ow could th oug h t really claim to appreh end th e
oth er, th e w h olly oth er, w ith out
ast
onish ment? T h oug h t
is in essence a f orce of mastery . It is continually b ring -
ing th e unk now n b ack to th e k now n, b reak ing up its
my stery to possess it, sh ed lig h t on it. N ame it.
So w h at h appens w h en our ey es h alt on th e w ords:
"
h
ospitality , prox imity enclav e, h ate, f oreig ner . . ."?
Ev en f f or an instant w e f ind some "elsew h ere" in
th em, th ey are soon assimilated to a landscape mark ed
b y th e seal of our
habitus
of th ink ing and our memory .
28
J.D. -FOREIGNER QUESTION
we sometimes tenderly ask children and those we
ove. Or else does hospitality begin with the un-1
questioning welcome, in a double effacement, the
effacement of the question and the name? is it more,
jyst and more loving to question or not to question?
to call by the name or without the name? to give or
to learn a name already given? Does one give hospi-
tality to a subject? to an identifiable subject? to a
subject identifiable by name? to a legal subject? Or
is_hospitality tendered, i s it g iv en to the other before!
are identified, even before they are (posited as
or supposed to be) a subject, legal subject and sub-
.
e,ct nameable by their family name, etc.?
e qu stion_o
,
ospit so t e-ques-1
don 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 enia. He inscribes t
say in the pact, in the
of that name. Basicall
foreigner before or o
change with a grou
line of descent. H rodotus sa that Polycrates had
concluded a x enr (pact) with i asis and that they
sent each other presents: x enien neth ek ato (verb
for pact: they oncluded, like a pac a x enia) pem-
pon dora k ai h omenos alla par'ek eiv in sending
and 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 commonplace. He too oc-
cupies, els here, that position of foreigner, and in-
ucr
t
4
te want to define the x enos, there
us i his beginning from the
nos in the x enia, which is to S)
ntract or collective alliance
ere is no x enos, there is no Al)
the x enia, this pact or ex- n
e 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 should
OEDIPUS: 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
J.D. -FOREIGNER QUESTION
T h e my th ical ch aracter in Soph ocles' Antig one cap-
tiv ates us b ecause sh e k eeps h erself close to th e orig ins.
"Sh e is one of th ose w h o lov e, not one of th ose w h o
h ate, " w rote PatoOk a, b ut th is lov e is not C h ristlik e. It
sig nif ies "lov e as f oreig n to th e h uman condition, de-
riv ing f rom th e portion of nig h t w h ich is th e portion of
th e g ods. "
8
12 th e
c
onf rontation b etw een C reon and
Antig one, Patook a sh ow s th at th e f orce of law repre-
sented b y C rean is really a response to f ear, f or it is "on
f ear th at th e sph ere of day depends, th e State as h e con-
ceiv es it." T h is f ear under its f inal mask is th e f ear of
42
eseus takes pity on the blind
forgotten, he says, that he too
gner" (562) and put his life at risk
" (563 ). Like 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 h osti
we hay
up t
s ran
A.D.-INVITATION
death . "T h us C reon h imself testes, w ith out r
ealizing it, to h is
de
pendence in relation to th e oth er, in relation
to th e law of N ig h t. And as Antig one e
mb odies th e
law , th e portion of nig h t, it is pointless to th reaten h er
w ith death .
H ere Patook a is w riting ag ainst w h at
h as associated our
consc
iousness w ith th e
mon
opolizing
of a meaning it th oug h t it could mak e use of
"Soph ocles' Antig one
r
epresents th e
r
eminder of a tiny
h ope, a
r
eminder th at C reon.'s w ay
o
f th ink ing h as com-
pletely h idden in us: th e f act th at man does not b elong
to h imself th at h is meaning is not Meaning , th at
44
J.D. -FOREIGNER QUESTION
as it is used most often, sensu stricto, when the con-
text does not specify it more (the normal meaning is
almost always the most "narrow" meaning, obvi-
ously), etrang er is understood on the basis of the
cirmcumscribed field of eth os or ethics, of habitat or
time spent as eth os, of Sittlich k eit, of objective moral-
ity, especially in the three instances determined by
law and Hegel's philosophy of law: the f amily , b our-
g eois or civ il society , and the State (or the nation-
state). We had elaborated and interrogated these
limits at length, and we asked ourselves a certain
number of questionsstemming from but also on
the subject of interpretations of Ben
.
yeniste, espe-
cially based on the two Latin derivations: the for-
eigner (h ostis) welcomed as guest or as enemy.
Hospitality, hostility, h ostpitality . As always, the Ben-
veniste readings had seemed to us as valuable as
they were problematiclet's not go back to that
here.
Today, and on that basis, let us broach more di-
rectly the meaning of etrang er, 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 uman meaning comes to an end as soon as one reach es
th e sh ore of N ig h t, and th at N ig h t is not a noth ing ness,
b ut b elong s to w h at 'is' in th e proper sense of th e
term.
N ig h t, f or Patook a, is "th e opening onto w h at dis-
turb s." It ask s us to g o th roug h th e ex perience of th e loss
of meaning , an ex perience f rom w h ich f low s th e au-
th enticity of
ph
ilosoph ical th ink ing . W h en Derrida
ref ers to PatoOk a's ref lections on th e ex perience of th e
f ront in W orld W ar I, w h at h e is lay ing h old of is th e
f itrth est edg e of th e concept of
h
ospitality .
1 1
In th e ex -
46
J.D. -FOREIGNER QUESTION
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-
netI 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 enos and x enia in Greece,
and about Oedipus and Antigone as x enoi address-
ing x enoi who speak to them, in return, reciprocally,
as x enoi and we'll be doing so again, later. But how
could 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 ois de Ph ospitalite [L aw s of H ospitality ],
but some texts and images distributed on the Inter-
net. The German government banned two hundred
pornographic sites (L e canard ench aine 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
perience of th e f ront, w rites th e C zech ph ilosoph er, th e
adv ersary is no long er th e same, h e is "our accomplice in
th e disturb ance of th e day . So it is h ere th at th e ab y ssal
domain of pray er f or th e enemy opens up: th e solidar-
ity of th e sh ak en.
"12
T o die so th at a truth of th e ques-
tioning of meaning may surv iv e, and not to g iv e th at
act th e arrog ance of a response, is to render to nig h t its
reality ; th e opposite of an ab dication.
It is in th is "nocturnal" sense th at I w ould lik e to
speak of th e relation b etw een reason and ob session: in
oth er w ords, "th e opening onto w h at disturb s."
48
J.D. -FOREIGNER QUESTION
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 and
public 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 authorized
only 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 to
ban 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 which this state in-
tervention claims to be justified is the allegation 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 exceeding
the readership of Sade, of
L ois de l'h ospitalite 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
Ob session, w h en it w ork s f rom th e inside of th oug h t, or
rath er if th oug h t h as enoug h f orce to let itself b e sh aped
b y it, mak es th oug h t creativ e in th e w ay th at a w ork of
art inaug urates a response to th e material th at h olds it
th at w as unk now n until th en. It is out of th e nig h t th at
"w h at ob sesses" can come to b e spok en.
W h en an utterance g iv es th e "nig h t" its portion, it
mak es us h ear th e w ords dif f erently . So, to speak of "th e
near, th e ex iled, th e f oreig -ner, th e v isitor, b eing at h ome
in th e oth er's place" prev ents concepts lik e `self and
oth er" or
`
! s
ub ject and ob ject" f rom presenting th em-
J.D. -FOREIGNER QUESTION
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 existing
law 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, my
word, 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
ti
me 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 end
of 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 violation 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
selv es under a
per
manently dual law . W h at Derri da
g ets us to
u
nderstand is th at th e opposite of nearness is
not
el
sew h ere b ut anoth er f ig ure of
n
earness. And I
th ink th is g eog raph y leads
t
h roug h out th e seminar to
th e
r
ev elation of th e question "W h ere?" as b eing th e
question of man. A question w h ich , lik e th at of th e
Sph inx , is addressed to a man on th e mov e, w h o h as no
oth er place of h is ow n th an th at of b eing on th e w ay ,
b ound f or a
d
estination th at is unk now n to h im, b ut
precedes h im w ith its sh adow
T h e question "W h ere?" is ag eless,
t
ransitiv e, it g iv es
52
J.D. -FOREIGNER QUESTION
ket (some 20,000
of 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 wide
erimeter (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 on
the 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 pse, potis, potens, 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-
53
A.D.-INVITATION
as essential th e relation to place, to dw elling , to place-
lessness, and in its v ery f unction ref uses th oug h t in its
compreh ending relation to th e ob ject. T h e only truth is
th at of th e running f erret in th e ch ildren's rh y me, a
truth f ound out b y its mov ement and named b y th e
trace.
13
Its not so much ab out def ining , ex plaining ,
understanding , as contending w ith th e ob ject of
th oug h t b y discov ering in th is conf rontation th e terri-
tory w h ere th e question is inscrib ed: its rig h tness.
T h is is w h y "th e b order, th e limit, th e th resh old, th e
step b ey ond th is th resh old" return so of ten in Derrida's
54
J.D. -FOREIGNER QUESTION
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 power.
This collusion is also power in its f initude, 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, without
/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 (Gew alt) 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
55
A.D.-INVITATION
lang uag e, as th oug h th e impossib ility of mark ing out a
stab le territory w h ere th oug h t could b e estab lish ed w as
prov ocativ e of th oug h t itself "T o of f er h ospitality , "h e
w onders, "is it necessary to start f rom th e certain ex is-
tence of a dw elling , or is it rath er only starting f rom th e
dislocation of th e sh elterless, th e h omeless, th at th e au-
th enticity of h ospitality can open up? Perh aps only th e
one w h o endures th e ex perience of b eing depriv ed of a
h ome can of f er h ospitality ."
"W h ere?" say s th at th e f irst question is not th at of
th e sub ject as "ipse, " b ut more radically th at of th e v ery
56
J.D. -FOREIGNER QUESTION
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 and
politics: 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 a
particular 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-statethe classical State, or
the cooperation of classical Statesmakes excessive
efforts 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.
57
A.D -INVITATION
mov ement of th e question out of w h ich th e sub ject h ap-
pens. It translates th e inab ility to h av e a land of one's
ow n, since th e question is turned b ack to th e v ery place
f iom w h ich one th oug h t one w as sure of b eing ab le to
b eg in to speak . It puts th e question of th e b eg inning ,
or rath er of th e
i
mpossib ility of th e b eg inning , of an
uncontested f irst orig in w h ere th e
logos
w ould b e
inscrib ed
B ut one can also catch oneself in th e v ertig o of a
k ind of w andering , as if cutting oneself of f f rom mate-
rial roots (v ia th e Internet and oth er distance tech -
58
J.D.
-FOREIGNER QUESTION
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 bills, 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
59
A.D.-INVITATION
nolog ies), in oth er w ords "rio long er h av ing to cross th e
distance th at separates us f rom th e th resh old, " as
Derrida f ormulates it, g av e us a suspended meaning .
For contemporary w andering is capab le of b eing a sub -
tle lure. It's a w andering th at in reality dooms us to
b rutal and b arb aric assig nations b eneath w h ich , as
Derrida stresses, appears th e return of nationalisms and
Andamentalisms in th eir most b loody manif estations.
N ow h ospitality can only b e of f ered h ere and now ,
someplace. H ospitality g iv es as unth oug h t, in its
"nig h t, " th is dif f icult, amb iv alent relation to place. As
6o
J.D.
-FOREIGNER QUESTION
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 who is
wrong, 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 circumscribe
d
property is
just what opens it to intrusion. That, once again, is
not absolutely new: in order to constitute the space
of a habitable house and a home, you also need an
opening, a door and windows, you have to give up
a passage to the outside world
Pt-rang er].
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 always 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 i
mpossible 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
61