Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
In
the
Present
Anne Dufourmantelle
invites
Jacques Derrida
to respond
Translated by
Rachel Bowlby
rv
I
~
Contents
." J
Translator's Note
lX
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE
R.B.
x
Invitation Foreigner Question:
Coming from Abroad / from the Foreigner
Anne Dufourmantelle
Question d'itranger: venue de l'ttranger
"An act of hospitality can only be poetic." Fourth seminar (January 10, I99 6 )
-Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
It is Derrida's poetic hospitality that I would like to Isn't the question of the foreigner [letrangerl a
invoke in these pages, including the difficulty ofgiving foreigner's question? Coming from the foreigner,
its due to the night-to that which, within a philo- from abroad [letranger]?
sophical kind ofthinking, does not belong to the order Before saying the question of the foreigner, per-
of the day, the visible, and memory. This is to try to haps we should also specifY: question of the for-
come close to a silence around which discourse is or- eigner. How should we understand this difference of
dered, and that a poem sometimes discovers, but always accent?
pulls itself back from unveiling in the very movement There is, we were saying, a question of the for-
of speech or writing. If a part of night is inscribed in eigner. It is urgent to embark on it-as such.
language, this is also language's moment ofeffacement. Of course. But before being a question to be dealt
This nocturnal side ofspeech could be called obses- with, before designating a concept, a theme, a prob-
sion. A forger can imitate a painter's brush stroke or a lem, a program, the question of the foreigner is a
writer's style and make the difference between them question ofthe foreigner, addressed to the foreigner.
imperceptible, but he will never be able to make his As though the foreigner were first of all the one who
own their obsession, what forces them to be always puts the first question or the one to whom you ad-
going back toward that silence where the first imprints dress the first question. As though the foreigner were
are sealed. Derrida's obsession, 1 in this philosophical being-in-question, the very question of being-in-
narrative woven around that fine theme ofhospitality, question, the question-being or being-in-question of
takes its time in drawing the contours ofan impossible, the question. But also the one who, putting the first
illicit geography ofproximity. A proximity that would question, puts me in question. One thinks of the
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A.D.-INVITATION
I were foreign, you would accept with more toler-
ance .t~at I don't speak as you do, that I have my
own 1dlOm, 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 xenos, 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 hostis, 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: xenos indicates
relation~ of ~he s~me type between men linked by a
pact wh1ch 1mphes precise obligations also extend-
ing to their descendants.,,2
. ~~is last point-we take its measure right away-
1~ cntlcal. This pact, this contract of hospitality that
lmks 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
that one might have the gift of second sight, in other ~o the family, to the generation, to the genealogy. It
words the most subtle ofears. "What Nietzsche required 1S not, here, although the things are connected, a
for his work was a form ofattention sensitive to the body
~uesti~n of the classical problem of the right to na-
ofthe words. "0 man, you higher man, take care! This tlOnaltty or citizenship as a birthright-in some
speech is for delicate ears, for your ears: What does the places linked to the land and in others to blood. It
deep midnight declare? ,,4 We must learn to perceive
is not only a question of the link between birth and
what is almost inaudible. Added Nietzsche, "For what nationality; it is not only a question of the citizen-
one lacks access to from experience one will have no ear. ship offere~ to someone who had none previously,
Now let us imagine an extreme case . . . the first lan- but of the nght granted to the foreigner as such, to
guage for a new series ofexperiences. In that case, sim-
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A.D.-INVITATION
Jacques Derrida
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A.D.-INVITATION
Jacques Derrida
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J.D.-STEP OF HOSPITALITY
A.D.-INVITATION
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A. D .-INVIT A TION
the laws, are thus both contradictory, antinomic,
and inseparable. They both imply and exclude each
other, simultaneously. They incorporate one another
at the moment of excluding one another, they are
dissociated at the moment of enveloping one an-
other, at the moment (simultaneity without simul-
taneity, instant of impossible synchrony, moment
without moment) when, exhibiting themselves to
each other, one to the others, the others to the other,
they show they are both more and less hospitable,
hospitable and inhospitable, hospitable inasmuch as
inhospitable".
Because exclusion and inclusion are inseparable in
the same moment, whenever you would like to say
"at this very moment," there is antinomy. The law, in
the absolute singular, contradicts laws in the plural,
but on each occasion it is the law within the law, and
on each occasion outside the law within the law.
That's it, that so very singular thing that is called the
laws of hospitality. Strange plural, plural grammar of
two plurals that are different at the same time. One of
these two plurals says the laws of hospitality, condi-
tionallaws, etc. The other plural says the antinomic
addition, the one that adds conditional laws to the
Hyperboles unique and singular and absolutely only great Law of
hospitality, to the law of hospitality, to the categori-
To finish, I would like to try to thro.w /~~ht on cal imperative of hospitality. In this second case, the
Derrida's particular way of''taking ~o the !tmzt one or plural is made up of One + a multiplicity, whereas in
a number ofconcepts. In order to pzck .out ~hese hyper- the first case, it was only multiplicity, distribution,
boles, I will sometimes have to transcrzbe hzs speech al- differentiation. In one case, you have One + n; in the
mrut W
ord for word. I will take two examples .that .I
other, n + n + n, etc. (Let us note parenthetically that
will deliberately not borrow from the seminars gwen. zn as a quasi-synonym for "unconditional," the Kant-
this book, so as to keep back the "suspense" oft~e phzlo- ian expression of "categorical imperative" is not un-
sophical narrative for the reader. The first LS about problematic; we will keep it with some reservations,
madness, the second about ghosts.
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--
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IIO III
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II2 II3
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ISMENE: To do what?
ISMENE: What?
ISMENE: Whose?
ISMENE: But how can that be right for us? Don't you see?
... He died unburied, apart from all.
is not a question here ofgoing back over the trauma of
ANTIGONE: Take me there and then kill me. (1724-33)
the war, but of understanding why this radicaL disen-
chantment it produced affected something in our hu- It is then, at the moment of this Wish, that
manity, in that which "promises" us to another, and Theseus, who comes back, reminds them about the
perhaps permanently. Is it not the first time in the west Oath. He reminds them of this son of Zeus who
that the word, in what it opens up ofthe very possibiL- bears the (name of) Oath (Orkos). In order to re-
ity of the dimension of the promise and the oath, has main faithful to a sworn pledge, to avoid perjuring
been mutiLated in this way? With Nazism, it was a themselves, they must not see, see with their own
whoLe peopLe, nations, and thousands of individuaLs eyes, the holy and last dwelling place of their father:
who saw themseLves "bewitched" by a word whose pur-
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A.D.-INVITATION J.D.-STEP OF HOSPITALITY
Difficulties
When my uncle Octave took my aunt Roberte in his
arms, it was wrong to think that he was the only one to
take her. A guest was entering, although Roberte com-
pletely in the presence of my uncle, wasn't expecting him,
and while she was afraid of the guest coming, because
Roberte was expecting some guest with an irresistible res-
olution, already the guest was looming up behind her, al-
though it was my uncle who was entering, just in time to
take by surprise the fulfilled fright of my aunt, taken by sur-
prise by the guest. But in my uncle's mind, it only lasted
an instant and again my uncle was on the point of taking
my aunt in his arms. It only lasted an instant . .. since in
the end, one cannot both take and not take, be there and
not be there, enter when one is within. My uncle Octave
was asking too much if he wanted to prolong the moment
o/the open door, it was already a lot that he could have the
guest appear at the door and that at that very moment the
guest loomed up behind Roberte to enable Octave to feel
he was himself the guest when, borrowing from the guest
the gesture of opening the door, coming from the outside,
he could from there perceive them with the feeling that
it was he, Octave, who was surprising my aunt.
Nothing could give a better idea of my uncle's men-
tality than these handwritten pages that he had had put
under glass and framed to hang from the wall of the bed-
room reserved for visitors, just above the bed, with a few
tion Of nomadic peoples, and of all transhumance.
wild flowers wilting on the old-fashioned frame:
Nomadic peoples, transhumant populations, are so now
only as a result of war, when they are constrained and
The Laws ofHospitality
forced into exile. But that a family, an individual, a
clan, should want, by itself, to change country, laws, The master of the house having no more urgent concern
and customs, is now-on the threshold of a Europe than that ofletting his joy shine out over anyone who, of
an evening, will come to eat at his table and rest under his
without frontiers-totally proscribed, for their history,
roof from the fatigues of the road, anxiously awaits on the
their identity, their debts will pursue them and catch threshold of his house the stranger he will see rising into
up with them as surely as if they were standing on a view on the horizon like a liberator. And from as far away
glass chessboard.
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J.D.-S TEP OF HOSPIT ALITY
A.D.-I NVITA TION
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,I Then the master of the house went out to them and said,
"No, my brothers; I implore you, do not commit this
crime. This man has become my guest; do not commit
such an infamy. Here is my daughter; she is a virgin; I will
give her to you. Possess her, do what you please with her,
but do not commit such an infamy against this man."
The men would not listen to him. So the Levite took his
concubi ne and brought her out to them. They had inter-
course with her and outraged her all night till morning ;
when dawn was breaking they let her go.
At daybreak the girl came and fell on the threshold of
her husband's host, and she stayed there till it was full day.
In the mornin g her husband got up and opened the door
of the house. 8
155
Notes
INVITATION
157
'j",
NOTES NOTES
Antigone, in its originary femininity" ("Le my the de 5 Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus, 11. 42, 87-90, 123-
l'homme-dieu," in Marc Richir and Etienne Tassir, 25, 142.
eds., Jan Patocka: philosophie, phenomenologie, politique 6. Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus, 11. 510 -48.
(Grenoble: Jerome Millon), p. 131.
8. J. Patocka, Platon et l 'Eu rope, seminars of 1973, STEP OF HOSPITALITY / NO HOSPITALITY
trans. E. Abrams (Paris: Lagrasse, Verdier, 1983), p. 52. I. A:-rivant is italicized, hinting at the relationship of
9. Patocka, Platon, p. 53 the arrival to the revenant, or "returner," meaning a
10. Patocka, Platon, p. 59. ghost.-Trans.
II. See Derrida, The Gift ofDeath (1992), trans. David
. 2. On the logic of such a commitment, of a "duty"
Wills (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1995). without debt or without duty, compare for instance [Der-
12. Patocka, Platon, p. 14I. rida,] Passions (Paris: Galilee, 1993), pp. 88ff. It is thus not
13. "II court, it court, Ie furet" - "he's running, he's a matter here, or there, if one is willing to read, of re-
running, the ferret" -is the line repeated in a game re- peating the Kantian argument about what is "conforming
sembling "Hunt the Slipper." Players sit in a circle and to. duty" (pjlichtmdssig), but on the contrary, against and
pass around the "ferret" while another player, in the mid- wIthout Kant, of carrying oneself beyond debt and duty,
dle, has to guess where it is.-Trans. an.d thus ~ven beyond what is done out of sheer duty (aus
14. As Mme Maeght detested cats that ate birds, he remer Pjltcht). To be continued.
gave her as a birthday present a bronze cat holding out a 3 Derrida, Monolingualism ofthe Other, trans. Patrick
tray between its paws. "For the crumbs ... ," said Gia- Mensah (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999),
cometti with a smile. pp.84ff.
4 EI~lIT~anuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay
FOREIGNER QUESTION
on Extenortty, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh, PA:
I. Plato, The Apology ofSocrates, 17c-d. (Summary of Duquesne University Press, 1969), p. 299.
an improvised development ofthis ofwhich only an abridged 5 Emmanuel Levinas, Autrement qu'etre ou au-dela
note remains here: What we must be attentive to here, so de l'essence (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974), p. 142;
as to comment upon it and explicate it at length, is the cf. :Iso PP: 15~, I~~, 179, 201, 212, and the whole chapter
socio-cultural difference between languages, codes, con- on Substitution. My reading of Levinas has been elab-
notations, within the same national language, the lan- l orated since the time of this seminar: see Derrida, Adieu
guages in the language, the effects of "foreignness" in do- to Emmanuel Levinas, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and
mesticity, the foreign in the same. A lot could be said Michael Naas (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,
about languages within a language: whence the cleavages, 1999)
the tensions, the virtual or oblique conflicts, declared or . 6. These two points had been extensively developed
deferred, etc.) III the course of an improvised discussion of which no
2. "L:hospitalite," in Emile Benveniste, Le vocabulaire I race was kept.
des institutions indo-europeennes (Paris: Minuit, 1969), 7 Genesis 19: 1-9, The Jerusalem Bible (London: Dar-
p. 94.-Trans. I()n, Longman, and Todd, 19 6 6).
159
NOTES
interpreted it, transformed it. In the Essai sur l'origi~e des Cultural Memory in the Present
langues [Essay on the origin oflanguages] as well as III Ie
Uvite d'Ephrarm [The Levite of Ephraim] of which ~e
says in the Confessions that "if it isn't my best :-V0rk, [It]
will always be my favorite." See the fine analysIs of these
texts offered by Peggy Kamuf in a complete chapter of
Signature Pieces: On the Institution ofAuthorship (Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), pp. 79- 100 .
160
Sarah Winter, Freud and the Institution ofPsycho-
analytic Knowledge
Samuel Weber, The Legend ofFreud, second
edition
Aris Fioretos, ed., The Solid Letter: Readings of
Friedrich Holderlin
J. Hillis Miller / Manuel Asensi, Black Holes /
j. Hillis Miller; or, BoustrophetWnic Reading
Miryam Sas, Fault Lines: Cultural Memory and
Japanese Surrealism
Peter Schwenger, Fantasm and Fiction: On Textual
Envisioning
Didier Maleuvre, Museum Memories: History,
Technology, Art
Jacq ues Derrida, Monolingualism of the Other; or,
The Prosthesis of Origin
Andrew Baruch Wachtel, Making a Nation, Break-
ing a Nation: Literature and Cultural Politics
in Yugoslavia
Niklas Luhmann, Love as Passion: The Codification
ofIntimacy
Mieke Bal, ed., The Practice of Cultural Analysis:
Exposing Interdisciplinary Interpretation
Jacques Derrida and Gianni Vattimo, eds., Religion