論柯慈《麥可‧K 的生命與時代》中的悅納異己

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(1)i. 國立臺灣師範大學英語學系碩士論. 文. Master Thesis Graduate Institute of English National Taiwan Normal University. 論柯慈《麥可‧K 的生命與時代》中的悅納異己 The Ethics of Hospitality in Coetzee’s Life & Times of Michael K. 指導教授：梁孫傑教授 Advisor: Dr. Sun-Chieh Liang 研究生：傅莉芳 Advisee: Li-Fang Fu. 中華民國一百零一年一月 Jan. 2012.

(2) ii. The Ethics of Hospitality in Coetzee’s Life & Times of Michael K. A thesis submitted to The Graduate Institute of English National Taiwan Normal University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. by Li-Fang Fu Jan 2011.

(3) iii. 摘要. JM．科慈一向十分關注社會中被邊緣化的他者，透過書寫邊緣他者與其艱難的處境，科慈實踐了悅納並擁抱異己的作客之道，在作品《麥可‧K 的生命與時代》中，科慈也呈現出「悅納異己」此倫理命題的諸多面相。主角流浪漢麥可總是徘徊於許多慈善機構，也一再地接受他人的照顧得以生存，這樣的描寫狀似讚揚了國家機器對於邊緣他者的「悅納異己」，但麥可至始至終抗拒的態度和多次逃離卻反倒呼應了德希德所謂「悅納異己的不可能性」。為探索此不可能性、瞭解為何不可能，筆者分三章討論，並加入現代理論的解析，試圖剖析此作品中關於「悅納異己」的實踐。首先，在古典文學、聖經、希臘羅馬史詩故事與德希達解構理論中，對於「悅納異己」的描寫總能嗅出主客之間的權力角力，此也反應在小說中，麥可總是需要聽令於照顧他的政府慈善組織抑或醫療機關。而在第二章中，為深入瞭解「悅納異己」的實踐與所引發的權謀角力，筆者也將引用傅科對於權力系譜學、生命政治、醫療發展史的研究，剖析麥可在醫療院所中，如何在醫病、主客間「悅納異己」的醫療行為下，被醫療知識體系轉化為正常、健康的勞動力。而在第三章中，筆者透過傅科與阿岡本關於生命政治的研究，討論科慈小說中關於集中營地中，政府官員對於麥可「悅納異己」的實踐，也就是說，在《麥可‧ K 的生命與時代》中，「悅納異己」已淪為政府拉攏異己、並試圖改造、吸納邊緣他者的生命政治手段，這樣關於「悅納異己」的描寫也證實了德希達所謂的「悅納異己的不可能」。. 關鍵詞：悅納異己，他者，德希達，傅科，生命政治，集中營，阿岡本.

(4) iv. Abstract J. M. Coetzee shows his deep concern with the socially marginalized characters. Depicting heterogeneous beings and their difficult situations, Coetzee actualizes the invisible violence in the society. Throughout his writing career, Coetzee practices hospitality ethics and embraces the other in a metaphoric way. In Michael K, hospitality is also one important theme. The protagonist is taken care of by many institutions and individuals, but his resistance is consistent with Derridean idea of “impossible hospitality.” That mechanism of hospitality that causes such impossibility is my main concern, and I would like to explore how hospitality is practiced in Michael K. This thesis is divided into three chapters. Firstly, I explore hospitality ethics in contexts, including the ancient literature, modern theory and Michael K. From the etymological resource to the biblical stories of Abram and Lot, hospitality ethics in the context always show its conflicting nature. Seeing through the operation of hospitality ethics, I can see a clear power flow and power struggle between Michael, the absolute other, and welcoming hosts. Therefore, the main focus in Chapter Two is the rapport between power and hospitality, in line with Foucauldian genealogy of power, I would trace the operation of hospitality in the modern medical systems. Following the medical system, in the Chapter Three, I would focus on the other important reception structure—the camp. In the final analysis, I would argue that the ethics of hospitality turns out to be a bio-political strategy for the government to manipulate and produce the ideal docile citizens for the sovereign power.. Key words: hospitality, other, Derrida, Foucault, biopolitics, camp, Agamben.

(5) v. Acknowledgements Firstly, I am heartily thankful to my advisor, Professor Sun-chieh Liang. Without his patience, encouragement and guidance, I could not have completed this thesis during those busy days with the educational program, part-time jobs and other things. I thank him for his tolerance of my terrible grammar. Whenever I felt tired and made a lot of grammatical mistakes, he always corrected them with kindness, friendliness and thoughtfulness. Without his inspiring lectures in “Ethics and Literature” and “Contemporary Global Novels,” I would never have known the fields of ethics. His unfailing guidance from the preliminary report to this present project helped me go through many difficulties and sufferings. My grateful thanks also go to Professor Shyn-jen Fuh. Her essay in Chung-Wai Literary Quarterly really inspired me and her conductive comments immensely helped me improve this present project. I would also express my sincere gratitude to Professor Han-yu Huang. I thank him for being my reader. His helpful comments sustained me throughout the writing of this thesis. Secondly, my ineffable gratitude goes to my dear fellow students at NTNU, especially Ann Chen, Kevin Chiu and Joy Cheng. Their valuable suggestions and feedbacks helped me develop my whole thesis and better it up. Also, I want to thank all my classmates and friends: Rachel Wu, Grace Chen, Rain Chen, Megan Chen, Ann Lin, Sharon Jiang, Stella Chen, Yen-yi Ou, Yu-jung Huang, Yo-en Hsieh, Chia-Yi Hu and etc.... I thank them for their timely support and encouragement. Besides, I owe a debt of gratitude for all the teachers and the students that I met at NTNU. During these years, they have taught me how to write the “genuine” academic essays and how to do research and in addition, they all encouraged me in every possible way. Finally, my greatest gratitude goes to my family. I thank my dear grandma, mother, father, brother, and sister for their unfailing love, trust and support which help me fulfill my dreams. They always let me know that they are on my side whatever happens. Also, my special thanks go to my dear Ruby and Brown, the cutest Beagles and the most beautiful mixes in the world. I thank them for their companion and love which make me so happy all the time..

(6) vi. Table of Contents Chinese Abstract ...................................................................... iii Abstract .................................................................................... iv Acknowledgements ................................................................... v Introduction .............................................................................. 1 I. Motivation and Literature Review .............................. 1 II. Approach ........................................................................ 8 Chapter One: Hospitality in Contexts: Ancient and Modern, Theory and Literature ............................................................ 16 I. Hospitality in Ancient Contexts ................................... 18 II. Hospitality in the Deconstructive Context ................. 27 III. Hospitality and Michael K ......................................... 42 Chapter Two: Hospitality and Power: Foucault, Discipline and Governmentality .............................................................. 49 I. Hospitality Ethics and Foucault ................................... 51 II. Hospitality, Hospitals and Michael K ........................ 62 Chapter Three: Hospitality and the Camps: Agamben and Biopolitics ............................................................................... 88 I. Agamben’s Critique and Completion of Foucault’s History of the Other.......................................................... 90 II. Michael in the Camps ............................................... 105 Conclusion ............................................................................. 121 Works Cited .......................................................................... 131.

(7) 1. Introduction I.. Motivation and Literature Review. J. M. Coetzee, the Nobel and Booker Prize winner, shows his deep concern with the socially marginalized characters. From outcast Westerners in apartheid South Africa to homeless bastards, we can see his protagonists share a common feature of social otherness. As Derek Attridge points out, Coetzee’s characters always represent the otherness: Throughout Coetzee’s oeuvre, we find figures of otherness, individuals or groups who, because they belong to a different, and always subordinate, class, cannot be fathomed by the dominant consciousness of the novel (whether a first-person narrator or third-person focalizer), and often the literary techniques deployed by the novelist contribute to the sense of estrangement experienced by this consciousness by being themselves estranging for the reader. (“Ethical Modernism” 655) Furthermore, Coetzee’s works show an ethical significance—it is “[n]ot simply that discourse’s other, which would, as an opposite, still be part of its system; but heterogeneous to it, inassimilable, and unacknowledged unless it imposes itself by violence or unless a fissure is created in the discourse through which it can make itself felt” (“Ethical Modernism” 669). That is, his literary works show “an otherness brought into being by [his] language” (“Ethical Modernism” 669) and expose the readers to various kinds of violence. In a nutshell, he shows his concerns with the other and fights against any form of violence against the socially marginalized. Depicting the heterogeneous beings and their difficult situations in the society, Coetzee actualizes the invisible violence and reveals its defects without blunt criticism. Dedicating his literary career to exposing various forms of violence,.

(8) 2. Coetzee believes that “the writerly inspiration [is] to be a secretary of the invisible” (Marais “Coming into Being” xvi). Writers should prepare “a home for the other and then… try to make for it a home of language, of the text” (Marais “Coming into Being” xvi). Actually, the uprooted minor social otherness can settle down in Coetzee’s works, which always prove to be a home to them. This echoes distantly with the ethics of Emmanuel Levinas: “the essence of language is friendship and hospitality” (Totality and Infinity 305). Coetzee prepares for them a textual home, and his language distinguishes from other writers because [in his novels] “the force of the other can be most strongly represented” (“Ethical Modernism” 669). Attridge describes this ethical effect “as textual otherness, or textualterity: a verbal artifact that estranges as it entices…that speaks while it says that it must remain silent—and in so doing stages the ethical as an event” (“Ethical Modernism” 669). For Coetzee, “the writer’s task [is] to make of the text a home for the other… The text must “host” the other and so enable it to interrupt history” (Secretary of the Invisible xv). Throughout his writing career, Coetzee practices hospitality ethics and embraces the other in a metaphoric way. Therefore, it is appropriate to discuss the issue of hospitality in Coetzee’s works from an ethical reading. That is, “the otherness and its encounter to the society.” In my thesis, I would try to show the mechanism of hospitality by concentrating my discussion on one of Coetzee’s works—Life & Times of Michael K (1983): a story of a homeless hare-lipped retarded man. Michael K, the protagonist, is a stranger in the society. In addition to his weird outward appearance and marginal (and marginalized) social status, the fact that he keeps visiting at different places and being sent to different social institutions verifies his identity as a “stranger.” Throughout this novel, Michael K passes through many different places such as Cape Town (his hometown), Stellenbosch, Worcester, Albert Prince, Jakkalsdrif, Kenilworth and so on. His being.

(9) 3. of a stranger, the completely other, and a heterogeneous powerless guest in the society posits an ethical problem of “hospitality.” Hospitality is one important theme in the Life & Times of Michael K. Throughout the novel, there are many interactions between Michael and other friendly people who try hard to take good care of him. Here comes a repeating vicious circle. Every time the society and the government want to help Michael, he obeys them at first and then escapes from them. Why does Michael try so hard to resist receiving hospitable charity from the society? What’s wrong with hospitality ethics? Michael’s case posits an ethical paradox in hospitality ethics and I would explore hospitality ethics in this thesis. This issue matters because hospitality is not only a philosophical question, but a daily ethical issue for every individual in the world. We often ponder on how to treat a stranger appropriately. With the high-speed development of globalization, each country and individual have to consider this issue when they encounter with political asylum-seekers, foreign spouses and legal/ illegal immigrants. Derrida particularly highlights hospitality as an urgent need because we have to “live with others” and he adds that, “Without this thought of pure hospitality …[w]e would not even have the idea of love or of “living [-]together (vivre ensemble)”(Philosophy in a Time of Terror 129). When Life & Times of Michael K was published in 1983, though being a Booker recipient, it has met various kinds of serious criticism. The major studies could be sorted out into four theoretical trajectories. First, some critics1 tend to take a postcolonial historical approach to analyze its inner themes and its setting of civil war-ridden South Africa, during apartheid era in the 1970-80s. Secondly, a group of critics use a philosophical approach to understand the ethics of its mysterious. 1. Durrant, Franssen, Kucala, and Poyner, etc..

(10) 4. rhetoric.2 Thirdly, the scope of eco-criticism sheds a new light on its interpretation.3 Lastly, the other critics use a comparative way to analyze Coetzee’s Life & Times of Michael K in connection to his literary predecessors, such as Franz Kafka and Samuel Beckett.4 Apparently, this work undergoes the dearth of ethical commentaries. Although most critics in the second category use philosophical approaches to analyze Michael K, they highlight the literary form and the rhetorical expression. In fact, only a few critics focus on the ethics of this work.5 Therefore, it is worth trying to investigate the specific ethical issue of hospitality. As I mentioned, there is not much scholarship specifically devoted to the issue of ethics in Michael K. Only a few critics concentrate on it, and they agree that Michael K embodies the social otherness. From his encounter with the society and his difficult situation, I observe how Coetzee depicts and criticizes the practice of hospitality in our society. In the following, I will begin with some overviews of related research of Michael K. In “Toward an Ethics of Silence,” Duncan Chesney focuses on the representation of Michael K as a figure of silence. He uses Agamben’s criticism of Melville’s Bartleby to interpret that Michael embodies a thinking of a “coming community.” In addition, in “Agnes Heller’s Existential Ethics and Bare Life,” on the basis of Agnes Heller’s existential ethics, John Grumley treats Michael as a figure of bare life: “a representative figure of excluded life whose biography hovers only marginally above mere biological existences” (Grumley 211). He concludes that though Michael tries to resist the fate, his life is still impelled by blind forces more than by individual 2. Mejiac, Buelens, Van Vuuren, Chesney, and Attridge, etc. Vital, Niedlich, and Barilla, etc. 4 Tajiri, Quaysan, Wright, Joffe, Merivale, and Hewson, etc. 5 Chensey’ “Toward an Ethics of Silence: Michael K,” Grumley’s “Agnes Heller’s Existential Ethics and Bare Life,” the second chapter (“A Goatseye View of the Stone Desert”) in Marais’s Secretary of the Invisible and the chapter two “Against Allegory—Waiting for the Barbarians and Life & Times of Michael K” in Attridge’s J. M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Reading. 3.

(11) 5. autonomy. In sum, both critics provide interesting ethical and theoretical scopes to understand Michael and his ethical values. However, neither of them particularly handles the issue of the other. In order to understand Michael as the other and put him into a social edifice, I will focus on the macroscopic and microscopic observation of hospitality. That is, I would pay attention to how the huge discursive political-juridical system “takes care of” Michael, what kind of systematic welfare service is provided and how Michael interacts with the people sent to host him. There is not much criticism on Michael K which is specifically devoted to this issue of hospitality. As a Coetzee scholar, Attridge often criticizes on the basis of a sophisticated ethical understanding, but, as Michael Marais says, he “has seldom used this term [hospitality] himself—the exception being his insightful reading of The Master of Petersburg” (“Coming into Being” 273). Attridge follows Coetzee’s lead in exploring a number of issues such as interpretation and literary judgment, responsibility to the other, trust and betrayal, artistic commitment, confession, and the problematic idea of truth to the self. In dealing with the other, Attridge focuses on “how otherness is engaged, staged, distanced, embraced, how it is manifested in the rupturing of narrative discourse, in the lasting uncertainties of reference, in the simultaneous exhibiting and doubting of the novelist’s authority” (“Ethical Modernism” 670). In short, Attridge interprets each of Coetzee’s works as “the literary event [that]…work[s] out of a complex and freighted responsibility to the other, a responsibility denied for so long in South Africa’s history” (“Ethical Modernism” 670). In his opinion, Coetzee’s literary ethical value is self-evident because “it is an otherness brought into being by language…what two thousand years of continuously evolving discourse has excluded—as other” (“Ethical Modernism” 669). He investigates the aspects of the other in the vein of “grand narrative convention” but he seldom touches on the issue of hospitality, as Marais indicates:.

(12) 6. “very little criticism to date has examined Coetzee’s use of the metaphor of hospitality in [Attridge’s] writing” (“Coming into Being” 273). Another important critic who is academically involved with his reading of Coetzee is Michael Marais. As he indicates, “Coetzee’s concern with hospitality is evident in his extensive use in his fiction of the trope of the arrival of the stranger who precipitates change in the host who receives her” (“Coming into Being” 274). In Secretary of the Invisible: The Idea of Hospitality in the Fiction of J. M. Coetzee (2009), Marais particularly draws attention to the aesthetic idea of hospitality in some of Coetzee’s works.6 He states that this ethical approach of hospitality benefits because it is “rather rare in Coetzee criticism” (Secretary of the Invisible xv). In Secretary of the Invisible, Marais recollects and revises several journal essays, such as “Literature and the Labour of Negation: J. M. Coetzee’s Life & Times of Michael K” (2001), “The Novel as Ethical Command: J. M. Coetzee’s Foe” (2000), “J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace and the Task of the Imagination” (2006) and “Coming into Being: J. M. Coetzee’s Slow Man and the Aesthetic of Hospitality” (2009). Clearly, in line with the aesthetic theories of Adorno and Benjamin, Marais analyzes the idea of hospitality from the aspect of “aesthetic autonomy.” In “Coming into Being,” Marais clarifies his standpoint in analyzing hospitality ethics: Coetzee’s use of the trope of hospitality, I contend, in fact sates language’s inability to achieve what this metaphor insists it must achieve. Although I do consider some of the points of intersection between [Coetzee’s] engagement with the idea of hospitality and that of thinkers such as Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida, my purpose is not to speculate on Coetzee’s philosophical allegiances but to consider his understanding of the. 6. Michael K, Foe, Age of Iron, The Master of Petersburg, Disgrace, Slow Man..

(13) 7. implications of the ethic of hospitality for the writing and reading of narrative fiction. (“Coming into Being” 273.) That is, Marais treats the issue of hospitality as a “metaphor.” He does not regard it as a practical issue; instead, Marais argues that Coetzee highlights the “language’s inability to achieve what this metaphor insists.” Precisely, Marais’ particular scholarly interest in hospitality focuses on the “aesthetic metaphoric formation” of literary language and its effects on “the writing and reading of narrative fiction” (Secretary of the Invisible 273). In this manner, Marais’s criticism on Michael K relating to hospitality7 centers around the medical officer’s hospitable writing of Michael in his diary. “The diary section of the novel, it would seem, is a sustained expression of the officer’s responsibility for Michael K” (Secretary of the Invisible 60-61). When the doctor writes down Michael’s story, he is also in contact with the otherness since “writing is a space in which the writer is approached by an otherness that cannot be controlled” (“Literature and the Labour of Negation” 114). By this technique, Coetzee blurs the line “between writer-figure and reader-figure” (Secretary of the Invisible 53). Then, “the reading subject loses control over the literary object” (Secretary of the Invisible 59). This obfuscation makes Michael K a novel of “autonomy place” (Secretary of the Invisible 59), a reference especially true for theories of Benjamin and Adorno. Also, this literary arrangement makes the doctor a hospitable writer who shows his care and “sense of responsibility” (Secretary of the Invisible 60). This fictional technique outlines the possibility of aesthetics. Marais concludes that the “medical officer [and] his failure to comprehend Michael’s otherness” actually “[mirror] that not only the writer but also the reader…must do what the writer has failed to do” (Secretary of the Invisible 60). In a word, the aesthetic lesson of hospitality Marais bestows upon Michael K is clearly an ethical one and it teaches the 7. Secretary of the Invisible (37-64).

(14) 8. reader the responsibility to be hospitable to alterity. In a word, Marais does not consider “hospitality” as a practical issue and he does not tease out its meaning in a philosophical ethical vein as Derrida and Levinas have done. In brief, what we have in hand concerning Coetzee and hospitality cannot provide a comprehensive theoretical framework to understand the essence and mechanism of hospitality behind its positive humanistic surface. When it comes to hospitality, Derrida’s philosophy of hospitality offers a wider scope to help us understand this ethical problem more. His denial of the possibility of hospitality is consistent with Michael K’s refusal of hospitality and I believe Derrida’s theory may shed a light on the study of hospitality ethics in Michael K. Thus, I intend to analyze the idea of hospitality on the foundation of Derridean ethics. To understand the reason why Derrida denies the possibility of hospitality, I would focus on the power struggle involved in hospitality ethics and reveal how hospitality ethics becomes a strategy for the powerful hosts to manipulate guests. According to Derrida, I would analyze the essence of hospitality and then apply Foucauldian and Agambenian theories to investigate and support Derridean concept of the impossible hospitality.. II.. Approach. To undermine the ethical aporia of hospitality and build up a theoretical grounding for an investigation on hospitality ethics, I would implement Derrida’s deconstructive theory of hospitality as the main foundation for two reasons. Firstly, it is because “deconstructive ‘is’ ethical” (Critchley 2). As Simon Critchley claims in The Ethics of Deconstruction, Derridean deconstruction “should be understood as an ethical demand” (Critchley 1). “[D]econstruction takes place (a lieu) ethically, or there is duty in deconstruction (Il y a devoir dans la déconstruction)” (Jean-Luc.

(15) 9. Nancy; qtd. in Critchley 2). Ethics, as a branch of philosophy, “namely moral philosophy or practical reasoning, is a region of inquiry” (Critchley 2). When Derrida applies deconstructive reading of ethics, he puts ethical inquiry “into question.” Indeed, that is the ethical value of deconstruction. “[F]or Derrida, demarcating the historical and cultural limits of apparently neutral concepts …expand[s] and updates rather than betrays its agenda” (Philosophy in a Time of Terror 17). As he suggests, “social critique and ethical responsibility require the deconstruction of falsely neutral and potentially hegemonic ideals” (Philosophy in a Time of Terror 17). This ethics of deconstruction justifies this choice of methodology. Deconstruction, as it always works to problematize a neutral ideal, would help to solve the mystery of the hospitality ethics and to identify “the form of a double imperative” (On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness xi). Secondly, I choose Derrida and his theory because hospitality is an important theme in his recent works. The significance of his theorization of hospitality cannot be overestimated. More importantly, Derrida has an ethical insight on this issue. During the last decade of his life, he persists in digging out its historical, cultural, and religious dimensions. He treats it as “the heritage” in dominant Western tradition and seeks it in “a form of conceptual genealogy” (On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness vii). Throughout, Derrida proposes a re-conceptualization of ethical responsibility toward the irreducible absolute otherness. Derrida articulates that “[h]ospitality—if there is any—must, would have to, open itself to an other that is not mine, my hôte, my mother, not even my neighbor or my brother” (Acts of Religion 363). He redefines hospitality—as an act of “welcoming the complete other” who is really a “stranger,” namely, “a visitor who is not an expected guest” (Acts of Religion 165). His combination of “hospitality” with “the absolute other” urges the contemporary to deconstruct hospitality ethics and inspires me to read Michael K in a new way. As I.

(16) 10. gradually enter into the realm of ethics, I start to re-read Michael K as a novel whose protagonist is “the absolute other,” a stranger, and an unexpected guest. Then, this reading illustrates a deeper aporia, tension and power struggle between the guest and the host. In line with Derridean definition, Michael K can be regarded as “the completely other who is relegated to an absolute outside [and who lives in] precultural and prejuridical, outside and prior to the family, the community, the city, the nation, or the State” (Acts of Religion 73; 73). As a heterogeneous being on the street, Michael suffers severely and lives on nothing but governmental and institutional charity. He is taken care of by many institutions and individuals—at least three hospitals, three medical doctors, two camps and many other “friendly” passengers. On the surface, it seems a story praising the ethics of hospitality. However, with the ending that depicts Michael’s resistance to the charity, this novel reveals Derridean idea of “impossibility of hospitality.” In Philosophy in a Time of Terror, Derrida claims that “[pure] unconditional hospitality is, to be sure, practically impossible to live” (Philosophy in a Time of Terror 129). The mechanism of hospitality that causes such impossibility is my main concern, and I would like to explore how hospitality is practiced in Michael K and how its inner impossibility is revealed by this practical operation. In the final analysis, I argue that the ethics of hospitality turns out to be a bio-political strategy for the government to manipulate and produce the ideal docile citizens for the sovereign power. This thesis is divided into three chapters. In the thesis, I first explore hospitality ethics in contexts, including the ancient literature, modern theory and Coetzee’s Michael K. Starting from the biblical stories of Abraham and Lot that show the conflicting nature of hospitality ethics, I would gradually move on to Derrida’s philosophical reconfiguration of hospitality ethics. Influenced by Immanuel Levinas’s appeal for the “infinite welcome,” Derrida.

(17) 11. theorizes the philosophy of the “unconditional hospitality.” To clarify this notion, he begins with a critique of conditional hospitality revealed in the Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant’s To Perpetual Peace. Pointing out that hospitality provided by the existing juridical-political systems is tarnished with calculation of power and politics, Derrida deconstructs the universal idea of hospitality. His own deconstructive philosophy of hospitality ethics consists of two seemingly contradictory imperatives: “unconditional hospitality” and “conditional hospitality.” As the way he defines the “real forgiveness” as an act of “forgiv[ing] the unforgivable” (On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness 39), he argues that “real hospitality” is to “host” the guest who is “nonidentifiable and unforeseeable.” However, he denies the possibility of it and he puts that “one cannot in any case, and by definition, organize [unconditional hospitality]” (Philosophy in a Time of Terror 129). Why is it impossible? It is because there is always a “power issue” lying in the mechanism of hospitality. It is impossible because a hidden power relation between the powerful hosts and the relatively powerless visitors is inevitable. Within the existing systems, the hosts, such as the state apparatus, individuals and families could only provide conditional hospitality on a premise that the guest should show submission to them. To be more specific, the powerless guests always have to follow the hosts’ rules and the tolerant hosts always “wish to limit [their] welcome, to retain power and maintain control over the limits of [their] “home,” [their] sovereignty… [their] territory, [their] house, [their] language, [their] culture, [their] religion, and so on” (Philosophy in a Time of Terror 128). That is to say, hospitality constantly gets “stained” due to its involvement with power issue. Following the introduction to Derrida’s hospitality ethics, I would connect Michael K with the recent bio-political theories and regard him as an absolute other. In contemporary ethics, Michael K is in a position where his otherness certificates him as a Derridean model of absolute other.

(18) 12. and homo sacer in Giorgio Agamben’s terms. In a word, Michael is a “stranger” and a guest in the social edifice. Here, I would introduce my theoretical supposition that takes Michael as a guest while the state as the most powerful host. To take care of Michael, this socially disadvantaged homeless, the state offers shelters in the camps and provides medical care in hospitalization facilities. The state seems to practice hospitality. However, as the ancient stories show, there is an aporia of power and the charity facilities definitely serve political purposes of the state. Therefore, when Derrida points out that the highly praised concept of tolerance reveals nothing but conditional hospitality he then affirms that this form of conditional hospitality is just “the good face of sovereignty” (Philosophy in a Time of Terror 127). With the intervention of the legal system and sovereign power, the practice of hospitality in Michael K vividly reveals the conflicts of the power struggles. The main focus in Chapter Two is the rapport between power and hospitality, and I would like to investigate what kind of power is implicated. To observe the power flow that intervenes in the practice of hospitality, I would begin with an in-depth analysis of hospitality and the operation of power struggle in the context and theory. Therefore, I would draw attention to Foucauldian genealogy of power and trace the practical operation of hospitality upon the other. Foucault’s overall historical study indicates how the mentally unbalanced were marginalized from the society, and he expresses his deep concern with the social otherness. Furthermore, his research reveals the historical development of discursive knowledge/power, unveils the discursive formation of the medical knowledge/power and points out how the discursive power models ideal citizens and marginalizes the abnormal. Foucault’s research shows how the medical system offers “hospitality experience” upon social otherness with an invisible violent intention to put the abnormal in internment within charity facilities, and he highlights a macroscopic control of the state apparatus. He.

(19) 13. further indicates that the discursive power divides the world into two parts: the normal and the abnormal. He criticizes how this “world of division” tries to violently exclude and normalize the abnormal. In this manner, his observation of history can be understood as a “history of the social otherness.” Or, we can say, his research shows a history of hospitality or inhospitality toward the social otherness. Furthermore, in the investigation of power, throughout his study of history, he locates the power flow within human bodies and social institutions. His theory and observation prepare a concrete ground to trace the abstract power flow. Following Foucault’s analytic methodology, I locate the power flow within the individuals and institutions, so I would like to pay attention to how the state operates to offer hospitality and what the strategies they take. To be accurate, the state offers hospitality by establishing the associated hospitality apparatus. I would particularly focus on three hospitals where Michael stays. For Foucault, the medical system is not only a place for the social other to be “hospitalized,” but also a place designed to reform them and “put the hospital inmates to work” (Boyne 9). In order to transform these incapables into useful “docile bodies,” the physicians certificated by state apparatus examine the abnormal unhealthy bodies with scientific discursive knowledge. Thus, the medical system turns out to be a “disciplinary institution” that is created to make human become self-disciplined. To connect Michael’s hospitality experience with Foucault’s theory of discipline, I would argue that the state adopts hospitality ethics as a tactic to normalize Michael and this insincere hospitality could be observed from the attitude of the people who receive Michael in the charity facilities. For example, the medical space is where the authority exercises power to transform the patients. That is the reason why Foucault regards the medical space as a disciplinary field constitutive of power relation. Furthermore, the three hospitals in Michael K are a mixture of the police, military and medical system, and their function is to assist the government in.

(20) 14. maintaining a better quality of population. In this regard, I argue that the hospital is “a hospitality apparatus” that supports the sovereign power. As a useful tool, the hospital works to reproduce more docile healthy bodies to work for the state. In a word, the practice of hospitality of the medical system, therefore, does not only reveal itself as a form of a conditional hospitality but is also a bio-political disciplinary strategy to normalize human bodies. In addition to the medical system, there is another significant reception structure that tries to receive Michael and then normalize him. It is the camp. In Chapter Three, in order to scrutinize how this particular reception structure practices hospitality on Michael and investigate its biopolitical operation thoroughly, I would apply both the biopolitcal theories from Agamben and Foucault. In Foucault’s works, as Agamben criticizes, there is a flaw, a shortage of discussion on “the camp” in which he would like to complete (Homo Sacer 9; italics original). At the same time, Agamben’s theories of the camp, his unique figuration of the other in relation to the huge juridical system, and his critique of the contemporary inhospitable immigration policies can be construed as good references to the study of hospitality ethics. Agamben’s completion of Foucault’s biopolitical theories indeed “provide[s] a genealogy or a counter-history of Western politics through the figure of homo sacer, suggesting that the modern figure of the refugee, as well as the prisoner in the concentration camp” (Murray 60). Following Agamben’s criticism, I will supplement Foucault’s discourse with Agamben’s theory of homo sacer, and then link their biopolitical theories on the camp to the camps in Michael K. With the support from Foucault and Agamben, I would consider the following questions from the aspect of biopolitcs. How do the camp doctor, the camp supervisors, and the government try to host Michael K? How do they try to “transform Michael into a docile body”? What is the specific technique? Inside the rehabilitation and work camp, the doctors and supervisors apply various.

(21) 15. disciplinary skills that Foucault discusses in Discipline and Punish (1975). Furthermore, from Agamben’s viewpoint, in these two camps, Michael can be seen as a paradigm of homo sacer who is manipulated and suppressed by biopower. The sovereign biopower exerts the authority and forces Michael to do strenuous drills. In this sense, the two camps are both disciplinary fields. More significantly, the camps in Michael K are like the Nazi camp and treat Michael as homo sacer. In a similar manner, he remains a “living dead,” stripped off the spiritual dimensions. Michael’s hospitality experience in the camps is congruent with Agabem’s theories of homo sacer and he represents a figure of homo sacer. Michael can be killed with impunity, but paradoxically he is inscribed by the legal system in an exclusive form. Additionally, Agamben provides insight in the discussion of the camp while he claims that the camp is a modern Western political principle. This “logic of the camp” is consistent with Michael’s observation. In Michael K, the camp is ubiquitous and each camp is an embodiment of a close monitoring by the biopolitical power. To sum up, the two hospitality apparatus, the hospitals and camps, are places established on hospitality ethics, but in reality they are operated as “fields of force relations” where the superior host remodels his “abnormal” guests. Through imposition of various commands and services, such as repeated physical exercise and given religious service, these Foucaudian “disciplinary institutions” undertake a comprehensive reform. Their goal is to reproduce “docile bodies” that help the sovereignty work well. The state, the host, treats his guests generously and then asks the grateful guests to be grateful and submissive to the host. This relationship reveals a reciprocal nature of conditional hospitality. In this regard, I argue that the state’s offering of hospitality is a bio-political technique that controls human beings. That is, practicing hospitality is a charitable way to make the abnormal follow social rules, meet social standards and work for the social body out.

(22) 16. of their will. The practice of hospitality in Michael K reflects the impossibility of hospitality, as Derrida argues that “[pure] unconditional hospitality is, to be sure, practically impossible to live” (Philosophy in a Time of Terror 129).. Chapter One: Hospitality in Contexts: Ancient and Modern, Theory and Literature. Hospitality, as Derrida claims, is part of culture. The thread of hospitality links to its ancient heritage and this can be traced back to many ancient texts8, including the stories of the Bible, Homeric epics and Greek mythology9, All these texts keep emphasizing a stern obligation of a host to offer hospitality to his visitor, as Kevin O’Gorman points out: “[h]ospitality has an ancient origin and honourable tradition” (17). The common understanding indicates a harmonious relationship between the guest/host, and it implies a friendly, self-giving and selfless behavior toward the stranger. In fact, as all of the stories imply a paradox, an invisible power struggle and a tension behind the friendly practice of hospitality, the practice of hospitality has it. 8. “The oldest collection of texts that refer to hospitality is from a literary genre known as Ancient Near East Texts” and these texts were written around 3500 (in parallel with the Old Testament). These texts indicate Eastern Mediterranean traditions from Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, Syria-Palestine, and Egypt” (O’Gorman 18). In Hospitality: A Social Lens, the writer explores the history of hospitality through the ancient Greek, Roman, and Eastern Mediterranean texts. In the second chapter, “Dimensions of Hospitality: Exploring Ancient and Classical Origins,” Kevin D O’Gorman investigates the promotion of hospitality ethics in the classical worlds. In ancient Greece, there were poets, philosophers, tragedians and historians praise the hospitality ethics, such as Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, Homer, Plutarch, Thucydides, Publius Vergilius Maro (Virgil), Xenophon, Euripides and so on. Also, other Roman prose stylists, historians, philosophers and poets glorified the practice of hospitality, such as Cicero, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Titus Livius (Livy), Publius Ovidius Naso (Ovid), Petronius, Titus Maccius, Plautus Mestrius Plutarchus and etc. When it comes to the records of hospitality in ancient Eastern Mediterranean , there are Ancient Near East Texts. The Old Testament and New Testament also are included in the list. In “Hospitality as Openness to the Other: Levinas, Derrida and the Indian Hospitality Ethos,” Siby K. George also investigates relative famous Indian texts and religious texts (ex: the Veda, The Laws of Manu and so on) which emphasize hospitality ethics. 9 In the Bible, there are the episodes record how Abrahams practices hospitality. In the myth of the Golden Fleece: Aetes plays the role of a host while Jason plays as a guest. In Odyssey, Telemachus visits Nestor and is treated well. Also, the giant Polyphemos does not offer his hospitality to Odysseus and finally is punished..

(23) 17. aporetic moments. Derrida states that “[h]ospitality is culture itself” (On Cosmopolitanism 16), and he devotes himself to deconstructing this cultural code. In particular, he uses “a form of conceptual genealogy” to construct and then unfolds the aporetic hospitality ethics—this unseen “once double and contradictory [imperative]” (On Cosmopolitanism xi). Precisely, this “genealogical approach to the history of particular concepts” (Reynold 33) is a characteristic methodology employed by Derrida. Culture is revealed by the customs, beliefs, art, way of life and social organizations of a particular country or people. To better understand the culture of hospitality and point out the blind spot, Derrida reexamines the overall Western system, so this affirmative deconstruction involves “a discussion of the ways in which this concept has been recognized in legal, literary, intellectual and technological domains” (Reynold 33). Derrida situates his interest in hospitality within the context of an attempt to deconstruct the heritage of Western tradition, and he opens up the possibility of a different way of understanding hospitality ethics. His philosophy of hospitality is established by aporetic analyses of Western custom of hospitality “in a series of discussions of the gift, justice, responsible decision, democracy, the cosmopolitan right of hospitality and a number of other concepts” (Reynold 30). This way of pointing out a blind spot of particular ethical ideas characterizes Derrida’s ethical thinking. In this manner, he ingeniously unveils the aporia of hospitality ethics, develops his own theory and applies this theory as a tool to attack contemporary governmental inhospitable foreign policy. As Derrida suggests, to find out the truth of hospitality, it is crucial to notice the “aporetic moment” in the working of hospitality ethics in a genealogic approach. I will begin to highlight the logical contradiction, an aporia, a blind spot of hospitality ethics. In the first part of this chapter, to unfold this blind spot, I would examine the.

(24) 18. hospitality ethics in ancient contexts. As Derrida claims, when dealing with issues of ethics “we cannot treat [it] without bringing back to the beginning again” (“Ethics and Politics Today” 48). From the investigation of the Abrahamic stories (from Genesis) and etymologic roots of hospitality that emphasize the stern obligation of the hosts to offer hospitality to the guests, I would reveal the paradoxical and the conflicting nature of hospitality ethics. In the second part, I would focus on the philosophical context theorized by Derrida. Both parts demonstrate the aporetic and paradoxical nature of pure/unconditional hospitality.. I. Hospitality in Ancient Contexts 1. Etymological Source of Hospitality. According to Oxford English Dictionary (2005), the word hospitality can be dated back to the late 14th century. It derives from Old French hospitalite that originates from two Latin words—hospitalitas and hospitalis, and the latter one means “hospitable” (OED 839). In brief, these English or French words derive from the Latin hospes that is formed from the adjective hostis which originally meant “of or belonging to the enemy, hostile” (Oxford Latin Dictionary 867). That is, the practice of hospitality comes from its opposite meaning: the “enemy.” This formation of semantics connotes that there is something “hostile” inside the hospitality ethics. Furthermore, the “hospitable” but also “hostile” host should be analyzed in depth. “Host” is not only a master of a house but also the subject who practices “hospitality.” As The New Shorter Oxford Dictionary (1993)10 explains, host has multiple meanings. There are four possible meanings when we discuss the issue of. 10. In comparison, the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (SOED) which published in 1993 provides much more information in the word “host,” than the OED (2005)..

(25) 19. “hospitality ethics.” The first meaning denotes “a person who lodges or receives and entertains another as a guest…in his or her own home” (The New Shorter Oxford Dictionary 1266), and it actually derives from the Old French word “hôte” (which I would discuss later). The second one implies “a sacrificial victim…with reference to Christ” (The New Shorter Oxford Dictionary 1266), and it derives from the Latin hostia. Thirdly, host also indicates “a stranger, enemy and army” (The New Shorter Oxford Dictionary 1266), deriving from Old French host (which means army). Lastly, in its biological sense, a host is “an animal or plant on or in which a parasite or commensal organism lives” (The New Shorter Oxford Dictionary 1266).11 These previous reference overturns the commonly accepted view of hospitality ethics and clearly point out its hostile, antagonistic and aggressive aspects. In the article “Hospitality” (2000), Derrida deconstructs the word “hospitality” in accordance with its etymological source. He also puts an emphasis on its etymological “troubling origin” as following: [H]ospitlaity is a Latin word (Hospitalität, a word of Latin origin, of a troubled and troubling origin, a word which carries its own contradiction incorporated into it, a Latin word which allows itself to be parasitized by its opposite “hostility,” the undesirable guest [hôte] which it harbors as the self-contraction in its own body. (“Hospitality” 3) As Derrida indicates, hospitality reveals “its own contradiction” and it is “parasitized” by hostility. In its root sense (recorded in the 10th century)12, “host” refers to the war-like expedition, the enemy and the stranger. Also, it is connected with the politics of governing one’s house. To treat his guest well, the host must be powerful enough to govern his place well. He has power over his servants, his home and his territory. This 11. The issue of parasite would be discussed in chapter 3 The general meaning of host (means a master) is dated back to mid 13th century while the meaning of “sacrifice” is in early 13th century. 12.

(26) 20. historical and etymological development cannot prove that the “host” would be the enemy of the guest, but it does prove that there is a power relation between the guests and the hosts. Thus, in terms of etymology, the traditional custom of hospitality ethics is fundamentally aporetic and problematic. Hospitality, a part of cultural heritage, includes its own history which depicts the power struggles between the guests and hosts. Seeing through its etymological history, we can see a hidden power relation. In the following section, hospitality ethics in ancient text would also reveal its paradoxical nature. These ancient records witness the power struggle, tension and an exchange of advantages inside the hospitality ethics.. 2. Biblical Source of Hospitality—Abrahamic Hospitality. As the most influential religious canon in the world, the Bible includes numerous sections that teach “[h]ospitality [as] a practical way to serve God” (Wilson 301). From Genesis 17 and 18, Luke 10 and Romans 12, there are stories that teach devoted believers to be hospitable to the strangers. Among these, I would focus on Genesis 17 and 18, the stories of Abraham. In Derrida’s word, these episodes show “the great founding scene of Abrahamesque hospitality” (Of Hospitality 153). Abraham, whose birth name was Abram, is a significant religious character. According to the Hebrew Bible, he is not only the father of the Abrahamic religions, such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, but also the father of the other religions and peoples13. In Genesis, he is the one who signs a monotheistic covenant with the Hebrew God Yahweh. As a reward, God promises to make him a father of a “great nation” and then reveals that he would have a son born to him at the age of one 13. “You can now see that Abraham was the father or the progenitor of the Israelities, the Ishmaelites, the Midianites, the Edomiites, and other Arabians” (Ikapatt 4)..

(27) 21. hundred. There are two episodes in Genesis, I would like to mention. One is Abram’s immediate response to the call of God in Genesis 12. The second one is that his hospitality to the three guests in Genesis 18. In the first episode, God tells Abram to leave his native land and his father’s house for a land that God promises to make of him a great nation (Genesis 12:1-3). At the age of 75, Abram takes his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, and the wealth and servants that they acquire in Haran, and all of them travel to Canaan (Genesis 12:4-6). To fulfill God’s wish, he gives up his homeland and becomes a stranger, a foreigner in Egypt. Abram responds to the call of the other—the God (Yahweh) and it marks his beginning as a stranger, a person who supposedly receives hospitality from the local, this firstly links him to hospitality ethics. Moreover, according to Derrida, the renaming of Abram (into Abraham) suggests that he, as a host, is “overwhelmed” by the almighty visitor. In Genesis 17, God revisits 99-year-old Abram and renames him: “Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham; for the father of a multitude of nations have I made thee” (Genesis 17:5). Yielding obedience to Yahweh, Abram changes his name into Abraham after his re-visitation. Derrida links this transformation in name to hospitality ethics: “God initiates the visit and the moment at which, visiting him, he speaks to him. This is indeed hospitality par excellence in which the visitor radically overwhelms the self of the “visited” and the chezsoi of the hôte (host). For as you know these visitations and announcements will begin with changes of names, heteronomous changes, unilaterally decided by God who tells Abram that he will no longer be called Abram but Abraham (with wordplay, it seems, on Ab-hamon, “the father of the multitudes”) much as later, before Isaac’s birth, he will change the name of Sarai into Sarah” (“my princess” into “my prince”)” (Acts of Religion 372)..

(28) 22. More importantly, Abraham, as a hospitable host, kindly treats three visitors (who turn out to be angels) with good will. He offers water to wash, bread, cake, milk, butter and a calf tender to eat. As Abraham hosts the three guests, he manages the domestic affair and leads his wives and servants well (Genesis 18: 1-8). In return, one angel promises to ninety-nine-year-old Abraham that upon his return next year, Sarah would have a son (Genesis 18:9-10). In the first episode in Genesis 12, Abraham leaves his native land and becomes a stranger in Canaan. “[H]e is destined by God to be a hôte (ger14), an immigrant, a foreign body abroad, a strange body to the stranger [un corp étrnger á l’étranger]” (Acts of Religion 399). As the French word hôte suggests a host and guest, Abraham becomes a hôte who is both a host and a guest in a foreign land. He is a stranger, an enemy for the Egyptian, but his descendants will finally become its masters. As God prophesizes, “[Abraham’s] seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them. And also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge: and afterward shall they come out with great substance” (Genesis 15:13-14). Abraham’s double role as a stranger but also a host echoes the paradoxical etymological development of hospitality. He was once an enemy, and then a master in the foreign land. Abraham, who firstly performs the practice of hospitality to God and to the angels, as God promises, becomes “the father of nations.” He is assigned as “a stranger, a hôte, a gêr, and a kind of saint of hospitality” (Acts of Religion 369). It’s crucial to discuss Abraham’s story in depth for several reasons. Firstly, Abraham, “the origin of the three religions,” is the man who announces the “pact as experience of sacred hospitality” (Acts of Religion 373; 373). Abraham’s experience leads to a “strange configuration of Judeo-Islamico-Christian hospitality” 14. The Hebrew word gêr (or ger) means a stranger and hôte..

(29) 23. (Acts of Religion 379). The holy pact or covenant of hospitality becomes subsequently a social norm. More significantly, Abraham’s kindness earns him good reputation and God’s admiration. Therefore, hospitality ethics becomes not only a pact of “an exchange of advantages” but also a responsibility for God’s believer. “In Abraham’s day, a person’s reputation was largely connected to his hospitality—the sharing of home and food. Even strangers were to be treated as highly honored guests. Meeting another’s need for food or shelter was and still is one of the most immediate and practical way to obey God. It is also a time-honored relationship builder” (Wilson 301). The heartwarming hospitality that he offers to his three mysterious visitors brings not only the birth of his heir Isaac but also assures his future political honor of being the “father of nations.” In the name of God, Abraham and his offsprings are forever honored with grace. For his practice of hospitality, he and his descendents are benefited politically. In a word, Abrahamic hospitality ethics implies “an exchange of benefits” so it is indeed “a conditional form of hospitality.” Abrahamic story teaches the benefits of hospitality while the following Lot’s hospitality implies the double sides of bonus-penalty. While the hospitable guests are rewarded, those inhospitable are punished severely by God. Briefly, both the stories of Abraham and Lot indicate a “conditional hospitality” because both are involved with “an exchange of advantages.” In Genesis 19, Sodom is destroyed because it is “the city of self-love which objects to the visitation of angels, of guests [Hôtes], of strangers, or wishes to abuse them” (Acts of Religion 374). Lot and his daughters survive from this providential catastrophe because Lot intends to sacrifice their virginity in order to protect the angels while the Sodomites are eager to violate the two angels (Genesis 19:4-8). Lot has been living in Sodom for many years, but, he is still a stranger for the local. Lot is also a hôte, a guest and a host. He leaves Haram with Abraham and then decides to stay in Sodom where he offers hospitality to the.

(30) 24. strangers. As Derrida claims, he is “a foreigner (gêr) [who] come[s] to stay (gûr) with the Sodomites” (Of Hospitality 151). As a stranger, a non-native, Lot intends to be a good host in an extreme violent way. It reveals a gross violation of his sexually inexperienced daughters. What he offers is an arguably quasi-hospitality and it is revealed when “he chooses to offer his virgin daughters” rather than “[t]o have offered himself to be homosexually abused in place of his guests” (The Bible in Three Dimensions 95-96). Here, two points merit our attention to Lot’s hospitality. On one hand, Lot’s “penchant for self-interest” is highlighted. On the other, as a mater of his house, his emphasizes power over his daughter. In order to fulfill the genuine hospitality, the hosts have to be in the dominant position in his home. The host should be the master of his house, territory, possessions, servants and even his wives and daughters. Throughout this strict hierarchical power relation, an aporia of hospitality is unveiled: “I can invite the other in, host them within my home, be generous with what I have only insofar as it is my home, and they are my possessions” (Of Hospitality 135). As Abraham gives orders to his two wives and servants to take care of his guests, Lot assigns her daughters to be violated in place of the guests. As Abraham, Lot is also rewarded and is saved by his practice of hospitality. He and two daughters survive when the Sodomites are destroyed. As mentioned above, Abraham practices hospitality and then he benefits from it. To be precise, he benefits politically from this holy pact. As the father of nations, Abraham’s practice of hospitality links hospitality ethics with the birth of nation and even the issue of politics. The seemingly paradoxical but inseparable relationship of hospitality and its political aspect is also one of my main concerns in this thesis. “Abraham’s hospitality is the sign announcing the final completion of the gathering of all nations, all blessed in Abraham, in this Holy Land that must be monopolized by none” (Acts of Religion 370). Abraham’s “heroic manner of hospitality in which he.

(31) 25. has practiced the notion of hospitality” earns him the reputation to be the person who deserves the “inheritance not only of the Holy Land but also the entering in it of all the foreign hôte who are “blessed” by his hospitality” (Acts of Religion 370; 370). With the “gathering of all nations” and the “monopolized territory of Holy Land,” the initialization of a state is accomplished.15 It marks a foundation of a formal political structure. Abraham, the “father of a multitude of nations” (Acts of Religion 372), up to a point, his position unfolds the intriguing relationship of politics and ethics. When he leaves his motherland and moves south to Egypt, he is actually a hostile enemy who invades a foreign country. Despite of the fact that he is a stranger, he is still blessed and is destined to be a master of the Holy Land. The case of Abraham, this hôte, underlines an aporia inside hospitality ethics. As a stranger, he comes to ask for the sharing of Egypt. But he also plays the role of a host who monopolizes the land and who claims for his private possession of territory. After all, the ethics of hospitality indeed connotes that the host should monopolize a land since “the own home that makes possible one’s own hospitality” (Acts of Religion 53). In short, one should claim for his private property before he practices hospitality. In this regard, the charity of hospitality ethics contradicts with itself. In summary, the ancient contexts of hospitality emphasize the stern obligation of hospitality. The person who follows the pact will be rewarded but the other who violates would be punished. As Derrida argues, “the verses of the Bible do not here have as their function to serve as proofs; but they do bear witness to a tradition and an experience” (Acts of Religion: 404). These biblical stories of the two hôtes (Abraham and Lot) reveal that firstly hospitality ethics turns out to be an exchange of. 15. “While a nation may constitute itself into a state, the state covers an immense variety of political structures—kingdoms, empires, city state, principalities, republics, federations. The state only implies a successful claim for a territory, which gives it the monopoly of legitimized use of physical force” (Gupta 57)..

(32) 26. advantages and a social norm. In this manner, hospitality is “no longer an absolute hospitality” when it is “no longer graciously offered beyond debt and economy” (Acts of Religion 83; 83). The one who practices hospitality will earn good reputation and will deserve rewards, so the others should follow this rule to get benefits or to escape from providential castigation. In this way, the ancient biblical stories reflect the fact that hospitality is at its core conditional and problematic. As discussed above, hospitality in ancient contexts is aporetic. In the vein of the Genesis, Derrida ponders over true hospitality when digging the issue of hôte. To be specific, hospitality ethics itself essentially relates to this double-meaning word “hôte.” The pure hospitality signifies that a “guest” should become the “host” in a foreign land. When welcoming a visitor, the master should give up “his territory” and let the “guest” become a host. The master forgets his property, territory, and shares everything with his host. At last, the host and guest are both becoming the hôtes. Without the guest, the host won’t understand the true meaning of hospitality. In this regard, Derrida argues that the host is not the one who bestows a favor but the one who gets salvation from the practice of hospitality. The host is “an impatient master awaiting his guest as a liberator, his emancipator” (Of Hospitality 125). As Derrida indicates, when the line between the passive guest and active host gets blurred and then the “possibility of the impossible hospitality [will take] place” (Acts of Religion 387). Besides, influenced by Levinas who articulates ethics as the first philosophy, Derrida develops his own theory of hospitality. Derrida articulates that “[h]ospitality—if there is any—must, would have to, open itself to an other that is not mine, my hôte, my mother, not even my neighbor or my brother” (Acts of Religion 363). He redefines hospitality—as an act of “welcoming the complete other” who is really a “stranger,” namely, “a visitor who is not an expected guest” (Acts of Religion.

(33) 27. 165). His combination of “hospitality” with “the absolute other” urges the contemporary to deconstruct the hospitality ethics. According to this philosophy of absolute hospitality, I would reread Life & Times of Michael K in a new way, and I would like to introduce Derridean theorization of hospitality in the following section.. II. Hospitality in the Deconstructive Context. 1. Derrida and Levinas: Welcome the Other with “Unconditional Hospitality”. Without this thought of pure hospitality…we would not even have the idea of the other, of the alterity of the other, that is…We would not even have the idea of love or of “living together” with the other in a way that is not a part of some totality or “ensemble” (Philosophy in a Time of Terror 129). Derrida recurrently investigates the isuue of hospitality in several recent works—Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas (1999), Of Hospitality (2000), On Cosmopolitan and Forgiveness (2001), Acts of Religions (2002), and Philosophy in a Time of Terror (2003). Exploring the historical, philosophical and cultural heritage of hospitality, Derrida indeed criticizes the contemporary politicians and their inhospitable policies toward the social other, such as asylum-seekers and immigrants. For example, he criticizes that the French policy of treating foreign asylum seekers in an inhospitable way16 and he disputes the ethical-political violence of the worldwide anti-terrorist 16. “In France, the phrase “threshold of tolerance” was used to describe the limit beyond which it is no longer to ask a national community to welcome any more foreigners, immigrant workers...François Mitterrand once used this unfortunate expression as a self-justifying world of cautions: beyond a.

(34) 28. movement after 911. Among these works, Derrida devotes one particular to mourning the loss of Levinas. Indeed, he establishes his own theory of hospitality while studying Levinas intensively. In this part, to tease out Derrida’s philosophy of hospitality ethics, I would start from discussions on his relation with Levinasian concept of hospitality. The philosophy of hospitality constitutes a new type of discourse of “the other.” For Levinas, “ethics is the name that [he] gives to the relation to the Other that does not totalize, or render similar, that Other” (Reynold 40). Following Levinas, Derrida is also ethically “concerned with the relation with the other” (Reynold 38; italics original) and his deconstruction can “be understood as an ethical demand, provided that ethics is understood in the particular sense given to it in the work of Emmanuel Levinas” (Critcheley xi). In the field of ethics, Levinas’s work “exert[s] a powerful and continuous influence on the development of Derrida’s thinking” (Reynold 127). As Derrida suggests, Levinas’s thought fundamentally alters “the course of philosophical reflection in our time, and of our reflection on philosophy, on what orders it according to ethics, according to another thought of ethics, responsibility, justice, the state, etc., according to another thought of the other, a thought that is newer than so many novelties because it is ordered according to the absolute anteriority of the face of the Other” (Adieu 4). Levinas’s ethics emphasizes individual’s responsibility to welcome the other. Derrida approaches Levinas’ thought through “the pivotal notion of hospitality” (Raffoul 274), and he believes that Levinas “offers us a genuine ethics of hospitality…an ethics as hospitality” (Rouffle 275). For Derrida, “Levinas’s entire thought is and wants to be a teaching on…what ‘to welcome’ or ‘to receive’ should mean” (Derrida qtd. in Raffoul 275). Before. certain numbers of foreigners ...who do not share our nationality, our culture...” (Philosophy in a Time of Terror 128).

(35) 29. understating Derrida’s configuration of hospitality ethics, it is necessary to understand the part of Levinasian ethical conception that Derrida’s hospitality ethics is indebted to. Firstly, Derrida’ is influenced by Levinas’s critical understanding of ethics. Levinasian ethics concerns “a primordial ethical experience” with the otherness of the other and he separates the discussion of ethics from the conventional moral philosophy. It is a difference between the moral and the ethical: the moral refers to “the socio-political order of organizing and improving our human survival which is itself founded upon the prima philosophia17 of an ethical responsibility towards the other” (Face to Face with Levinas 29). It is noteworthy that Derrida perceives ethics as something prior to moral questions and moral law and he also refers to Levinassian ethics as “an ethics of ethics.” Originally, Derrida’s first major discussion of ethical issues is in the lengthy appraisal of Levinas, “Violence and Metaphysics18” (1978). It deals with Levinas’s ethical relation to the philosophical tradition which emphasizes the cognitive power of the ego, the knowing subject. Both Derrida and Levinas agree that Western philosophy fundamentally excludes the other (alterity) in order to preserve the philosophical values of order, truth, and subjectivity. Thus, Levinas puts the philosophical tradition into question and he calls it the Same: the ego, the knowing subject, self-consciousness. The Same maintains a relationship with otherness and it is. 17. Prima philosophia means the first philosophy. In fact, Derrida writes this essay to criticize Levinas’s ethics. In Totality and Infinity (1979), Levinas defines metaphysics as the desire for the absolutely other (Totality and Infinity 30) and he criticizes the traditionally classical philosophy of ontology. Derrida highlights that Levinas’s “ethical overcoming is conceptually on those very traditional resources that it sought to overcome” (Understanding Derrida 131). In conclusion, Derrida poses a question of whether the experience of other is possible or not, “in its very empiricism, Levinas’s metaphysics of presence…leaves no room for alterity” (Howells 127). In response, Levinas’s published a later work, Otherwise than Being (1981), “which might itself actually be read as a response to Derrida’s “Violence and Metaphysics”” (Understanding Derrida 130). In any case, the textual encounters between the two philosophers lead to a deeper level in the fields of the discourse of the other.. 18.

(36) 30. called into question by the irreducible other,” as Levinas stresses “the putting into question of my spontaneity by the presence of the Other” (Totality and Infinity 43). For both Levinas and Derrida, ethics describes “the non-totalizable relation with the other, the replacing in question of the ego, or consciousness, by the alterity of the other” (Reynold 128). For Levinas, “ethics is critique” (Critcheley 5). A critique of the traditional notions of spontaneity and subject since the traditional history of thoughts has reduced otherness to the sameness of subjectivity. Reversing the traditional hierarchies, both philosophers then emphasize the singularity of the other in its original and respect the alterity because it is beyond the universal and formal rule. Furthermore, the values of ethics is to preserve and nurture the excluded alterity, the otherness of the other, the singular strangeness or the one who is not identified by the self19. When Levinas puts emphases on the singularity of the self and the other, he develops a notion of “pluralism’ that “implies a radical alterity of the other, whom I do not simply conceive by relation to myself, but confront out of my egoism” (Totality and Infinity 121; italics original). This pluralism requires an ethical responsibility to treat the others in its irreducible form. It suggests that the irreducibility of the others. In this regard, pluralism precedes egoism and “the separation of the I is possible only through the look of the look of the other” (Schroeder 157). The Levinasian pluralism indicates an obligation of the self to the other: “a radical incommensurability between the other who exists before the self, and a self that is broken open, demanded of, or called to be by the other, before it can hold itself up in the ivory tower of self-sufficiency, self-consciousness and mastery” (Reynold 40). At this moment of contact, the self is called by an unconditional ethical obligation to the other “it is I, a singular self, who. 19. The concept of self is general here, in can be “my own self, a nation-state, a radical group, and so forth” (Understanding Derrida 38)..