Quote:Questions

Q1: On the notion of welcoming someone, of being hospitable to them: well, firstly, welcoming to what? To a thing, whatever that might be? But secondly, it seems to me that it implies a form of acceptance and maybe inclusion, and I think that the notion of inclusion is problematic because it tends to imply some form of assimilation, and again assimilating someone to what? Which carries us on to the notion of equality, which can be coercive, and I wondered what you thought about the notion of coercion and equality: people aren't necessarily equal, nations aren't equal, states aren't equal and what is the form of agency that will make them equal and therefore perhaps avoid assimilation?

J.D.: Thankyou. No, when I speak of hospitality I have in mind the necessity not to simply assimilate the Other, but that's an aporia. We have to welcome the Other inside - without that there would be no hospitality, that the Other should be sheltered or welcomed in my space, that I should try to open my space, without trying to include the Other in my space. That is to ask that he or she learn my language, or adopt my religion or become English or become French, today for instance that's the condition, that's the left-wing discourse, the prevailing left-wing discourse, 'we are hospitable to the immigrants to the extent that they become French citizens, respect secularism, that they learn the French language', assimilation. We call this integration, and of course this can be done in a novel fashion and that is part of hospitality: if I want to open my house of course my bed is your bed, you want to use my bed? - it's still a bed, you have to get used it; this is what I eat, I can give you what I eat; you have to get used to it. But that's a double bind, on the one hand I should respect the singularity of the Other and not to ask him or her that he respect or keep intact my own space or my own culture.

That's what I said at the beginning about the unconditionality. I have to accept if I offer unconditional hospitality that the Other may ruin my own space or impose his or her own culture or his or her own language. That's the problem: hospitality should be neither assimilation, acculturation, nor simply the occupation of my space by the Other. That's why it has to be negotiated at every instant, and the decision for hospitality, the best rule for this negotiation, has to be invented at every second with all the risks involved, and it is very risky. Hospitality, and hospitality is a very general name for all our relations to the Other, has to be re-invented at every second, it is something without a pre-given rule. That is what we have to invent - a new language for instance. When two people who don't speak the same language meet, what should they do? They have to translate, but translation is an invention, to invent a new way of translating in which translation doesn't simply go one way but both ways, and how can we do that? That's the aporia, and this is political, the new form - but it had always been a form - of politics, but today it has, because of the development of communication, of crossing borders, of telecommunications, it has new forms of urgency.

(01-01-2011, 03:11 PM)unity100 Wrote: that is more related to wisdom i believe. just like how it happened to Ra and confederation regarding their boondoggle with orion. had they accepted it, they would become slaves.

Quote:same goes for immigrants. they are immigrating into a country, because they find the conditions there more appealing than the ones in their own country. they are migrating to a country because that country is what it is. coming in, not adapting and trying to change it would not be considered immigration, but conquest. or, 2d behavior.

(01-01-2011, 09:11 PM)Crimson Wrote: I was trying to put this on a 4d+ context as a possibility of a germinal beginning for a social memory complex.