Derrida's Paternal Imagery

Dear Professor Kearney,
I was wondering if you could explain why, as Derrida argues, hospitality is an act initiated by the familial despot (149).  Derrida's emphasis on acting from the norms of rights or obligations (the "pact") seems to belie the very spirit of hospitality as being spontaneously volitional, generous, even excessive.  If we were seeking means congruent with the end of hospitality, I would imagine they'd be more democratic than despotic (though I'm aware the 'master' of the house is the one in best position to extend the offer of hospitality -- I just wonder if despotic language befits the contemporary household).  I find Derrida's paternal imagery all the more striking/surprising when I think of how hospitality has been reclaimed (in theology and ministry) as part of a feminist critique (I am thinking of someone like Letty Russell, for example).
Marc

Dear Marc
Excellent question. When Derrida speaks of hospitality as predicated upon a sovereign paterfamilias who decides which strangers to host, he is speaking of conditional hospitality. That is, hospitality as understood by Benveniste, as a pact between two sovereign clans or warriors. For this to occur, the host has to have power over his own home so as to control who comes in or out. Lot can welcome angels, keep out Sodomites and hand over daughters. So yes, there is an implicit despotism and violence inherent in all forms of conditional (or practicable) hospitality.
This is why, arguably, Derrida needs absolute and unconditional hospitality to safeguard the hope of hosting strangers beyond sovereignty, reciprocity and power. Such 'pure' hospitality is, of course, impossible for Derrida. But it always remains a promise or desire of justice-to-come, a justice (and perhaps love) which would transcend and transgress the laws and rights of ordinary, impure hospitality.
To return to your question then, democratic hospitality would always be a promise of 'democracy-to-come', the promise of a Messianicity more 'feminine' (like Derrida's khora) than paternalist. In short, the kind of hospitality more likely to come from Lot's daughters than from Lot himself, from the concubine than from the Levite master or her knife-wielding spouse...
Hope that helps? We can return to this in next class.
Best,
Prof Kearney

Guests in the Story of Lot: Competing Unconditional Demands?

Dear Professor Kearney,
I was interested in your reaction to the reading I proposed yesterday on the story of Lot - where the two visitors are inscribed within Lot's ethical system & cease to be guests, becoming part of Lot's narrative, while the Sodomites take the role of the Stranger demanding hospitality from Lot. Something I forgot to mention is that I feel that if Lot had said 'No, you can't have these men, because... I don't know why, you just can't.' the two visitors would have remained guests; however, since he gave a reason ('they have come to me for hospitality') he has inscribed them within his ethical system.
I'm curious for your response, since I give seems to break down the possibility of ethics (while preserving the possibility of morality) in a way that I'm not sure is compatible with your own reading; so a critical response would be most welcome.
Gabe


Dear Gabe,
Interesting...
But isn't Lot himself a 'guest' of the Sodomites who originally host him....' a foreigner (ger) come to stay (gur) with the Sodomites' (OH, p 251)?
So when the Sodomites (Lot's hosts) ask him to hand over his own guests they are abusing both the right of their guest (Lot) and of his guests (the two angels). A case of double betrayal of the law of hospitality?
I am not sure about your distinction between ethics and morality here; unless you mean that if Lot protects his guests he is observing the ethic of hospitality but if he hands over his daughters as 'gifts' to the Sodomites (his hosts and perhaps now, perversely, his guests who know at his door?) he is breaking the moral rules of family kinship and protection?
By this reading the biblical story would illustrate the trumping of familial morality by an ethics of unconditional hospitality? But does not the rhetorical force of the narrative suggest that this is not a great thing....to sacrifice your daughters to rapists? Or I imagining the biblical scribes to be more moral than they were?
It is true, of course, that Abraham was ready to sacrifice his son....to God? But what kind of God? A God of rapine who insists on child sacrifice or a God of mercy who is teaching Abraham a basic moral lesson: you just shouldn't do that kind of thing with your children, even if you think it is God knocking at the door and demanding you hand them over. So put away that knife and take your son home with you to Sarah and grow up!In other words, 'I am not a God of sacrificial bloodletting like the gods before me, but a God of love and justice'!
--Wishful thinking on my part? Kant and Girard would agree with the moral reading....but they are weird, so maybe the three of us are wrong and the sacrificial reading of both Abraham and Lot wins out? Give the gift of your children unconditionally to the one who asks but protect your guests no matter what? (Abraham receives the angels - God - unconditionally under the Mamre tree when they bring the gift of a son, Isaac, to him and the barren Sarah...but Abraham is then willing to give Isaac back again (offer him up!) to the same God when He asks. Benveniste's reading of hospitality as exchange of gifts? Potlach. You gave something to me, but I am now giving something more to you etc).
Perhaps that opens up new questions for discussion?
Best,
Prof. Kearney

Snake

Psyche is seduced by Amor. She has never seen him, although she recieves him each night - her sisters poison her with doubt, say she is making love to a dragon who will eat her up in the end, at any rate, that she should check. She betrays him - she lights the oil lamp one night and a drop of oil burns him awake: he leaves. (And what could be worse than the flight of Amor?)

Marie-Louise von Franz interprets this story in her book on redemption motifs. She says that the animal and the divine are very close ("above and below the human level") and one of the things that unites them is their being "touchy about being seen in the light of consciousness". 'Dragon' is synonymous with 'snake' here. The voice of the sisters is the voice of hasty consciousness, Lawrence's "accursed human education". It is also the voice of 'conditional hospitality'.

Normally we think of bringing something to light as positive (especially as philosophers). Marie-Louise von Franz isn't saying that consciousness is bad, rather, she says instead "in this light of recognition there is a 'nothing but' attitude", and we must be careful of this. Otherwise, like Psyche, we might roam all over the world in pursuit of the vanished stranger who was a lover and might have been a husband.

(This is a psychological interpretation of the story of a meeting, which I think is convincing, but I would like to add that an actual meeting with a snake needs no 'interpretation' to mediate the sense of meeting one of God's more dubious sons.)