Jacques Derrida, Of Hospitality (Stanford University Press, 2000) pp. 53-55
8 Mar 2020
One can become virtually xenophobic in order to protect or claim to protect one's own hospitality
The perversion and pervertibility
of this law (which is also a law of hospitality)
is that one can become virtually xenophobic
in order to protect or claim to protect one's own hospitality,
the own home that makes possible one's
own hospitality. [...] I want
to be master at home (ipse, potis, potens, head of
house, we have seen all that), to be able to receive
whomever I like there. Anyone who encroaches on
my "at home," on my ipseity, on my power of hospitality, on my sovereignty as host, I start to regard
as an undesirable foreigner, and virtually as an
enemy. This other becomes a hostile subject, and I
risk becoming their hostage.
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