The 'double law' of hospitality: Rethinking cosmopolitan ethics in humanitarian intervention

International Relations

Volumn 24, Issue 1, 2010, Pages 87-103

  Baker, Gideon ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

'Undecidability'; Cosmopolitanism; Emmanuel Levinas; Ethics; Hospitality; Humanism; Humanitarian intervention; Jacques Derrida

Indexed keywords

EID: 77949876881     PISSN: 00471178     EISSN: 17412862     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0047117809348689     Document Type: Article

References (99)

1. For a more general statement identifying cosmopolitanism with the ethics of hospitality, see my 'Cosmopolitanism as Hospitality: Revisiting Identity and Difference in Cosmopolitanism', Alternatives, 34(2), 2009, pp. 107-128.
2. Suzanne Metselaar, 'When Neighbours Become Numbers: Levinas and the Inhospitality of Dutch Asylum Policy', Parallax 11(1), 2005, p. 65.
3. Where the O in Other is capitalised, Derrida, following Emmanuel Levinas, is referring to the transcendence of the stranger, to his or her irreducibility to any theme. I follow this practice here.
4. Immanuel Kant, 'Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch', in H. S. Reiss (ed.), Kant's Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), pp. 105-6.
5. Jacques Derrida, 'Hospitality', Angelaki, 5(3), 2000, pp. 10-11.
6. For an extended discussion on the difference between Kantian and Derridean hospitality, see Gideon Baker, 'The Politics of Hospitality: Sovereignty and Ethics in Political Community', in G. Baker and J. Bartelson (eds), The Future of Political Community (London: Routledge, 2009).
7. Jacques Derrida, 'Force of Law: The "Mystical Foundation of Authority"', Cardozo Law Review, 921, 1990, p. 955.
8. Derrida, 'Force of Law, p. 967.
9. Jacques Derrida, 'Hospitality, Justice and Responsibility: A Dialogue with Jacques Derrida', in R. Kearney and M Dooley (eds), Questioning Ethics: Contemporary Debates in Philosophy (London: Routledge, 1999), p. 72.
10. Jenny Edkins and Maja Zehfuss, 'Generalising the International', Review of International Studies, 31, 2005, p. 471.
11. Thanks to Ken Booth for reminding me that the Derridean problematic of undecidability is by no means a new one in international relations theorising. Derrida himself, of course, also gets it from elsewhere-particularly from Kierkegaard.
12. Nicholas J. Wheeler, Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
13. Jacques Derrida, Adieu: To Emmanuel Levinas, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Nass (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), pp. 46 and 92.
14. Jacques Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness (London: Routledge, 2001), p. 16.
15. See also: '[Hospitality] is ethicity itself, the whole and the principle of ethics' (Derrida, Adieu, p. 50).
16. S. E. Kelly, 'Derrida's Cities of Refuge: Toward a Non-Utopian Utopia', Contemporary Justice Review, 7(4), 2004, pp. 421-39.
17. INCA was disbanded in 2005, to be replaced by the International Cities of Refuge Network (ICORN) and Cities of Refuge North America. In its founding Charter, ICORN responds to the ongoing persecution of writers by providing 'a functioning network of cities and regions that will provide shelter for persecuted writers'. The Charter is available at: www.icorn. org/resource/userfiles/TheCharter/Eng-TheCharter.pdf (accessed 1 May 2007).
18. Cities of Refuge North America, meanwhile, 'helps writers, persecuted and silenced in their native countries, to find safe haven in North America': www.citiesof refuge.com (accessed 1 May 2007).
19. Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism, p. 6.
20. Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism, p. 15.
21. Derrida, in G. Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), p. 129.
22. Jacques Derrida, 'The World of the Enlightenment to Come (Exception, Calculation, Sovereignty)', Research in Phenomenology, 33, 2003, p. 40.
23. Jacques Derrida, Of Hospitality (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000), p. 25.
24. Jacques Derrida, 'The Principle of Hospitality', Parallax 11(1), 2005, p. 6.
25. Considering hospitality as a concept rather than practice we get the same paradoxical result or 'double law'. The foreigner/ host relation sets the logical, and not simply the material, limits of hospitality. For hospitality there must first be a foreigner; and, for the foreigner to appear foreign in the first place, there must be hospitality.
26. Derrida, Of Hospitality, p. 149.
27. Kelly, 'Derrida's Cities of Refuge', p. 429.
28. Derrida, Of Hospitality, p. 15.
29. Derrida, 'The Principle of Hospitality', p. 7.
30. Derrida, 'The Principle of Hospitality', p. 6.
31. See also Derrida, Of Hospitality, pp. 147-148.
32. Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism, p. 22;
33. see also, p. 45.
34. Jacques Derrida, Aporias (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993), pp. 16-17.
35. See also Jacques Derrida, The Other Heading: Reflections on Today's Europe, trans.
36. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael B. Nass (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), pp. 41, 45 and 72.
37. Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism, pp. 53-54.
38. Derrida, 'Hospitality, Justice and Responsibility', pp. 65-67.
39. Derrida, 'Force of Law', pp. 961-963.
40. Derrida, 'Force of Law', p. 91.
41. Derrida, Adieu, p. 21. 31
42. Derrida, Adieu, p. 21. 32
43. Derrida, Adieu, p. 22.
44. Alex Bellamy, 'Pragmatic Solidarism and the Dilemmas of Humanitarian Intervention', Millennium, 31(3), 2002, p. 489.
45. Bellamy, 'Pragmatic Solidarism', pp. 491-492
46. Bellamy, 'Pragmatic Solidarism', p. 492.
47. Bellamy, 'Pragmatic Solidarism', p. 492.
48. Bellamy, 'Pragmatic Solidarism', p. 496.
49. Bellamy, 'Pragmatic Solidarism', p. 497.
50. Jürgen Habermas, 'Bestiality and Humanity: A War on the Border between Legality and Morality', Constellations, 6(3), 1999, p. 267.
51. cited in Richard Devetak, 'Between Kant and Pufendorf: Humanitarian Intervention, Statist Anti-Cosmopolitanism and Critical International Theory', Review of International Studies, 33, 2007, p. 174.
52. Kimberly Hutchings, 'Happy Anniversary! Time and Critique in International Relations Theory', Review of International Studies, 33, 2007, pp. 71-89.
53. Devetak, following Linklater (Andrew Linklater, 'The Good International Citizen and the Crisis in Kosovo', in Albrecht Schnabel and Ramesh Thakur (eds), Kosovo and the Challenge of Humanitarian Intervention (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2000), p. 488), in fact avoids this problematic line of defence, suggesting instead that 'deciding whether or not armed intervention may be legitimate for humanitarian purposes must surely be a matter for judgement depending on particular circumstances, not something one can judge in advance' (p. 174).
54. 'Trying to extend the apparent consensus and security of the domestic to the international [is] inevitably an imperial imposition' (Edkins and Zehfuss, 'Generalising the International', p. 470).
55. Wheeler, Saving Strangers.
56. Noam Chomsky, The New Military Humanism: Lessons from Kosovo (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 1999).
57. Michael Ignatieff, Empire Lite, available at http://empirelite.ca.
58. Fernando Tesón, 'Ending Tyranny in Iraq', Ethics and International Affairs, 19(2), 2005, pp. 1-20.
59. Terry Nardin, 'Humanitarian Imperialism', Ethics and International Affairs, 19(2), 2005, pp. 21-6.
60. David Chandler, Empire in Denial: The Politics of State-Building (London: Pluto Press, 2006), p. 1.
61. One of the views expressed at the New Delhi regional roundtable of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), 2001. 'Background' to final report, available at: www.iciss.ca/report-en.asp, p. 388 (accessed 15 April 2007).
62. The view from Beijing of the ICISS. 'Background', p. 392.
63. Final document of the XIII Ministerial Conference of the Non-Aligned Movement of the UN, 2000, available at: www.nam.gov.za/xiiiminconf/final4.htm (accessed 15 April 2007).
64. Derrida, 'Force of Law', p. 925.
65. Derrida, 'Force of Law', p. 959.
66. Derrida, 'Force of Law', p. 971.
67. Derrida, 'Force of Law', p. 965.
68. David J. Gauthier, 'Levinas and the Politics of Hospitality', History of Political Thought, 28(1), 2007, p. 167.
69. Emmanuel Levinas, Humanism of the Other, trans. N. Poller (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2006), p. 68.
70. Levinas, Humanism of the Other, p. 68.
71. Derrida, Adieu, p. 6.
72. Levinas, Humanism of the Other, p. 33.
73. Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. M. Lingis (London: Martinus Nijhoff, 1981), p. 300.
74. Derrida, Adieu, pp. 97-98.
75. Levinas, Humanism of the Other, p. 67.
76. Derrida, Adieu, p. 117.
77. Derrida, Adieu, p. 117.
78. Derrida, The Other Heading, p. 78.
79. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, p. 300.
80. Derrida, 'Hospitality, Justice and Responsibility', pp. 68-69.
81. Derrida, Adieu, pp. 29-32.
82. Or, as Levinas writes, making the same point, 'the substitution of the one for the other does not imply the substitution of the other for the one'. Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, trans. A. Lingis (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1981), p. 158.
83. François Raffoul, 'On Hospitality: Between Ethics and Politics', Research in Phenomenology, 28(1), 1998, p. 280.
84. Isaiah 57:19
85. cited in Levinas, Otherwise than Being, p. 157.
86. Derrida, Adieu, p. 29.
87. Levinas, Otherwise than Being, p. 157.
88. Cited in Derrida, Adieu, p. 32.
89. Derrida, Adieu, p. 30.
90. For more on how I define 'cosmopolitanism as hospitality', see my article of the same name in Alternatives, 34(2), 2009, pp. 107-128.
91. Mary Kaldor, Global Civil Society: An Answer to War? (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001).
92. Andrew Linklater, The Transformation of Political Community (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998), pp. 212 and 206, emphasis added.
93. Edkins and Zehfuss, 'Generalising the International', pp. 462-463.
94. Speech available at: www.number10.gov.uk/output/Page1297.asp (accessed 2 April 2007).
95. Derrida, Of Hospitality, p. 15.
96. Derrida, Of Hospitality, p. 65.
97. For more on the irreducibility of sovereignty to an ethics of hospitality, see my 'The Politics of Hospitality'.
98. Derrida accords with Levinas that hospitality, the welcome of the Other, requires a 'pluralism in which the plurality is not that of a total community, that of the cohesion of the whole'. Derrida quotes Levinas at this point: 'The unity of plurality is peace, and not the coherence of the elements that constitute plurality... Peace must [therefore] be my peace, in a relation which starts from an I and goes to the other, in desire and goodness, where the I both maintains itself and exists without egoism.' For Levinas, all other peace is but 'the peace of empires' (Derrida, Adieu, pp. 96-7, emphasis added).
99. From the perspective of the ethics of hospitality, the home exists to make the welcome possible and this 'is its sole destination'. Following Levinas in departing here from the phenomenological tradition, Derrida sees the home as the 'possibility of the welcome' rather than the welcome of possibility (Derrida, Adieu, p. 28). The dwelling is justified only in the welcome of hospitality, having 'nothing natural about it, nothing of a root'. 'Hospitality thus precedes property' and the threshold is defined not as that which shuts out the Other but as that which opens on to her (Derrida, Adieu, pp. 92 and 45).