Page 93 - DENG501_LITERARY_CRITICISM_AND_THEORIES

Unit 7: Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences-Jacques Derrida

such an altruistic concept and is inconceivable without it. In fact, he argues that it is this internal Notes
tension that keeps the concept alive.
As Derrida makes explicit, there is a more existential example of this tension, in that the notion of
hospitality requires one to be the 'master' of the house, country or nation (and hence controlling).
His point is relatively simple here; to be hospitable, it is first necessary that one must have the
power to host. Hospitality hence makes claims to property ownership and it also partakes in the
desire to establish a form of self-identity. Secondly, there is the further point that in order to be
hospitable, the host must also have some kind of control over the people who are being hosted.
This is because if the guests take over a house through force, then the host is no longer being
hospitable towards them precisely because they are no longer in control of the situation. This
means, for Derrida, that any attempt to behave hospitably is also always partly betrothed to the
keeping of guests under control, to the closing of boundaries, to nationalism, and even to the
exclusion of particular groups or ethnicities. This is Derrida's 'possible' conception of hospitality,
in which our most well-intentioned conceptions of hospitality render the "other others" as strangers
and refugees. Whether one invokes the current international preoccupation with border control,
or simply the ubiquitous suburban fence and alarm system, it seems that hospitality always posits
some kind of limit upon where the other can trespass, and hence has a tendency to be rather
inhospitable. On the other hand, as well as demanding some kind of mastery of house, country or
nation, there is a sense in which the notion of hospitality demands a welcoming of whomever, or
whatever, may be in need of that hospitality. It follows from this that unconditional hospitality, or
we might say 'impossible' hospitality, hence involves a relinquishing of judgement and control in
regard to who will receive that hospitality. In other words, hospitality also requires non-mastery,
and the abandoning of all claims to property, or ownership. If that is the case, however, the
ongoing possibility of hospitality thereby becomes circumvented, as there is no longer the possibility
of hosting anyone, as again, there is no ownership or control.
7.7.3 Forgiveness
Derrida discerns another aporia in regard to whether or not to forgive somebody who has caused
us significant suffering or pain. This particular paradox revolves around the premise that if one
forgives something that is actually forgivable, then one simply engages in calculative reasoning
and hence does not really forgive. Most commonly in interviews, but also in his recent text On
Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, Derrida argues that according to its own internal logic, genuine
forgiving must involve the impossible: that is, the forgiving of an 'unforgivable' transgression - eg.
a 'mortal sin'. There is hence a sense in which forgiving must be 'mad' and 'unconscious', and it
must also remain outside of, or heterogenous to, political and juridical rationality. This unconditional
'forgiveness' explicitly precludes the necessity of an apology or repentance by the guilty party,
although Derrida acknowledges that this pure notion of forgiveness must always exist in tension
with a more conditional forgiveness where apologies are actually demanded. However, he argues
that this conditional forgiveness amounts more to amnesty and reconciliation than to genuine
forgiveness. The pattern of this discussion is undoubtedly beginning to become familiar. Derrida's
discussions of forgiving are orientated around revealing a fundamental paradox that ensures that
forgiving can never be finished or concluded - it must always be open, like a permanent rupture,
or a wound that refuses to heal.
This forgiveness paradox depends, in one of its dual aspects, upon a radical disjunction between
self and other. Derrida explicitly states that "genuine forgiveness must engage two singularities:
the guilty and the victim. As soon as a third party intervenes, one can again speak of amnesty,
reconciliation, reparation, etc., but certainly not of forgiveness in the strict sense". Given that he
also acknowledges that it is difficult to conceive of any such face-to-face encounter without a third
party - as language itself must serve such a mediating function - forgiveness is caught in an aporia
that ensures that its empirical actuality looks to be decidedly unlikely. To recapitulate, the reason
that Derrida's notion of forgiveness is caught in such an inextricable paradox is because absolute

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 87