Ethics of Hospitality: Envisaging the Stranger in the Contemporary World

The London School of Economics and Political Science Ethics of Hospitality: Envisaging the stranger in the contemporary world Maria Fotou A thesis submitted to the Department of International Relations of the London School of Economics for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, London, June 2016. DECLARATION I certify that the thesis I have presented for examination for the MPhil/PhD degree of the London School of Economics and Political Science is solely my own work other than where I have clearly indicated that it is the work of others (in which case the extent of any work carried out jointly by me and any other person is clearly identified in it). The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. Quotation from it is permitted, provided that full acknowledgement is made. This thesis may not be reproduced without my prior written consent. I warrant that this authorisation does not, to the best of my belief, infringe the rights of any third party. I declare that my thesis consists of 105,813 words. I can confirm that my thesis was copy-edited for conventions of language, spelling and grammar by Danny Hayward. Mistakes and misunderstandings are all mine and mine alone. 2 ABSTRACT The main contention of this thesis is that traditional IR approaches, ethics of migration literature and a part of the poststructural scholarship, either implicitly but also often explicitly, are based on an exclusionary, hierarchical understanding of the Other and an Us versus Them ordering of society even when they purport to contradict it. As such, they engender a collective ethos, which, despite these approaches’ initial intentions or pronounced humanitarian commitments, does not take into account the stranger Other beyond a lordship/bondage view on one hand and allow for exacerbating the violence towards the Other/ stranger on the other. This exacerbation can be noted when looking at current hospitality practices (detention camps; “closed hospitality centres”; state sanctioned illegal push-backs of refugees; “fortress Europe” kind of policies, etc.). Whilst accepting this is not a new problem (movement of individuals, post-conflict waves of refugees, liminal figures in societies and communities have always been present and have constituted parts of on-going theoretical discussions in IR, bringing out theoretical tensions and difficulties), the thesis argues that there are certain novelties to be found: namely, a strengthened overarching security narrative and the resulting militarisation of the treatment of strangers. Against this background, my thesis notes the relative absence of any ethically engaged discussion around hospitality and finds it problematic. It proposes the reconsideration in IR of an umbrella term naming the liminal abject Other. It then argues for the need to reconsider the Levinasian understanding of the ethical responsibility towards the singular and multiple Others through the concept of fraternity. Finally, it revisits the Derridean theorisation of hospitality, i.e., hospitality as an opening up of theory to the “missing” or the Other in Western thought beyond an “Us/ Them” understanding, through an affirmative reading of autoimmunity, arguing that the autoimmunitary ethics of hospitality can enact the ethical responsibility by crossing the threshold of undecidability towards an opening to the Other. 3 CONTENTS Declaration ............................................................................................................................................ 2 Abstract .................................................................................................................................................. 3 Contents ................................................................................................................................................. 4 Acknowledgments .............................................................................................................................. 7 Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 9 Hospitality as the interruption of the Self ........................................................................... 13 The who of hospitality ................................................................................................................ 18 - Xenos / Stranger / Foreigner/ Abject Other ................................................................. 18 - Self/Other ................................................................................................................................. 21 The what of hospitality ............................................................................................................... 22 - Injustice ..................................................................................................................................... 22 - Violence and Biopoliticisation of Hospitality ............................................................... 24 An affirmative, autoimmunitary ethics of hospitality ..................................................... 25 Outline of Chapters ...................................................................................................................... 26 1 / A Conceptual History of Hospitality ................................................................................. 28 Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 28 1.1 From a history of ideas to a history of concepts ..................................................... 30 1.2 A conceptual history of hospitality to date ............................................................... 32 1.2.1 Hospitality in the ancient world .......................................................................................... 34 1.2.2 Hospitality in modern times and up to the French Revolution ............................. 46 1.2.3 Kant .................................................................................................................................................. 55 1.2.4 Hospitality: a biopolitical turn? ........................................................................................... 60 1.3 Hospitality and the Other ............................................................................................... 66 1.3.1 Proximity and belonging: Fear oF the stranger constituting the inside ............... 69 1.3.2 The issue oF categories. Legal, illegal, undocumented Other .................................. 73 1.3.3 Abject other and biopolitics .................................................................................................. 79 2 / The Normative Turn in IR. The Ethics of Hospitality in IR Literature .................. 84 Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 84 2.1 IR and ethics ........................................................................................................................ 85 2.2 IPT and the case of borders ........................................................................................... 94 4 2.2.1 In the beginning was the border ......................................................................................... 96 2.2.2 Free movement ......................................................................................................................... 102 2.2.3 The right to leave ..................................................................................................................... 105 2.3 Other neo-Kantian approaches to hospitality ...................................................... 112 2.3.1 Distributive Justice .................................................................................................................. 112 2.3.2 Justice as equality and as political membership ........................................................ 115 2.4 Poststructuralism and Ethics ..................................................................................... 119 2.4.1 Poststructuralist IR ................................................................................................................. 119 2.4.2 On hospitality ............................................................................................................................ 124 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................... 137 3 / Levinas: Otherness and Fraternity ................................................................................ 145 Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 145 3.1 Self and Other .................................................................................................................. 151 3.2 Human relation ............................................................................................................... 159 3.3 The face, Otherness, ethics of responsibility. ....................................................... 162 3.4 Ethics of responsibility in society: fraternity and the third ............................. 168 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................... 179 4 / Derrida: Hospitality

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