Threshold Phenomena: Derrida and the Question of Hospitality

Threshold Phenomena reexamines Jacques Derrida's thinking of hospitality, from his well-known writings of the 1990s to his recently-published seminars on the same topic. The book follows Derrida's rereading of several central figures and texts on hospitality (Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus, Kant's Perpetual Peace, Levinas's Totality and Infinity) and his attempt to rethink questions surrounding not only private but also public hospitality in the form of immigration law, the contemporary treatment of migrants or stateless peoples, and the establishment of cities of asylum. Naas develops many of the central themes of Derrida's seminar—the relationship between hospitality and teletechnology (telephone, internet, cyberspace, etc.), the role of fatherlands and mother tongues in hospitality, questions of purity, immunity, and xenophobia, and the possibility of extending hospitality beyond the human—to animals, plants, gods, and clones. Reframing Derrida's approach to ethics, Naas reconsiders the relationship between hospitality and deconstruction, concluding that hospitality is not merely a theme to be treated by deconstruction but one of the best ways of describing its work. Naas's book turns around a figure that Derrida himself returns to several times throughout the seminar: the threshold—a figure of hospitality par excellence, but also, in his seminars, another name for what Derrida in the 1960s began calling différance. Threshold Phenomena concludes that Derrida's seminar on hospitality is one of the best introductions we have to Derrida's work in general and one of the surest signs of its continuing relevance, a seminar that is at once fascinating and engaging in its own right and necessary for analyzing today's increasingly nationalistic and xenophobic political climate.

Table of Contents:
Abbreviations of Works by Jacques Derrida ix Introduction: Fist Bumps and Pandemic Bubbles 1 I. Preliminaries: Questions on the Threshold 1. Hodos and Odos (Homeric Hospitality 1) 17 2. Translating Hospitality 23 3. Masters of the House: Hospitality and Sovereignty 31 4. Xenos and Xenia (Homeric Hospitality 2) 39 5. On Dying Abroad: Oedipus (on the Threshold) at Colonus 44 6. Plato's Xenoi 53 II. The "Concept" of Hospitality 7. Stranger Things 63 8. Conditional and Unconditional Hospitality 67 9. Unconditional and Conditional Hospitality 79 10. The Art or Poetics of Hospitality 97 11. But Why So Much Kant? 104 12. Xenos Paradox: Hospitality and Autoimmunity 113 III. The Wall, the Door, the Threshold, the Hotspot 13. Dirty Foreigners: The Question of Purity 127 14. Homing Devices: Teletechnology and the Question of Private Space 133 15. Phantasms of Fatherlands and Mother Tongues 145 16. Phantasms of Mother Tongues and Mobile Phones 152 17. On Cosmopolitanism and Cities of Refuge 164 18. Beyond Anthropo- Hospitality: Plants, Animals, Gods, and Clones 177 Conclusion: From Threshold to Threshold— Derrida's Démarche 199 Acknowledgments 207 Appendix: Two Regimes of Hospitality (Chart) 209 Notes 211 Index 233

About the Author :
Michael Naas is Professor of Philosophy at DePaul University. He is the author of Class Acts: Derrida on the Public Stage (2022), Apocalyptic Ruin and Everyday Wonder in Don DeLillo's America (2022), Don DeLillo, American Original: Drugs, Weapons, Erotica, and Other Literary Contraband (2020), Plato and the Invention of Life (2018), The End of the World and Other Teachable Moments: Jacques Derrida's Final Seminar (2015), Miracle and Machine: Jacques Derrida and the Two Sources of Religion, Science, and the Media (2012), Derrida From Now On (2008), Taking on the Tradition: Jacques Derrida and the Legacies of Deconstruction (2003), and Turning: From Persuasion to Philosophy (1994). He is co-translator of a number of books by Jacques Derrida, including Life Death (2020), and is a member of the Derrida Seminars Editorial Team.

Review :
Hats off to yet another of those very good books by Michael Naas. And hats off to Derrida, who devoted his incomparable skills to understanding what our agonizingly inhospitable time so desperately needs.-- "Research in Phenomenology" An exceptional achievement. Highly recommended.-- "Choice Reviews" Naas's book accompanies and enlightens Derrida's seminar with a particularly hospitable form of commentary whose relaxed ease is a real achievement.---Penelope Deutscher, Northwestern University This is the fullest treatment of Derridean hospitality to date and the only one that builds upon the recently published versions of his Hospitality seminar. It is also a pedagogical tour de force, enabling engagements on different levels: with Derrida as a teacher and humorist, as a public intellectual, and as a champion of the undocumented.---Diane Rubenstein, Cornell University