Welcome Nowhere: Hospitality and the Feminine in Derrida

Abstract

My senior project is an analysis of Jacques Derrida's work in Of Hospitality, particularly focused on the question of the female foreigner, and its articulation through Derrida's treatment of Antigone in his reading of Oedipus at Colonus. I argue that Derrida's theory of hospitality revolves around an undertheorized and unsatisfying concept of the feminine. Through close readings of Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus, I offer alternate ways of thinking through hospitality in Sophocles, and the implications that this would have on Derrida's work. Using Hospitality and the Maternal by Irina Aristarkhova and Love of the Other by Luce Irigaray, I show how some of the problems with Derrida's conception of hospitality arise from his de-materialized notion of the feminine and association of the feminine with the maternal. In the project, I also explore problems that come from the interplay of the universal Law and particular laws of hospitably, and how thinking through the hospitality of pregnancy can help to theorize hospitality beyond the state and property. I explore the ways that Oedipus can be read as a queer figure, or "strange mother," and how this relates to Derrida's work on origin. I also explore the religious elements of hospitality, and the way Sophocles subverts and supports the idea that one must always be ready to welcome God. Ultimately, although Derrida's conclusions about the role and status of the female foreigner are critiqued, his ideas are in no way dismissed, and the necessity for hospitality, and its adequate theory, are stressed. This is because the possibilities that hospitality offers for thinking through encountering an other has real implications, especially those who experience foreignness or the price of hospitality in some way, as refugees, immigrants, stateless people, prisoners, or as any type of social/political strangers. It also allows for a better understanding of what someone can offer and how they can invite in acts of hospitality, even when they seem to have nothing.