|
HUM 270 |
"Questions of Responsibility: Hospitality/Hostility"
|
Jacques Derrida |
This year we will continue
to pursue the cycle of explorations started in the past
several years on the present stakes (philosophical, ethical,
juridical or political) of the concept of responsibility.
We have been privileging, as a guiding thread, the themes
of the secret and of witnessing. This year, after
devoting a few more sessions to the testimonial experience
(see last year's syllabus and bibliography), we will attempt
to elaborate a problematic of the stranger or foreigner
(l'étranger).
What does one call a foreigner/stranger? How does
one welcome him? How does one reject him? What
is an invitation? How is the notion of the foreigner/stranger
inscribed in language? What is its European, and first
of all Greek or Latin, history? How is this notion
distributed, now, among the spaces of relation, ethnicity,
city, state, nation? How to analyze, today, the pertinence
and the stakes of the opposition friend/foe? How to
reelaborate the multiple questions of borders, of citizenship,
of the rights called of blood and soil, of the aforementioned
"rights of man," of displaced or deported populations,
of immigration, of exile or asylum, of integration or assimilation
(republican or democratic), of xenophobia or racism, etc.?
A minimal and initial bibliography:
Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism.
New edition. New York: Harcourt Brace and and World,
1966. Part two: Imperialism. Chapter 9: "The
Decline of the Nation-State and the End of the Rights
of Man."
Benveniste, Emile. Le Vocabulaire des institutions indo-européennes.
Paris: Minuit, 1969.
Vol. 1, Chapter 7: "L'hospitalité."
The Bible, Genesis XIX, 1-10, Judges XIX, 22-31.
Heidegger, Martin. Was heisst Denken? Tübingen:
Niemeyer, 1984. English: What is Called Thinking?
Tr. with an introduction by J. Glenn Gray. New York: Harper
and Row, 1968.
Kant, Immanuel. Zum ewigen Frieden, ein philosophischer
Entwurf. Erlangen: Fischer, 1984. English: Perpetual
Peace and Other Essays on Politics, History, and Morals.
Tr. with an introduction by Ted Humphrey. Indianapolis:
Hackett, 1983.
Klossowski, Pierre. Roberte ce soir. Paris: Minuit,
1953. English: Roberte ce soir and The Revocation
of the Edict of Nantes. Tr. Austryn Wainhouse. New
York: M. Boyars, 1989.
Plato. Apology of Socrates.
Sophocles. Oedipus at Colonus.
