We can easily begin with Kant's cosmopolitan right, he says, "Our concern here is not with philanthropy, but with right, and in this context hospitality means the right of an alien not to be treated as an enemy upon his arrival in another’s country.” (Kant 118) Kant links this with a greater cause that is implied with a movement towards a universal peace. He later describes how when people are able to move freely between states without having a fear of hostility they are more likely to grow closer together and formulate a cosmopolitan constitution. He says, “For since the earth is a globe, they cannot scatter themselves infinitely, but must, finally, tolerate living in close proximity, because originally no one had a greater right to any region of the earth than anyone else.” (Kant 118).
“Hospitality” is, as Derrida says, “necessarily, a right, a duty, an obligation, the greeting (his italics) of the foreign other as a friend but on the condition that the host, the Wirt, the one who receives or gives asylum remains the patron, the master of the household, on the condition that he remains his own authority in his own home.” (Derrida, Hospitality, 4) Both host and guest are bound to specific requirements of engagement. These requirements necessitate that authority is bestowed both onto the person visiting and the person hosting. This authority grants the visitor freedoms—human rights. The interaction between host and visitor is a premise that contains two parallel clauses:
(1) The host is required to meet the foreigner with a certain level of dignity. Human dignity in this case is described as “a stranger treated as a friend or ally, as opposed to the stranger treated as an enemy (friend/enemy, hospitality/ hostility).” (Derrida 4) This dignity is met with the bestowing of authority onto the visitor. They have the right and the expectation to be greeted well.
(2) The visitor must respect the host’s rule—it’s law—in order to maintain the relationship. The visitor grants the host certain dignities in respecting the authority of the host within the host’s space. This clause also contains the conception that if the visitor violates the host’s space, the host is well in its right to remove the visitor from it’s territory.
This juxtaposes human rights over state law. Both are bestowed with a level of dignity and authority in their interactions. However, there is one flaw to the system. If the visitor violates the system, where can they go? If the host refuses to respect the authority that the visitor demands as a human being entering the host’s territory, what happens? Are there consequences? These clauses are meaningless unless an understanding is created about what the distinction between host and visitor is.
In nation-states a distinction is made regarding who is allowed citizenship. It is a conclusion that began when the nation-state came into existence. Countries created “territorial and membership organizations '"of" and "for" particular, distinctive, bounded nation' (Brubaker 1992: Chapters 1 and 2, esp. pp. 43-49)-states must be in a position to embrace or grasp their members and to distinguish them from non-member others, an aim that has typically come to be achieved through identification documents.” (Torpey 74) The citizen is the host for the non-citizen visitor. This distinction is made clear enough through bureaucratic documentation—the passport. A citizen receives all the benefits that a society is able to provide while the non-citizen does not participate in the system and therefore hasn’t earned the same ability to access the same services. “Different” people who need to access the same facilities are segregated by the merit of where they live (or are documented to live) though their need to use the same services offers no distinction. The very notion of citizenship creates a contrast as to who gains from a states existence. Balibar notes this when he says, “The law or order necessarily also represent a point of dissolution of all order and all legality, a point of exception with respect to its universality and of liberation with respect to its legal constraint.” (Balibar, 314) Law then strips the person of their fundamental rights before bestowing an order all its own. He continues to say, “universalization as such appears to be inseparable from procedures of exclusion and of inner exclusion.” Universalization for whom? When the law seeks to separate and ensure the interests and security of the state, services are universalized for those who are citizens. The law designates citizenship and as such who gets services. This places citizenship (law) above humanity. Forcing the visitor to be received with suspicion and without human dignity.
Leaving room for shifts in Authority, how people are respected, and the creation of the other. “Colonialism, decolonization, and postcoloniality involved special kinds of traffic with people deemed “other”—the familiarity of a presumed common humanity defamiliarized, as it were.” (Spivak 77) This invention has allowed people to point fingers as to who is with or against us. People who in the United states promote assimilation noting that immigrants should adapt to “our” culture, because this is “our” country. I put our in quotes, because we are a nation of immigrants and in reality that is our identity—a walk through New York can tell you that. Derrida defines identity as a “concept, which the transparent identity to itself is always dogmatically presupposed by so many debates on monoculturalism or multiculturalism, nationality, citizenship, belonging." (Derrida quoted by Spivak 82) Spivak continues, “Two kinds of points are being made in the Derrida text: first, that the enthnos is already self-divided, and second, that ipseity or self-sameness has something in common with the despot claiming power and property. Identity politics is neither smart nor good.” (Spivak 84) Another approach looks at the other and sees a right to difference. This is a hospitable approach to immigration because recognizes the other as itself, without conditions, and allows it to function alongside the citizen. Assimilation views foreign culture with a large degree of hostility.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LCL2IqgjSc
http://www.minutemanhq.com/
Excuse the profanities and the obliviously extreme example. Notice the minutemen’s argument. They make reference to defending sovereignty and refuse to recognize their own roots in immigration. Taking the argument from above, they have assimilated and refuse to see anyone else who has not been assimilated. Their hostility to the other comes from a strong association to the country which overrides their need to see a basic human dignity and to an even more basic level the right of a person to travel freely on the planet we all share. The construction of a border fence justifies the argument of the minutemen. The border fence is another example of the need to divide the planet. An object that is the physical representation of dividing us from the other.
http://www.minutemanborderfence.com/
America’s border fence has a parent, the West Bank wall. Granted Israel has been facing terrorist attack for some time, attacks that did originate from the Palestinian territories (not that this justifies the construction of the border fence), but the wall not only serves as a protective measure it is being used to keep the other away. To use the websites own examples, all border fences on the Lebanon and Syrian border, as well as Palestinian walls maintain that the other remain in their place. The same can be said for settler demonstrations in Palestinian towns, with the claim that it is their territory coinciding with the expansion of Jewish settlements into the West Bank.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU1fIIwVMck
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Peace/fence.html
Tent City for Illegal Immigrants. An illustration of how authority is distributed and this project goes completely against the notion of hospitality.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJFKloIvk-g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1tfIKUZ0fY
Sheriff Joe Arpaio's Juridical Philosophy
With people still needing to define themselves in opposition to the other it becomes hard to be able to see Kant’s cosmopolitan dream. With people taking it upon themselves to try and defend their identity from the invasion of the other, authority becomes vested in the ones who identify with a larger cause. Be it citizenship, nationality, or race. With the minutemen and groups like all over the world who identify to a larger cause and take it upon themselves to defend that identity (giving themselves authority), there can never be a cosmopolitan constitution. Where is human agency or dignity when a wall prevents people from communicating entirely?
And for a light hearted end:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7YrkpKNB7M
--Kevin Cassem
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