Only in a world in which the spaces of states have … perforated and
topologically deformed and in which the citizen has been able to recognize the
refugee that he or she is – only in such a world is the political survival of
humankind today thinkable.
(Giorgio Agamben, Means Without End: Notes on Politics, 2000)
The foreigner is first of all foreign to the legal language in which the duty of
hospitality is formulated, the right to asylum, its limits, norms, policing, etc.
He has to ask for hospitality in a language which by definition is not his own,
the one imposed on him by the master of the house, the host, the king, the lord,
the authorities, the nation, the State, the father, etc. This personage imposes on
him translation into their … language and that’s the first act of violence.
(Jacques Derrida, “Foreigner Question,” in Of Hospitality, 2000)
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