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chapter three
invited, … the hostage of the one he receives, the one who keeps him at
home,” and to dislodge the power relation between the host and his Other,
he must
… enter from the inside: the master of the house is at home, but nonetheless
he comes to enter his home through the guest-who comes from outside. The
master thus enters from the inside as if he came from the outside. He enters
his home thanks to the visitor, by the grace of the visitor (Derrida and
Dufourmantelle 2000, 125).
The grace of the visitor carries with it a liberationist potential for the
master of the house: he who “waits for anyone, anyone who arrives,” is able
to rid himself of the hostage situation within which he is placed by diminishing his authority as a host (Derrida 2000, 10). I will return to this need
for a liberator below in relation to the case of Palestinian citizens of
Israel, but it is important to understand that the formula that I have been
developing concludes that, for genuine hospitality without the embedded
violence of a sovereign relation, it is the invited guest who must become
“the one who invites the one who invites” and develop into “the host’s
host” (Derrida and Dufourmantelle 2000, 125). Put differently, and as
pointed to in Chapter Six, part of a genuinely hospitable arrangement
between Arabs and Jews in the Israeli regime is the dissolution of its
mechanisms and practices of ensconced Jewish ascendancy and control.
Despite the juridical formulation of hospitality, its genuine practice permits the corruption of the notion of mastery so that no entity such as a
sovereign state or master of a household can exercise authority or impose
laws over another subject. The conditional and juridico-political dynamics embedded in the host-guest relationship that seeks to ensure the maintenance of a governing state or master is not immune to transgression.
Thus, an unconditional injunction forcing the host to open his doors, his
home, his culture, his language, his nation, his state, and his self ensures
that there is no obligation or exchange involved. Derrida notes:
Let us say yes to who or what turns up, before any determination, before any
anticipation, before any identification, whether or not it has to do with a
foreigner, an immigrant, an invited guest, or an unexpected visitor, whether
or not the new arrival is the citizen of another country, a human, animal, or
divine creature, a living or dead thing, male or female (Derrida 2000, 77).
Welcomed without any qualifications or invitations that would suggest a
kind of exchange (and therefore ownership over what is being exchanged)
between the two, the arrival of the guest demands absolute surprise and
lack of preparation. Again, genuine hospitality involves risk. The unexpected
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