Hospitality (and the) Inhuman

Abstract

During the second year of his Hospitality seminar, Jacques Derrida dedicates a prominent place to the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. Also due to the unusual modalities of this seminar – and, as the editors of the published volume underline, having improvised a considerable part of the sessions, whereas he would usually write down a text that he read throughout – Derrida shows peculiarly adherent to Levinas’s thought. Deploying an extensive reading of the latter’s texts, the seminar shows a proximity that the published essays do not allow perceiving. This article wishes to interrogate this proximity, focusing on the motive of the inhuman (hospitality for the inhuman, and/or the inhumanity of hospitality), both in a critical and in a constructive fashion, and to address some current issues as pertains hospitality (and the) inhuman in the current Italian normative context.