HOSPITALITY, RESPONSIBILITY, AND COMMUNITY: A POLITICAL PHENOMENOLOGICAL READING OF ANTIGONE

Nicolai Knudsen

doi:10.24310/Raphisa.2019.v3i2.4994

Authors

Nicolai Knudsen Aarhus University Denmark http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0077-3057

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.24310/Raphisa.2019.v3i2.4994

Keywords:

Hospitality, community, responsibility, Derrida, Heidegger, Arendt

Abstract

In Derrida’s reflection on hospitality, the figures of Oedipus and Antigone play a decisive role. Derrida describes Oedipus as being anomos, an outlaw, since he transgresses the established nomos. According to Derrida, both Oedipus and Antigone are involved an unsolvable tension between conditional and unconditional hospitality. A closer look at Sophocles’ Antigone, however, fits poorly with this understanding of the relation between hospitality and the nomos. Arguing against Derrida, I propose a phenomenological reading of Antigone’s actions as an attempt to disclose her suffering with the community. In this way, she demands hospitality not for herself nor for her infinitely removed father but for the world disclosure that she embodies. Within this phenomenological framework, hospitality is not caught in an aporia between the general and the singular, the conditional and the unconditional; rather, it constitutes a site of dispute between conflicting configurations of the shared world.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Metrics

Metrics Loading ...

Author Biography

Nicolai Knudsen, Aarhus University

PhD-Fellow, Deparment of Philosophy and History of Ideas, Aarhus University

References

Arendt, H. (1958). The human condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Aristotle. (1984). Nicomachean Ethics. In J. Barnes (Ed.), The complete works of Aristotle : the revised Oxford translation. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Butler, J. (2000). Antigone's Claim: Kinship Between Life and Death: Columbia University Press.

Derrida, J. (2002). Force of Law: The 'Mystical Foundation of Authority'. In G. Anidjar (Ed.), Acts of Religion. New York and London: Routledge.

Derrida, J. (2003). Work of Mourning. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Derrida, J., & Dufourmantelle, A. (2000). Of hospitality: Anne Dufourmantelle invites Jacques Derrida to respond. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press.

Heidegger, M. (1983). Einführung in die Metaphysik (P. Jaeger Ed.). Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann.

Heidegger, M. (1984). Hölderlins Hymne "Der Ister". Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann.

Kant, I. (1974). Kritik der praktischen Vernunft; Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (W. Weischedel Ed.). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

Raffoul, F. (2014). Heidegger and Derrida on Responsibility. In Z. Direk & L. Lawlor (Eds.), A companion to Derrida (pp. 412-429). Oxford: John Wiley and Sons.

Sophocles. (1998a). Antigone (H. Lloyd-Jones, Trans.). In H. Lloyd-Jones (Ed.), Antigone, The Women of Trachis, Philoctetes, Oedipus at Colonus. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

Sophocles. (1998b). Oedipus at Colonus (H. Lloyd-Jones, Trans.). In H. Lloyd-Jones (Ed.), Antigone, The Women of Trachis, Philoctetes, Oedipus at Colonus. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.