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Accepted Paper:

Hospitality beyond borders  
Senka Bozic-Vrbancic (University of Zadar)

Paper short abstract:

We address the meaning of the term 'non-European' arguing that it pulsates with an unconscious enjoyment. Are multiculturalisms, cosmopolitanisms and the celebrations of differences just different versions of Eurocentrism designed, more cunningly and shrewdly, to tame the non-European?

Paper long abstract:

In this paper we address the meaning of the term 'non-European' as well as the meaning of European borders and the (im)possibility of hospitality beyond borders. According to Said the non-European is virtually a European invention, a system of representations framed by Western political power. Since the eighteenth century, systematic knowledge about the non-European has expanded (with the non-European identified as 'barbarous', 'uncivilised', 'primitive', 'Oriental', 'inferior'). The relationship between European and the non-European has been shown as one between a strong and a weak partner. In our contemporary moment of European unification the meaning of the term 'non-European' fluctuates more than ever before, and consequently it is now more difficult to define (non Europeans are presented as 'culturally different immigrants and refugees', 'non-democratic societies', 'terrorists' and so on). This labelling shows how the term non-European is a floating signifier, it does not have a constant, fixed meaning, but is in a constant state of change. In this paper we argue that even though the term non-European is defined by its very negativity, it pulsates with the positive; it pulsates with an unconscious enjoyment that slides imperceptibly into the discourse by which it is constituted (Zizek). Since the dichotomy of European/non-European implies a border which is constituted through specific European metaphysical violence (Derrida), a border that makes and unmakes identities, the question 'what is the non-European?' touches the Real of contemporary European society. In other words, beyond that question there are complex articulations, different imaginaries of European identity(ies), geographical and mental borders, different senses of closure that mark a broad spectrum of dilemmas of inclusion and exclusion: who is inside? and who is outside? who is welcomed and who is not? Hospitality, for Derrida, is unconditional openness to the in-coming of the Other, the possibility of acts of love and justice, a non-oppositional economy of welcoming one that is much more open to the experience of the Other as Other, to the stranger. That brings us to the crucial question of this essay: is it possible to have hospitality beyond borders? (or even without borders)? Or, in more political terms, are multiculturalisms, cosmopolitanisms, and the celebrations of differences just different versions of Eurocentrism designed, more cunningly and shrewdly, to tame the non-European?

Panel IW05
European unification: anthropological perspectives
  Session 1