Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T15:33:28.071Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Women's Bodies Giving Time for Hospitality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Rosalyn Diprose
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper explores the gendered and temporal dimensions of the political ontology of hospitality that Derrida has developed from Levinas's philosophy. The claim is that, while hospitality per se takes time, the more that hospitality becomes conditional under conservative political forces, the more that the time it takes is given by women without acknowledgment or support. The analysis revisits Hannah Arendt's claim that central to the human condition and democratic plurality is disclosure of “natality” (innovation or the birth of the new). This can be described as accounting for the “temporalisation of time”: the disruption of the past (cultural tradition) in the present that is a condition of agency and political hospitality. On the other hand, the unpredictability and instability of human affairs that this temporalization of time engenders can, in times of heightened insecurity and fear, give birth to political conservatism that would contain “natality” and dampen the hospitality that characterizes democratic pluralism. The paper examines the connection between this idea of the temporalization of time and feminist observations, overlooked by Arendt, that “lived time” is gendered, that is, that the condition of “natality” and political hospitality is an unacknowledged stability provided by women giving lived time to others, beginning with reproduction in the “home.” The inequities that result are exacerbated, and democracy is further compromised, if this re-gendering of domestic space is accompanied by the deregularization of labor time.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Hypatia , Volume 24 , Issue 2 , Spring 2009 , pp. 142 - 163
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 by Rosalyn Diprose

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo sacer: Sovereign power and bare life, Trans. Daniel Heller‐Roazen. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Arendt, Hannah. 1977. Between past and future: Eight exercises in political thought. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Arendt, Hannah. 1978. The Life of the mind, Vols. 1 and 2. San Diego: Harcourt.Google Scholar
Arendt, Hannah. 1994. The origins of totalitarianism. New edition with added prefaces. San Diego: Harcourt.Google Scholar
Arendt, Hannah. 1998 (1958). The human condition. Introduction by Margaret Canovan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Birmingham, Peg. 2006. Hannah Arendt and human rights: The predicament of common responsibility. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Chanter, Tina. 2001. Time, death, and the feminine: Levinas with Heidegger. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Del Villar, Katrine. 2000. McBain v. State of Victoria: Implications beyond IVF. Laws and Bills Digest Group, August 15. http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/rn/2000‐01/01RN04.htm#4 (accessed October 18, 2008).Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. 1999. Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas, Trans. Pascale‐Anne Brault and Michael Naas. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. 2000. Of hospitality: Anne Dufourmantelle invites Derrida to respond, Trans. Rachel Bowlby. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. 2005. Rogues: Two essays on reason, Trans. Pascale‐Anne Brault and Michael Naas. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Diprose, Rosalyn. 2006. The ethics and politics of the handshake: Levinas, Merleau‐Ponty, and Nancy. In Difficult justice: Commentaries on Levinas and politics, ed. Horowitz, Asher and Horowitz, Gad. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 221–45.Google Scholar
Diprose, Rosalyn. 2008. Arendt and Nietzsche on responsibility and futurity. Philosophy and Social Criticism 34 (6): 617–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1980. The history of sexuality, Vol. 1. Trans. Robert Hurle. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 2003. Society must be defended: Lectures at the Collège de France 1975–76, Trans. David Macey. ed Bertani, Mauro and Fontana, Alessandro. New York: Picador.Google Scholar
Guenther, Lisa. 2006. The gift of the other: Levinas and the politics of reproduction. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Levinas, Emmanuel. 1969. Totality and infinity: An essay on exteriority, Trans. Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press.Google Scholar
Levinas, Emmanuel. 1981. Otherwise than being: Or beyond essence, Trans. Alphonso Lingis. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.Google Scholar
Maddison, Sarah, and Partridge, Emma. 2007. How well does Australian democracy serve women? A report prepared for the Democratic Audit of Australia. Canberra: Australian National University. http://democratic.audit.anu.edu.au/ (accessed October 19, 2008).Google Scholar
Marr, David, and Wilkinson, Marian. 2003. Dark victory. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Nancy, Jean‐Luc. 2002. L'Intrus. Trans. Susan Hanson. The New Centennial Review 2 (3): 189–201.Google Scholar
The Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia. 2005. Schedule 7 – Sedition. Anti‐Terrorism Bill (No. 2).Google Scholar
Perpich, Diane. 2001. From the caress to the word: Transcendence and the feminine in the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. In Feminist interpretations of Emmanuel Levinas, ed. Chanter, Tina. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1–27.Google Scholar
Pocock, Barbara. 2006. The labour market ate my babies: Work, children and a sustainable future. Adelaide: Federation Press.Google Scholar
Race, Kane. 2005. Recreational states: Drugs and the sovereignty of consumption. Culture Machine e‐journal 7. http://culturemachine.tees.ac.uk/frm_f1.htm (accessed October 18, 2008).Google Scholar
Rudd, Kevin, The Right Honourable Prime Minister. 2008. Apology to Australia's indigenous peoples. House of Representatives, Canberra: Parliament House. 13 February. The full speech can be accessed at http://www.pm.gov.au/media/Speech/2008/speech_0073.cfm (accessed October 19, 2008).Google Scholar
Sorial, Sara. 2006. Hannah Arendt's concept of the political. Cadernos de Filosofia 19–20:373–91.Google Scholar
Still, Judith. 2003. Acceptable hospitality: From Rousseau's Levite to the strangers in our midst today. Journal of Romance Studies 3 (2): 1–14.Google Scholar
Williamson, S., and Baird, M. 2007. Family provisions and work choices: Testing times. Australian Journal of Labour Law 20 (1): 53–74.Google Scholar