Abstract

In this essay, the question of hospitality, universal human rights, state and legal institutions in connection with contemporary European immigration policies and European sovereignty is discussed. The main focus lies in challenging Seyla Benhabib’s notion of a normative cosmopolitanism (in the sense of a universal, neo-Kantian conditional hospitality) with an approach which relies on the Derridean unconditional hospitality and promotes neighborliness and proximity in the sense of helping those near (Franz Rosenzweig). It is argued that this universalism does not take into account the urgencies of contingency and contiguity out of which solidaristic progressive politics often arise, and the proximate must be considered equally. Hannah Arendt’s call for the right to have rights is central in this essay; this unconditional double gesture calls for a politics which takes into account the needs of minorities, the stateless etc. A culturally or politically inflected enactment of universal or cosmopolitan norms (democratic iterations) such as Benhabib proposes, does not suffice when considering the rigidity of borders within the EU, i.e. a new racialized political order. In conclusion, the author argues in favor of a two-pronged strategy that both affirms the values of human rights while calling for forms of action that may seem to violate that universality at the same time; when we act on the basis of geographical or political proximity in solidarity with those who are near - an agonistic cosmopolitics which must always remain open and committed to the perpetual generating of new sites of action.

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