Hospitality: The Guest Replies

Hannah Arendt argued that refugees lose the fundamental right to political interaction, contending they cannot "have an opinion" as no one is interested in what they have to say. In recent years, refugees incarcerated in the Australian detention system have spoken out through smuggled films, articles, and books such as Behrouz Boochani's No Friend but the Mountains and Jaivet Ealom's Escape from Manus. This essay analyzes these works' reply to the host in their systemic critique of the experience of being a "guest" of such offshore "host" regimes that distort hospitality, are inhospitable, and create an inhospitable environment, in some ways beyond Derrida's concept of conditional hospitality.