existing forms of thought and practice (Deleuze and Guattari 1994 , 32 – 3 ).
In this manner, like Derridean deconstruction, their ethics of deterritoria-
lization is oriented towards the permanent possibility of something other,
towards a perpetually open future or ‘‘to-come’’. The particular concepts
they propose such as becoming, capture, and deterritorialization are not
meant as substitutes for existing concepts of justice, rights, democracy, or
freedom, but they only serve the pragmatic goal of philosophy to the extent
that they assist in bringing about another justice, new rights, or novel
forms of democracy and freedom.
5 The Unconditioned
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Deconstruction, especially in its so-called aYrmative phase, does not invent
new concepts or provide new means of description. Rather, its aporetic
analysis is applied exclusively to existing concepts such as democracy,
friendship, the gift, hospitality, and forgiveness in a manner which repro-
duces multiple versions of a distinction between a contingent or condi-
tioned form of the concept and an absolute or unconditioned form. In each
case, this analysis reinvents a distinction between two poles or ways of
understanding the concept in question in order to argue that the ever-
present possibility of transformation in our existing historically condi-
tioned and contingent ways of understanding the phenomenon in question
is guaranteed by the existence of an absolute or unconditioned form of the
concept.
Consider Derrida’s discussion of the concept of hospitality. On the one
hand, hospitality as it is practiced in particular contexts is always condi-
tional. It is always oVered to certain determinate others, endowed with a
particular social status and subject to certain reciprocal duties in relation to
the rights of the host. On the other hand, the conditional practice of
hospitality derives its force and its meaning from a concept of absolute
or unconditional hospitality which would welcome the other in the absence
of any conditions such as knowledge of name, status, or provenance, and
without any restrictions with regard to their movements or behavior while
in the domain of the host:
post-structuralism and liberal pragmatism 137