“Hospitality is the deconstruction of the at-home; de-
construction is hospitality to the other, to the other than one-
self,” Derrida proclaims ( 364 ). This exalted vision of hospital-
ity Derrida derives in part from chapter 12 of Genesis, in which
Abraham becomes a wanderer, leaving his homeland of Ur.
The fact that Abraham is himself uprooted, Derrida argues, al-
lows him to become a host to the angels who visit him (in
chapter 18 ). The astonishing scene in which Abraham bargains
with God over the fate of Sodom, arguing that the Lord should
spare the city, is also an act of hospitality in Derrida’s sense: a
taking responsibility for the life or death of the other. The
other’s hope for survival may displace one’s own interests. In a
story like Abraham’s argument over Sodom, “one becomes,
prior to being the host, the hostage of the other,” given over to
the hope for the other’s survival ( 365 ). (This theme is familiar
from Lévinas.)^6
Such a radical vision of self-sacrifice means sacrificing, as
well, one’s judgment about the moral choices made by others.
If Sodom is about to be destroyed, this is no time to weigh the
faults of its inhabitants. The extreme pressure that Derrida ex-
erts here, by pointing to a situation in which utter destruction
is threatened, allows him to avoid moral description (as he did
in his treatment of de Man and Heidegger, who, like the
Sodomites, might not have survived bombardment from the
skies). But—one might answer Derrida—even in the midst of
catastrophe, people make character-revealing choices; and one
can demonstrate hospitality toward them without abandoning
a sense of who they are.
Once again, Derrida sees justice as so urgent that it is
inconceivable, surpassing our customary ways of judging ac-
tions. For him, justice requires potentially dreadful self-sacrifice.
The melodrama of such martyrdom, being “raped” or “stolen”
232 Politics, Marx, Judaism