470 Jacques Derrida 1984–2004
much too timid on this question.25* When some people expressed
surprise that he was intervening on such questions, even if it was
in a less thunderous way than Bourdieu, Derrida replied that he
did not feel there was any divorce between his writings and his
commitments, ‘only diff erences of rhythm, mode of discourse,
context, and so on’.^26 In a long interview he gave to the Cahiers de
médiologie, he explained, very convincingly, that ‘law’ and ‘papers’
were completely inseparable: ‘The “paperless person” is an outlaw,
a nonsubject legally, a noncitizen or the citizen of a foreign country
refused the right conferred, on paper, by a temporary or permanent
visa, a rubber stamp.’^27
There were increasing bridges between his philosophical work
and his political commitments. Hospitality, the topic of his seminar
from 1995–7, became a recurrent theme, one of those to which his
name would be most frequently attached. This was because the
principle of hospitality concentrated within itself ‘the most con-
crete urgencies, those most proper to articulate the ethical on the
political’. Derrida stated this in a lecture whose title was a whole
programme in itself: Cosmopolites de tous les pays, encore un eff ort!†
Hospitality is culture itself and not simply one ethic among
others. Insofar as it has to do with the ethos, that is, the res-
idence, one’s home, the familiar place of dwelling, inasmuch
as it is a manner of being there, the manner in which we relate
to ourselves and to others, to others as our own or foreigners,
ethics is hospitality; ethics is so thoroughly coextensive with the
experience of hospitality.^28Apart from politics, religion was the major fi eld which preoccu-
pied Derrida at this time. The Italian publisher Laterza planned an
Annuaire philosophique européen that, year after year, would bring
together European philosophers to discuss a particular theme. At
the initial meeting, Derrida suggested they begin with a word, the
word that was in his view ‘the clearest and most obscure: religion’.^29
At the end of February 1994, in a hotel on the isle of Capri,
several philosophers sat round a table to exchange ideas in complete
freedom. Together with Derrida, there were Gadamer, Vattimo,
Ferraris, and others. ‘We came rather unprepared,’ Ferraris recalls,
- Derrida said of François Mitterrand, in a late interview with Franz-Olivier
Giesbert: ‘I met him several times. Even if he had rather limited views on liter-
ature or philosophy, he was a man of the book. I would have liked to admire him.’
Derrida long continued, despite these reservations, to vote socialist and sometimes
to call on others to do the same, as in the presidential election of 1995.
† Literally: ‘Cosmopolitans of all lands – just one more eff ort!’ – Tr.