La società degli altri. Ripensare l'ospitalità

Using the hospitality relation, it is not just a question of regarding the other (the stranger, the foreigner, the outsider, the illegal immigrant) as an essential element of our identity, but, at a deeper level, it is a question of rethinking the problem of the social inclusion of outsiders in terms of otherness, or rather, on the social, ethical and juridical plane of alienness (and alienation). We should, therefore, restart from here, from all the philosophy (I am referring particularly to Bataille, Blanchot, Lévinas and Derrida) which, although its methods have been repeatedly criticised, has managed to exploit the deep-rooted sense of otherness as an unprecedented opportunity to reflect upon the issues and conditions that are a feature not only of the processes of formation of social identities, but also of the problems of including outsiders. This is what, in part, the ancient laws of hospitality teach us: in the hospitality relation, whoever is offered hospitality remains invariably other with respect to the society that is nonetheless accepting him; he is always an outsider with respect to the procedures of social inclusion and assimilation, who remains on the margins of the processes of cultural absorption. The laws also teach us to understand the problem of citizenship within the complex dynamics of acceptance and otherness which have always been a feature of the “hospitality” relation with outsiders, with persons who recognise one another (and who identify themselves) in their reciprocal alienness, both by means of what makes them the object of hospitality and at the same time hostile to one another. Placing this paradoxical area of ethics within the realm of law does not mean invoking right, and rights, as the only general medium of social inclusion of outsiders (and solidarity with them) that is available in our modern multiethnic societies (Habermas 1998); it means, as well as all of these, restoring to right its essential ethical character that exposes it to the dynamics (however paradoxical they seem) of acceptance and hospitality, returning it to the very level of duty and obligation on which it always had its origins. Only in this way, I believe, can we perhaps give back to our social coexistence that vitality that is nourished, for good or evil, in our relations with others; others who remain outsiders even though being defined (and establishing themselves) in the ‘symbolic’ terms of differences, in the stable condition (within boundaries) that social action and right imposes upon them. This is because the outsider, if such he is, is only and invariably found in the indescribable “gap” (and the leftover) between the phenomenon of otherness and the idea of difference.

Vedere attraverso l’altro vuol dire vedere in se stessi e vedersi in quanto stranieri. E ciò perché l’estraneità, paradossalmente, è la condizione della nostra appartenenza, della nostra cultura, il focolare della nostra dimora. Nell’epoca della globalizzazione dei capitali e delle società multietniche, siamo diventati noi stessi altri tra altri e dunque immancabilmente stranieri. Per questo è importante parlare oggi di un diritto ospitale, perché l’ospitalità esiste proprio finché rimaniamo estranei gli uni agli altri. In linea con la tradizione umanistica e con gli strumenti offerti dalla riflessione sociologica, questo breve lavoro cerca di ripercorrere problematicamente il tema dell’ospitalità, in tutte le sue ambivalenze e contraddizioni e propone uno sguardo teso alla comprensione dell’altro (lo straniero, il migrante, l’estraneo), nel suo stesso apparire all’orizzonte fenomenologico dell’intersoggettività.