narrative/voice-hospitality/hostility

"The foreigner is stranger to the language of law that conditions the liability for hospitality, rights of asylum, their limits, criteria, and maintenance. He needs to ask for hospitality in a language, which is not his, by definition, but which is forced upon him by the host, sovereign, lord, authority, citizen, state, and father(or patriarch?). The host forces the foreigner to translate into his language and this IS the first violence. The question of hospitality emerges here...": my english translation of the korean translation of the french "original" by Jacques Derrida, On Hospitality...

("what is original and what is copy" (garri's famous Question!); what is original and what is translation? whatever! we might be reading different derrida, for example, but in doing so, we are creating another space of meaning. anyway,)



i thought i want to write something on "migrant activism," triggered by this and das's discussion on narrative and voice; first, there is difference between narrative and voice (das); narratives easily circulate (fixed storytelling w/ standardized forms and formats) but voices are rarely heard; in korea, (certain, fixed) narratives (of and on migrants) travel around freely, while voices are structurally unwelcome, edited, hushed, and even dangerous: this shows the paradox and "pervertibility" of the law of "hospitality" (Derrida): which again is not too surprising. under the activist euphemism of "in different voices" or "in their (own) voices," these uniform narratives repeat themselves and police others; in the midst of this, there emerges a group of "migrant activists" who master this particular language. and this even becomes the criteria to judge who is "conscious" and is not yet so (for local activists, ngo workers, artists, etc)...and this is where narratives disguise themselves as voices and hospitality both hides and reveals its inherent hostility and violence.