Michel Agier - The Stranger as My Guest

Finally, I would like to thank Bruno Auerbach at Éditions du Seuil for his attentive and perceptive reading of the French manuscript.

Since the stranger who is my guest, the one arriving now, is by definition an outsider, someone who has literally come from outside, there is always the risk that, in that first glimpse, no matter how distant or indistinct that person’s silhouette appears, he or she will be seen as an intruder by the people who witness that arrival, even though this would not be the stranger’s own perception. Hospitality represents a response to this ambiguity, to the doubts and uncertainties that stem from it. It is the moment where a single gesture can transform the stranger into a guest, even if he or she still continues to be a stranger to some extent, and therefore continues to embody certain elements of the intruder. It is through the various manifestations and experiences of this practice of hospitality (still to be defined in the details of its implementation, its impact and its limitations) that each individual gradually forms their own conception of the stranger, of the different rules and regimes and of the extent of their strangeness, and therefore of the relationship that can be forged with him or her, both during and beyond the initial gesture of hospitality. Whatever its limitations in time and space, this ‘space–time’ of hospitality is a vital element in determining the nature of the ensuing relationship.

The observations made by the philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy on the intruder as a foreign body that is ‘grafted’ onto and into my own body provide the most concrete and comprehensive starting point from which to approach the problem, along with some ideas for its eventual solution:

Something of the stranger has to intrude, or else he loses his strangeness. If he already has the right to enter and stay, if he is awaited and received, no part of him being unexpected or unwelcome, then he is not an intruder any more, but then neither is he any longer a stranger. To exclude all intrusiveness from the stranger’s coming is therefore neither logically acceptable nor ethically admissible.

If, once he is there, he remains a stranger, then for as long as this remains so […] his coming does not stop: he continues to come and his coming does not stop intruding in some way […] a disturbance, a trouble in the midst of intimacy.

We have to think this through, and therefore to put it into practice: the strangeness of the stranger would otherwise be reabsorbed – would be an issue no longer – before he even crossed the threshold. To welcome a stranger, moreover, is necessarily to experience his intrusion. For the most part, we would rather not admit this […] This moral correctness presupposes that, upon receiving the stranger, we efface his strangeness at the threshold: it aims thereby not to have received him at all. But the stranger insists and intrudes. This fact is hard to receive and perhaps to conceive. 1

The sense of intrusion that Nancy is trying to capture here emerges in the context of a highly complex heart transplant operation, followed by a raft of complications over a period of many years. The philosopher has drawn on this experience to produce a powerful work on identity and the stranger, on what is ours and what is different, on the inside and the outside that will be useful here (although any substantial analogies should be avoided). Let us see how this works.

The two concepts of guest and of stranger must not be confused if we wish to be able to describe, according to the anthropological tradition, what is meant by making the stranger a guest (‘[i]f he already has the right to enter and stay, if he is awaited and received, no part of him being unexpected or unwelcome’, then ‘he is not an intruder any more’). This also means that, for us, hospitality represents a test (‘[t]o welcome a stranger, moreover, is necessarily to experience his intrusion’). It is not a matter of behaving as though the stranger were not a stranger, so that ‘we efface his strangeness at the threshold’. It is, on the contrary, a matter of acknowledging, on the basis of the sense of intrusion experienced, the very political dimension of hospitality, which involved making the decision to offer the stranger a welcome. It is a solution to a potential conflict (hostility towards intrusion), but a temporary solution, which has a beginning and an end. For, ‘[i]f, once he is there, he remains a stranger, then for as long as this remains so […] his coming does not stop’, nor will it stop being ‘a disturbance, a trouble in the midst of intimacy’. We need therefore to step outside the space and time accorded to hospitality. Later, after many years – as Nancy tells us, speaking of the foreign body that was transplanted into his own and enabled him to live longer – the intruder ceases to be an intruder, but I myself have changed, I am both the same and another.

It is this combination of paradoxes, of tensions and ambiguities that is revealed by the gestures and the efforts made all over Europe, in the name of hospitality, in the face of what has been called ‘the migrant crisis’, which I identify as being, more fundamentally, a crisis of the nation states in response to the challenges posed by increased mobility.

From the year 2000 onwards, and especially since 2015, the majority of European countries have seen a divergence between national governments and some of their citizens on the subject of the welcome extended to migrants and refugees. On the one hand, governments have sought to demonstrate a certain protectiveness towards their citizens by portraying migrants as a threat to the security and identity of their countries, reviving a symbolic theme highlighted a few years ago by the American philosopher Wendy Brown 2– namely that of the strong (and masculine) state protecting the fragile (feminine) nation… Walls, expulsions, mass checks, a dissuasive police presence, all intended to reassure nervous inhabitants, and they were ready to give up some of their own freedom when confronted with the spectre of the dangerous stranger, who would thus be kept at a distance. In France in particular, the lack of enthusiasm or expertise demonstrated by government authorities in providing a dignified and peaceful welcome to migrants and refugees and the confusion provoked by the arrival of migrants to Paris, Ventimiglia or Calais – admittedly on a large, though by no means overwhelming or catastrophic scale – seem to have been both a response to, and a way of nurturing, a widely felt anxiety of the sort most clearly expressed by parties of the extreme right. In accordance with the supposed expectation of the population at large, there was a clear need to demonstrate all possible reticence and distrust towards the intruder, which meant not providing shelters, reassurance or food, all of which could have been made available, from a material and economic standpoint, without any special difficulty. And yet this same attitude provoked another section of the population to act in precisely the opposite manner. Some people felt deeply concerned by the state of the world and by the hostility displayed by their governments towards certain strangers (comments made by certain elites and images of neglect or of police violence). These people wanted to take action rather than remain indifferent, to show solidarity to the peoples or individuals in danger, the ones they were seeing arriving in their immediate neighbourhood, coming across their mountains, onto their coasts, into their streets. As a result, it has become possible – and by no means uncommon – to join forces and criticise states from a standpoint of hospitality, at a societal, community-based or micro-local level. This politicization of hospitality is, as we shall see, an alternative way of defining the ‘politics’ of hospitality and of understanding the contemporary meaning of a practice at once ancient and constantly transforming.