Analytical cosmopolitanism

Analytical cosmopolitanism does not see universal connectivity as the end goal to which we progress. In the philosophical tradition, Jacques Derrida (2001), also building on Kant as well as Levinas, has been influential. Derrida moves beyond legislative and regulating law and points towards ‘democracy to come’ as a model for the (always) future. Democracy to come is a central concept in Derrida’s thinking as it is the ideal of justice, forgiveness, hospitality and so on. Cosmopolitanism is to Derrida ‘conditional hospitality’ (Borradori 2003), whereas the ideal hospitality is to come. That is, Derrida theorises a space of continuous negotiation, ‘difference’, between the conditional (law, hospitality, forgiveness) and the unconditional and unattainable (law, hospitality, forgiveness). Derrida thus rejects the term cosmopolitanism on the grounds that conditional laws of tolerance, which Derrida posits in contrast to hospitality, sustain it. Tolerance is a form of Christian charity and is fraught with conditions, he argues (Derrida 2001).⁶³ Expressed differently, you only tolerate something you find contestable and consequently you pose conditions for your act of tolerance. Derrida’s use of the concept of hospitality is not a counter-Kantian or counter-Enlightenment argument, Borradori (2003) argues. On the contrary, he directs attention to the historical and cultural limits of apparently neutral concepts of the Enlightenment tradition in order to expand and update the concepts.

Going beyond something is not the same as leaving it behind to Derrida, but rather a

63 I will return to the discussion on tolerance when analysing case study 3.

deconstruction in contrast to a destruction. Hospitality is the gift of future – of time (Grosz 2005) and it is unconditional.⁶⁴ In particular, Derrida uses the term

‘unconditional hospitality’. Thus, Derrida theorises the meeting with the (global) other in different terms than the governmental approach. Rather than reworking the relation between the self and the other, he questions the conditions for this relation.

This is his poststructural move.

In On Cosmopolitanism (Derrida 2001), Derrida writes about ‘the cities of refuge’ as a figuration for a connectivity through which unconditional hospitality can be practised (Derrida 2001: 23). Derrida imagines the cities as places of refuge as well as of reflection. As I read Derrida here, he is not necessarily speaking of actual cities of people, buildings and streets, but of spaces of living/being with others. I read Derrida as speaking of non-physical communities. It is an ‘experience of cities of refuge’ he is referring to – and idea, an ideal, that is hospitality (Derrida 2001: 23). Regulatory justice or hospitality will always come about through a division, a fleshing out of what falls within and what falls outside of the law, and thus law will never reach the potential of hospitality but will have to work through the categorisation of tolerance.

This is, according to Borradori (2003), Derrida’s intervention on Kant’s cosmopolitanism: Derrida asserts that a cosmopolitan politics is a constant negotiation between the law of unconditional hospitality and the conditional laws of rights to hospitality. The law of unconditional hospitality is seemingly immovable and an unchanging ideal, which the conditional laws of rights to hospitality can never achieve though it must always strive towards achieving it, Derrida argues. This may sound close to what Simon Critchley (2007) calls the infinite demand of the other – but I will return to this shortly.

What Derrida is proposing is a new ethics or new cosmopolitics of the cities of refuge (Derrida 2001: 5), which I have already suggested to be a reflective space – differance – of relating to the other. This new ethics is hospitality, Derrida writes (2001: 17). The cities of refuge relate to each other through forms of solidarity yet to be invented (Derrida 2001: 4). Rather than cosmopolitanism, Derrida thus believes in another

64 The notion of the gift opens up a whole new set of Derridean ideas where the gift is only that which is not received as such. A discussion of this and related concepts goes beyond (but does not leave behind) the scope of this chapter.

connectivity, which blurs the boundaries of structural global institutionalised solidarity of reciprocity. It is the ethics of cities of refuge, spaces of reflection and a new order of law and democracy to come (Derrida 2001: 23). This new ethics or cosmopolitics speaks to the subject or smaller communities rather than multi-national corporations. Thinking of the Derridean cosmopolitics or cosmoethics alongside the USVI journalists’ practices, it urges them to begin their investigations from the other and to recognise the asymmetrical relationship as a power structure of the relation to the other. I see this as running close to USVI journalist Morris’ quote in the empirical study presented in chapter 2, in which she acknowledges the power of journalism and the need for accountability. Derrida’s thoughts, then, lay the groundwork – or the first breaking-apart – of another global journalistic ethics. In this view journalistic practice functions as obligations without rights as a form of hospitality (Silverstone 2007).

‘Effective speech entails a view of action as establishing connectivities between people and forging relationships of responsibility and commitment with the “other”

without asking for reciprocity or control over the outcome of action’ (Chouliaraki 2006: 201). Particular mediating acts may forge more or less empathy from the viewer and so direct the viewer into a controlled empathetic spectatorship of suffering (Chouliaraki 2006). This approach, however, assumes that communities of connections are somehow able to stay morally detached and impartial, and is questioned by the character of the embodied subject which I am theorising.

British philosopher Simon Critchley’s theories of the ethical and infinite demand of the other attach a creative production to the ethical relation. Though Critchley (2007) pays little notice to the concept of cosmopolitanism in Infinitely Demanding – Ethics of Commitment, Politics of Resistance (2007) his aim is to think a new ethics in which the relation to the other is paramount and in which that relation is built on hetero-affectivity understood as an ever-asymmetrical relation to the other. The demand (which is approved by the subject and creates the ethical subject) is unfulfillable and divides subjectivity. Therefore, Critchley argues, we deal with it through sublimation.

This sublimation should be enacted through humour and self-irony, which is an alternative version of the Freudian super-ego. In order to avoid self-loathing and masochism under the weight of unfulfillable demands, humour should be chosen as a mode of sublimation. However, Critchley believes in ‘true democracy’ which – inspired by Marx – is ‘a movement of democratization that is – dialectically expressed

– the truth of the state, a truth that no state incarnates’ (Critchley 2007: 115). The idea of ‘true democracy’ is what I find to run along the lines of Derrida’s ‘democracy-to-come’ in that they both not only deal with an ideal situation but also think democracy as a dialectical process of (Derridean) differance or (Critchley’s) distance to the state within the state (Critchley 2007: 113). With these concepts of a movement of democratisation and humour expressing resistance, Critchley opts for non-violent activism such as creative and humorous happenings and demonstrations in connection to political meetings etc., dislocation and distance to/within the state in relation to political struggles. Due to the mobility – both physical and topically – of the journalistic practice, this makes the journalist-subject an ideal figuration and testing-ground for cosmopolitan, subliminal activism shot through with the previously theorised creative production (see chapter 2). Journalist-subjects hold the potential of being distant from the state within the state and to productively create attention around the other political events. Journalism, thus, coupled with Critchley’s theories makes for an attempted decentring journalism.