public lecture & discussion : "Making contact, losing contact: on xenophobia and (un)hospitable flesh"

prof. Jacob Rogozinski (Université de Strasbourg)
date: Monday March 2nd; 16h00-17h30
room: Oude Manhuispoort A.0.08

"Today, xenophobia —the rejection and hatred of foreigners— that is, an extreme form of inhospitality, is on the rise in all Western countries. We need to understand this phenomenon in order to resist it. To do so, we will first refer to anthropology to analyze the rituals of hospitality that consist of making contact with strangers in order to defuse their “strangeness.” Then, we will turn to psychoanalysis to understand how the original contact with the body of the other and with my own body constitutes the “skin-ego” and helps explain its pathologies. Finally, we will draw upon phenomenology, its analysis of the “carnal transference” from my body to others and the breaking of this transference. This will help us understand how hospitality and inhospitality originate in our primordial experience of our flesh. It is within each of us that the struggle for hospitality begins."

Jacob Rogozinski is Full Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Strasbourg, where he succeeded Jean-Luc Nancy in 2002. His research is focusing on contemporary French philosophy, on political philosophy and on phenomenological thinking of the Ego and the body.

Among other books, he published Le moi et la chair, Cerf, 2006 (English translation: The Ego and the Flesh, Stanford UP, 2010), Cryptes de Derrida, Lignes, 2014, Ils m'ont haï sans raison – de la chasse aux sorcières à la Terreur, Cerf, 2015 (English translation: The Logic of Hatred, Fordham UP, 2024), Moïse l'insurgé, Cerf, 2022 and Inhospitalité, Cerf, 2024.

All welcome!

Hosted by the Critical Cultural Theory Group, Philosophy Department. For info: contact Aukje van Rooden, A.vanRooden@uva.nl