In Search of a Schema: Derrida and the Rhythm of Hospitality

For Derrida, hospitality is constituted by an aporia: unconditional hospitality and conditional hospitality are simultaneously contradictory and mutually necessary, heterogeneous and indissociable. Though not paralysing action, this aporia qua aporia should nevertheless be impassable. Yet Derrida enigmatically proposes that the distinction between unconditional and conditional hospitality “requires us to determine what would be called, in Kantian language (in an approximate and analogical way, since in the strict sense they are in fact excluded in this case, and this exclusion needs to be thought about), intermediate schemas,” ultimately allowing us to “interven[e] in the condition of hospitality in the name of the unconditional.” The purpose of this article will be to explore what Derrida could have meant by his invocation of the Kantian schema: its relationship to Kant’s thought, its possible function with respect to hospitality, and what in particular might be able to occupy the schematic role. In so doing, a step is taken not to re-solve or transcend but to fulfil the aporia of hospitality and thereby move toward a truly Derridean politics.