Exteriority Is Not a Negation, But a Marvel: Hospitality, Terrorism, Levinas, Beowulf

Abstract

Abstract ; This essay considers Emmanuel Levinas's philosophy of hospitality in relation to the "isolated and heroic being that the state produces by its virile virtues," through an analysis of female Chechen suicide terrorists in contemporary Russia and the figure of Grendel in the Old English poem "Beowulf," in order to raise some questions about the relation between violence, justice, and sovereignty, both in the Middle Ages and in our own time.