“I Was in No Mood for People Who Tried to Lay Claims on Me”: Community, Hospitality, and Friendship in Teju Cole’s Open City

ES REVIEW. SPANISH JOURNAL OF ENGLISH STUDIES 45 (2024): 170–191 E-ISSN 2531-1654 “I Was in No Mood for People Who Tried to Lay Claims on Me”: Community, Hospitality, and Friendship in Teju Cole’s Open City “No estaba de humor para las personas que trataban de interpelarme”: Comunidad, hospitalidad y amistad en Ciudad abierta de Teju Cole FATMA AKÇAY Institution address: Universidad de Córdoba. Departamento de Filología Inglesa y Alemana. Facultad de Filosofía y Letras. Plaza del Cardenal Salazar, 3. 14071. Córdoba. Spain E-mail: z62aka[email protected] ORCID: 0000-0001-6601-4489 Received: 29/11/2022 Accepted: 28/09/2023 How to cite this article: Akçay, Fatma. “‘I Was in No Mood for People Who Tried to Lay Claims on Me’: Community, Hospitality, and Friendship in Teju Cole’s Open City.” ES Review: Spanish Journal of English Studies, vol. 45, 2024, pp. 170–191. DOI: https://doi.org/10.24197/ersjes.45.2024.170-191 Open access article under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CCBY 4.0). Abstract: This article examines community, friendship, and hospitality in Teju Cole’s novel Open City, drawing on Nancy’s The Inoperative Community, Blanchot’s The Unavowable Community, and Derrida’s The Politics of Friendship and Of Hospitality. I aim to show how the representation of migratory experiences in this novel revolves around the contrast between operative communities based on immanence, fusion, and essentialist concepts such as race and ethnicity, and inoperative and elective communities characterized by openness and exposure to alterity. I examine how friendship and hospitality prove to be the necessary force in the novel to transform New York and Brussels into truly “open cities” hospitable to people of different races. Keywords: Community; friendship; hospitality; openness; alterity. Summary: Introduction. Operative and Essentialist Communities. The Elective Community: Friendship and Hospitality. Conclusions. Resumen: Este artículo examina la comunidad, la amistad y la hospitalidad en la novela Open City de Teju Cole, basándose en The Inoperative Community de Nancy, The Unvowable Community de Blanchot, y The Politics of Friendship y Of Hospitality de Derrida. Pretendo mostrar cómo la representación de las experiencias migratorias en esta novela gira en torno al contraste entre comunidades operativas basadas en la inmanencia, la fusión y conceptos esencialistas como raza “I Was in No Mood for People Who Tried to Lay Claims on Me”. . . 171 ES REVIEW. SPANISH JOURNAL OF ENGLISH STUDIES 45 (2024): 170–191 E-ISSN 2531-1654 y etnia, y comunidades inoperativas y electivas caracterizadas por la apertura y exposición a la alteridad. Examino cómo la amistad y la hospitalidad demuestran ser la fuerza necesaria en la novela para transformar Nueva York y Bruselas en verdaderas “ciudades abiertas” que son hospitalarias para personas racialmente diversas. Palabras clave: Comunidad; amistad; hospitalidad; apertura; alteridad. Sumario: Introducción. Comunidades operativas y esencialistas. Comunidad electiva: Amistad y hospitalidad. Conclusiones. INTRODUCTION Teju Cole belongs to the third generation of Nigerian writers whose works address issues of migration, dislocation, and cross-border movements. In his introduction to The Granta Book of the African Short Story, Helon Habila refers to these writers as “post-nationalist” (viii), as they have freed themselves from the “almost obligatory obsession of the African writer with the nation and with national politics” (viii). Cole’s novel Open City has such a post-national and transnational dimension, as it depicts the life of a character of Nigerian origin, Julius, in New York. The novel has been critically examined from the perspective of cosmopolitan identity and community.1 In her article “History in Place: Territorialized Cosmopolitanism in Teju Cole’s Open City,” Emily Johansen discusses how the novel suggests the possibility of creating cosmopolitan communities in the form of inoperative communities that reject any form of hierarchical structure and categorisation. In this article, I contribute to this discussion of community in Cole’s novel by arguing that the communitarian theories of Jean-Luc Nancy and Maurice Blanchot can be drawn upon to examine the protagonist’s portrayal of the coexistence of diverse people and communities in contemporary New York and Brussels, and his relationship to these social groups and collectives. My focus, however, is not on the concept of cosmopolitanism, but on the concepts of friendship and hospitality—as theorised by Jacques Derrida in The Politics of Friendship (1997) and by Derrida and Anne Dufourmantelle in Of Hospitality (2000)—in order to argue that they are central to the protagonist’s experience of community. In Open City, characters of African descent ask for recognition to connect with Julius based on the injustices and inequalities they have experienced in history. Therefore, they expect to create a sense of 1 See Hallemeier and Oniwe. 172 Fatma Akçay ES REVIEW. SPANISH JOURNAL OF ENGLISH STUDIES 45 (2024): 170–191 E-ISSN 2531-1654 community based primarily on their place of origin, skin color, and discourses of victimhood. This is the type of community that Nancy identifies as operative in The Inoperative Community (1991), characterised by “immanent unity, intimacy, and autonomy” (9). Julius, however, ceaselessly refuses to become part of an organic community based on race, place of origin, or shared vulnerability. I argue, therefore, that he prefers instead inoperative communities and elective communities, that is, communities of choice based, in his case, primarily on intellectual affinities. In his experience of community, friendship as discussed by Blanchot in The Unavowable Community (1988) and Derrida, along with Derrida’s notions of hospitality, plays a key role. Hospitality, understood as openness to the racial and migrant other, is a common thread throughout the novel, in which New York and Brussels are portrayed as only partially ‘open cities’ because of the racist ideologies and practices still prevalent towards African and black people. 1. OPERATIVE AND ESSENTIALIST COMMUNITIES Julius, who has a German mother and a Nigerian father, and is originally from Nigeria, is an intellectual with a cosmopolitan spirit living in New York. He is completing a fellowship at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital and has a deep knowledge of humanistic heritage, ranging from art, music, history to politics. From the beginning, the novel draws our attention to Julius’s constant activity of walking, an individual act linked to his sense of isolation and marginalized position in New York. Andrew P. Roger refers to Michel de Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life (1984) to describe walking as a tactic used by “those without a place” in order “to create space for themselves in environments defined by other people’s strategies” (128). It may be argued, then, that Julius uses walking as a tactic to resist the exclusionary aspect of space as defined by the strategies of hegemonic power in New York. Unlike the figure of the flâneur, much revered by twentieth-century modernist writers, Julius, however, can be more readily associated with, as Pieter Vermeulen argues, “the nineteenthcentury figure of restless mobility: the fugueur” (42). Vermeulen describes the fugueur as “‘mad travelers’ who unaccountably walked away from their lives” (42), which fits Cole’s description of Julius travelling to New York to break away from his national and ethnic community in Nigeria and walking around the city to overcome his sense of loneliness. “I Was in No Mood for People Who Tried to Lay Claims on Me”. . . 173 ES REVIEW. SPANISH JOURNAL OF ENGLISH STUDIES 45 (2024): 170–191 E-ISSN 2531-1654 The novel begins with Julius introducing his routine of evening walking, which is modelled on the way he observes the migration of birds from one place to another from the window of his apartment: “Not long before this aimless wandering began, I had fallen into the habit of watching bird migrations from my apartment, and I wonder now if the two are connected” (Cole 3). Birds, especially migratory birds, are an important motif, described at one point in the novel as “homeless travelers” (Cole 181). The metaphor constructed between migratory birds and migrants like Julius is clear, for both are in a state of mobility and dislocation. Migratory birds seek to transform their new environment into a place of belonging; they seek to make it their “home.” Similarly, as Julius wanders aimlessly, he negotiates and reflects on his place in New York, along with that of collectives that have traditionally occupied and continue to occupy a marginalized position, such as African Americans and “recent immigrants: Africans, Latinos, Eastern Europeans, Asians” (Cole 63). My particular focus, therefore, is on the relationship between his walks and his experience of community. I will first show how Julius refuses to make connections with people who claim to be related to him because of their shared racial identity or African heritage, which implies a rejection of an operative community, as defined by Nancy. The operative community, according to Nancy, is built upon a common “substance or subject—be these homeland, native soil or blood, nation” (15). These moments could also be read in the light of Blanchot’s conception of “traditional community,” the community “imposed on us without our having the liberty of choice in the matter: it is de facto sociality, or the glorification of the earth, of blood, or even of race” (46). The rejection of such a communal affiliation is seen in the passage in which after leaving the American Folk Art Museum in New York, Julius gets into a cab. As he is still thinking about a portrait by John Brewster of a deaf young girl, Sarah Prince, he does not immediately realize that the cab driver is an African, like him. Julius, then, addresses the cab driver to give him his address: So, how are you doing, my brother? The driver stiffened and looked at me in the mirror. Not good, not good at all, you know, the way you came into my car without saying hello, that was bad. Hey, I’m African just like you, why you do this? He kept me in his sights in the mirror. I was confused. I said, I’m sorry about it, my mind was where, don’t be offended, ehn, my brother, how are you doing? He said nothing and faced the road. I wasn’t 174 Fatma Akçay ES REVIEW. SPANISH JOURNAL OF ENGLISH STUDIES 45 (2024): 170–191 E-ISSN 2531-1654 sorry at all. I was in no mood for people who tried to lay claims on me. (Cole 40, my emphasis) This passage is particularly revealing because it shows how people may demand recognition and brotherhood from people who are related to them by their common race, national origin, or ethnicity. Yet Julius rejects this kind of connection based on similarity. The commonalities and the recognition of them are precisely what Nancy questions in his understanding of community: “he or she does not resemble me as a portrait resembles an original. It was this type of resemblance that constituted the initial given of the classic and tortuous problematic (or impasse) of the ‘recognition of the other’” (33). As opposed to a recognition of the self in the other—just “as a portrait resembles an original” (33) —that we find in operative and traditional understandings of community—represented in this passage by the cab driver—Nancy suggests a kind of community which “does not occur through the mediation of specular recognition” (33). Therefore, it is a community in which the other is characterized by an excess that cannot be recognized or appropriated: “the sovereign exposure to an excess (to a transcendence) that does not present itself and does not let itself be appropriated (or simulated) that does not even give itself” (18, emphasis in the original). In the passage from Open City quoted above, the driver approaches Julius through a logic of “specular recognition” (33), which Julius rejects. The passage’s focus on the concept of community is also evident in its use of the term “brother,” which leads us to Derrida’s argument in The Politics of Friendship, where the French thinker undertakes a revision of the concept of friendship in the Western philosophical tradition. Derrida goes back to Cicero, whose conception of friendship exemplifies the idea of the friend as one of the same kind. According to this conception, the friend is not “the other,” but “the same”: the “ideal double, [the] other self, the same as self but improved” (4). Derrida, however, wonders: “why would the friend be like a brother? Let us dream of a friendship which goes beyond this proximity of the congeneric double” (viii, emphasis in the original). The use of the term “brother” in the passage from Cole’s novel exemplifies this idea of friendship based on what Derrida calls “the principle of fraternity” (viii). It is this fraternity that the cab driver expects of him because of their common African origin. Julius’s use of the term “brother,” however, is a mere convention, for he does not consider the cab driver to be his brother or “congeneric double” (viii) at all. “I Was in No Mood for People Who Tried to Lay Claims on Me”. . . 175 ES REVIEW. SPANISH JOURNAL OF ENGLISH STUDIES 45 (2024): 170–191 E-ISSN 2531-1654 The rejection of connections based on race, skin color, and place of origin features prominently in the novel, suggesting the failure of the operative community, as in the passage in which Julius involuntarily engages in a conversation with an African American postal clerk. Julius refuses to choose stamps with flags, wishing for “something more interesting” (Cole 186). Julius’s post-national mindset is evident in this choice, which shows his aversion to national symbols.2 The postal worker, Terrence McKinney, on the other hand, invokes a logic based on common African roots: “Say, brother, where are you from?’ Cause, see, I could tell you were from the Motherland” (Cole 186). Similar to the cab driver, Terry assumes a commonality that connects him and Julius because of their shared history and suffering and the fact that they still “remain the unconquered” (Cole 187). He tells Julius that he wants his children to preserve their original African values, calling Julius a “visionary” (Cole 187), and telling him that they need to be a guide for future generations. Julian, however, has the following thoughts: “I made a mental note to avoid that particular post office in the future” (Cole 188). This passage demonstrates that Julius, as Susanne Gehrmann argues, “may identify politically as Black, but obstinately refuses any racial group affiliation . . . and challenges victimhood discourses attached to Africa” (68). With his refusal to befriend the postal worker simply because they share the same African and racial origins, Julius once again rejects a conception of community and friendship based on the experience of brotherhood. It may be argued, then, that in Cole’s novel we find a critique of the figure of the friend similar to the one that Derrida makes in The Politics of Friendship: “the figure of the friend, so regularly coming back on stage with the features of the brother—who is critically at stake in this analysis—seems spontaneously to belong to a familial, fraternalist and thus androcentric configuration of politics” (viii). The failure of a politics of community based on fraternity—and thus on homogeneity and similarity—reaches its climax in the eighteenth chapter. When he first encounters two young men on the street, Julius assumes “a gesture of mutual respect based on our being young, black, male; based, in other words, on our being ‘brothers’” (Cole 212). However, the assumption of solidarity and respect based on shared racial origin and gender is radically broken when they attack and 2 As Serena Guarracino argues, Teju Cole, like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, are among “the writers encompassed in the burgeoning corpus of third generation Nigerian literature [who] do not operate on a national level” (3). 176 Fatma Akçay ES REVIEW. SPANISH JOURNAL OF ENGLISH STUDIES 45 (2024): 170–191 E-ISSN 2531-1654 beat him. Fraternity emerges in this passage as a fallacy, an idealistic notion of communal belonging that is not realized in actual social relations based on mutual respect and mutual aid. Julius’s experience of community also plays a central role in his stay in Brussels, where he travels in search of his maternal grandmother and where a significant part of the novel unfolds. On the plane on the way there, he befriends Dr. Maillotte, a Belgian surgeon. When she learns that Julius is a psychiatry fellow, she asks him if he has ever been to Harlem Hospital in New York (Cole 88) where—she adds—there are “a lot of Africans, Indians, Filipinos, and really, it is a good environment” (Cole 89). Dr Maillotte states that she was educated at the Catholic University of Louvain, whose main requirement is to be Catholic in order to teach there. Yet she claims the Catholic University of Louvain to be better than the Université Libre de Bruxelles, founded and run by Masons, where one cannot climb the academic ladder unless one is a Mason. Dr. Maillotte’s words illustrate the exclusionary nature of operative communities. The institutions Dr. Maillotte mentions refuse entry to those who might pose a threat to their homogeneity. The implicit assumption is that an African immigrant, like Julius, would not be welcome there. She also refers to Belgium’s unsuccessful resistance under the rule of Leopold III to the Nazi onslaught, which she witnessed when she was fifteen years old, referring to the Nazis as “parasites” (Cole 90). It is revealing that Dr Maillotte pays attention to the Nazis, who, according to Nancy, embody the logic of immanent and operative community in its most extreme form, since they wanted to eradicate those who differed from their homogeneously conceived community: “the logic of sacrifice aimed at all those in the ‘Aryan’ community who did not satisfy the criteria of pure immanence” (12). Those who represent alterity and difference are seen as a threat by the immanent community and risk exclusion and even annihilation. During Julius’s stay in Brussels, his tendency to approach people who follow his intellectual interests is again evident. This is at the heart of his relationship with Farouq, a Moroccan translation student who speaks English, Spanish, Arabic and French. Farouq has been living in Brussels for seven years and works at the Internet and telephone shop Julius visits regularly. In their relationship, we see how diasporic subjects can form communities with other migrants to alleviate their sense of disillusionment and to resist antagonistic conditions. As Delphine Fongang argues, this kind of connection in Cole’s novel “symbolizes the development of cluster immigrant communities within the larger diasporic community to cater for “I Was in No Mood for People Who Tried to Lay Claims on Me”. . . 177 ES REVIEW. SPANISH JOURNAL OF ENGLISH STUDIES 45 (2024): 170–191 E-ISSN 2531-1654 other dispossessed migrants (as part of a surviving strategy) in a hostile environment” (143). When Julius addresses Farouq for the first time, calling him his brother and shaking his hand, he immediately regrets it, thinking that this gesture may make him seem insincere. Julius confesses that “I wondered how this aggressive familiarity had struck him. I wondered, also, why I had said it. A false note, I decided” (Cole 102). This passage again brings to mind Nancy’s theorization of a community which does not ask for recognition: “It does not seek the self-appropriation of subjective immanence” (34). The novel suggests that Farouq has no desire at all to be recognized and appropriated as a brother from the point of view of a community characterized by an “immanent unity” (9), a unity that arises from his and Julius’s common African origin. Julius himself understands that Farouq would find his gesture insincere, for Farouq responds only “[g]ood” (Cole 101), “with a quick, puzzled smile” (Cole 101). Julius and Farouq’s friendship—which will be analyzed in detail in the next section—takes place against the backdrop of a context characterized, as depicted in the novel, by increasing fear and even violence towards Arabs and Africans. In such a context, Julius feels uncomfortable and tries to avoid the bars and restaurants dominated by whites. He reflects that already in fifteenth-century Ghent, “the stranger was nothing unusual” (Cole 106) when Turks, Arabs, or Russians were present, adding that the stranger had remained strange and had become a foil for new discontents. It occurred to me, too, that I was in a situation not so radically different from Farouq’s. My presentation—the dark, unsmiling, solitary stranger—made me a target for the inchoate rage of the defenders of Vlaanderen: I could, in the wrong place, be taken for a rapist or “Viking.” But the bearers of the rage could never know how cheap it was. They were insensitive to how common, and how futile, was their violence in the name of a monolithic identity. (Cole 106, my emphasis) In the lines above, Julius criticizes the exclusionary nature of organic communities formed on the basis of homogeneous identity, pointing to its effects on migrants—and thus “strangers”—like him and Farouq. This passage evokes Sara Ahmed’s Strange Encounters (2000) where Ahmed discusses the implications of being “the outsider inside” (3). Being a stranger in a foreign country puts into question the “relations of proximity 178 Fatma Akçay ES REVIEW. SPANISH JOURNAL OF ENGLISH STUDIES 45 (2024): 170–191 E-ISSN 2531-1654 and distance,” that is, “by coming too close to home, [aliens] establish the very necessity of policing the borders of knowable and inhabitable terrains” (3). When African migrants like Julius and Farouq find themselves in territories mainly occupied and defined by Europeans and whites, they are automatically perceived as “strangers”; they are seen as having invaded that territory, which triggers in whites the need to protect their space. The novel illustrates the violent consequences of such perceptions of migrants by drawing attention to a number of “hate crimes” (Cole 99) promoted by the policies and ideology of right-wing parties such as the Flemish right-wing party Vlaams Belang (Cole 98), which incite fear and hatred against foreigners. An example of this is the crime committed by an eighteen-year-old boy who perceives Africans as “makakken” (Cole 99), a term that suggests a similarity between Africans and monkeys. The boy ends up killing a girl from Turkey and a nanny from Mali, along with the Flemish child she was caring for. However, he only expresses regret for having killed the Flemish child (Cole 99). Returning to Ahmed, this event demonstrates the perception of migrants as “strangers” that may lead members of the community to carry out violent actions aimed at expelling them “from the purified space of the community” (22). Back in New York, a concert at Carnegie Hall dedicated to the music of Gustav Mahler, which Julius attends, is particularly revealing for Nancy’s description of the exclusionary nature of operative communities and Ahmed’s notion of the stranger. Finding himself among white and well-off people, Julius feels like Ota Benga, a young African man who was put on view in a cage at the Bronx Zoo in the United States (Cole 252). When he was finally freed from the zoo, he attempted to go back to Africa but could not. Ota Benga could not bear the emotional toll of his sufferings and committed suicide in his early thirties. According to Dorottya Mózes, what Julius feels is “the impossibility of escaping the White gaze” (278), which also evokes the scene in Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks (1952) in which a child shouts “Look, a Negro! . . . see the Negro! I’m frightened! Frightened! Frightened!” (84). Julius is perceived as an Other—a stranger, borrowing Ahmed’s term—primarily because of his racial difference, which sets him apart in a white-dominated place and racially homogeneous community. Julius muses on these exclusionary homogeneous places by saying, “it never ceases to surprise me how easy it is to leave the hybridity of the city, and enter into all-white spaces, the homogeneity of which, as far as I can tell, causes no discomfort to the “I Was in No Mood for People Who Tried to Lay Claims on Me”. . . 185 ES REVIEW. SPANISH JOURNAL OF ENGLISH STUDIES 45 (2024): 170–191 E-ISSN 2531-1654 The novel’s concern with the possibility of hospitality towards African and black migrants is reminiscent of the motif of migratory birds mentioned earlier. At one point, Julius reflects on the sparrows he observes through the window as follows: There were sparrows flitting about in the distance, attempting to find a place to rest for the night . . . As I reflected on the fact that in each of these creatures was a tiny red heart, an engine that without fail provided the means for its exhilarating midair maneuvers, I was reminded of how often people took comfort, whether consciously or not, in the idea that God himself attended to these homeless travelers with something like personal care; that, contrary to the evidence of natural history, he protected each one of them from hunger and hazard and the elements. (Cole 181) It could be argued that Derrida’s idea of absolute/unconditional hospitality is echoed in Julius’s reflection on sparrows as “homeless travelers” in search of a place to stay. A hospitable God is portrayed as an ideal host, in contrast to the authoritarian forces that have prevented Saidu’s entry into the United States. God offers unconditional hospitality to migratory birds in search of a place where they can find shelter overnight. Saidu, on the other hand, together with many others, is denied entry into the United States where he has come to seek protection from the danger in his country of origin. In Open City, then, Cole draws our attention to the status quo of nations such as the United States as exclusionary and inhospitable places, while pointing to the need for them to become hospitable places. Saidu did not choose his birthplace. He is not responsible for the political upheavals taking place there. His family was killed, and he was subjected to abuse and violence. His fate calls into question the ethics of traditional, juridicopolitical hospitality that determines who is admitted and who is rejected. The novel points out that long before September 11, the city of New York was characterized by a lack of hospitality, especially toward African migrants and African Americans. Thus, as Julius reflects on the various historical events and processes that took place in New York, he repeatedly encounters signs and traces that point to the status of black people as unwelcome Others. Julius refers to a site that was an African burial ground in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, an area of “some six acres, as far north as present-day Duane Street and as far south as City Hall Park” (Cole 220). He highlights that “the bodies of some fifteen to twenty thousand blacks, most of them slaves” (Cole 220), were allowed to be 186 Fatma Akçay ES REVIEW. SPANISH JOURNAL OF ENGLISH STUDIES 45 (2024): 170–191 E-ISSN 2531-1654 buried at this site, which was not considered part of the city: “It was here, on the outskirts of the city at the time, north of Wall Street and so outside civilization as it was then defined, that blacks were allowed to bury their dead” (Cole 220). This passage underlines the irony of the novel’s title, for New York was never truly an “open city”—a hospitable city—for the African slaves. Since they were not considered proper residents of the city, or even proper human beings, they could only be buried “outside the city walls” (Cole 222). Derrida discusses hospitality to the migrant who is an arrivant in the context of the concept of the border, “the very border that delineated a legitimate home and assured lineage, names and language, nations, families, and genealogies” (Aporias 34). We see this boundary materialized in the walls of New York City, which determined who belonged to the city and was welcome and who was instead considered a stranger. Ahmed has also consistently considered borders and boundaries as central to the recognition of the stranger as “the outsider inside” (3): “the stranger is an effect of processes of inclusion and exclusion, or incorporation and exclusion, that constitute the boundaries of bodies and communities” (6). The image of New York as a city enclosed by borders comes into full play in chapter four, as Julius walks to the South End and heads towards the waterline: The strangest of islands, I thought, as I looked out to the sea, this island that turned in on itself, and from which water had been banished. The shore was a carapace, permeable only at certain selected points. Where in this riverine city could one fully sense a riverbank? (Cole 54) The fact that New York is built on an island that is “turned in on itself,” with a shore that acts as a “carapace, permeable only at certain selected points” suggests the exact opposite of openness and hospitality, but rather a space—and thus a community—that is “sealed: it is like a body that is fully contained by the skin” (Ahmed 25). The obvious implication is that such “an organic community . . . does not let outsiders (or foreign agents/viruses) in” (Ahmed 25) and is not open to all—an idea hinted at later in the text when Julius turns his attention to Ellis Island, which functioned as the country’s main immigration station in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: “the focus of so many myths; but it had been built too late for those early Africans—who weren’t immigrants in any case—and it had been closed too soon to mean anything to the later Africans like Kenneth or the cabdriver, or me” (Cole 55). Julius’s “I Was in No Mood for People Who Tried to Lay Claims on Me”. . . 187 ES REVIEW. SPANISH JOURNAL OF ENGLISH STUDIES 45 (2024): 170–191 E-ISSN 2531-1654 reflections strongly underscore Ellis Island’s mythic status as a symbol of the United States as a land of hospitality for newcomers, offering hospitality to Europeans but not to black people. Julius acknowledges the value the island may have had “for European refugees” (Cole 55) but adds that “[b]lacks” knew “rougher ports of entry” (Cole 55). The novel references a long tradition of fear and rejection of the African and black stranger that leads to “violence in the name of a monolithic identity” (Cole 107) in both New York and Brussels. The novel thus focuses on the historical and legal conditions that constrain and limit hospitality, which contrasts with the heterogeneity that characterizes these cities in the present. Therefore, the novel, which deals with hospitality in the cosmopolitan contexts of New York and Brussels, is also in dialogue with Derrida’s remarks on hospitality toward migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers in On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness (2001). In this text, Derrida introduces the notion of a kind of cosmopolitan city where migrants can seek refuge from any kind of threat. Derrida thus develops the concept of “open cities” or “refuge cities” (viii), “where migrants may seek sanctuary from the pressures of persecution, intimidation, and exile” (viii). Such cities would welcome newcomers according to Derrida’s concept of absolute/unconditional hospitality, Kant’s concept of moral law, and Levinas’s concept of infinite responsibility (xi). The existence of such cities which do not homogenize and do not exclude the other, would welcome migrants of all kinds without assimilating them or expecting anything in return, and would be a solution to the agonizing migration experiences and the grim fates of most of Cole’s characters. Open City ends with Julius recalling the death of migratory birds when the Statue of Liberty acted as a lighthouse, directing ships into Manhattan Harbor; “that same light,” however, “especially in bad weather, fatally disoriented birds. The birds, many of which were clever enough to dodge the cluster of skyscrapers in the city, somehow lost their bearings when faced with a single monumental flame” (Cole 258). It is telling that these birds lose their lives crashing into the Statue of Liberty, a symbol of freedom and hospitality for newcomers. Julius elaborates on the “large number of birds [that] met their death in this manner” (Cole 258), particularly in 1888: On October I of that year, for example . . . fifty rails had died, as had eleven wrens, two catbirds, and one whip-poor-will. The following day, the record showed two dead wrens: the day after that, eight wrens . . . the sense persisted 188 Fatma Akçay ES REVIEW. SPANISH JOURNAL OF ENGLISH STUDIES 45 (2024): 170–191 E-ISSN 2531-1654 that something more troubling was at work. On the morning of October 13, for example, 175 wrens had been gathered in, all dead of the impact, although the night just past had not been particularly windy or dark. (Cole 259) With these words the novel ends abruptly. The fatal fate of the birds refers not only to the unfulfilled migration experience of many of the novel’s characters, but also to the experiences of forced resettlement, suffering, exile, torture and ultimately death that African and black people have had throughout history. Hospitality thus becomes a chimaera and an unfulfilled expectation. CONCLUSIONS In Open City, Julius oscillates between rejecting organic communities based on African origin and race and experiencing friendships rooted in his intellectual interests, which transcend racial and ethnic boundaries. However, these friendships prove to be transient and ultimately dissolve. Julius’s mistrust of operative, organic and essentialist communities points to their marginalizing dimension, which in the urban context of New York and Brussels is shown in the lack of hospitality towards the black migrant, who is condemned to the role of “stranger.” The novel thus questions the extent to which New York and Brussels are actually open and hospitable cities. Although both New York and Brussels are racially heterogeneous, they are portrayed as being shaped by an urban, spatial logic that is both “protective and defensive” (Ahmed 26), which corresponds to the functioning of immanent and operative communities. In the part of the novel devoted to Brussels, particular attention is paid to how migrants and foreigners are met with suspicion, fear and even violence. The city functions largely as “an organic community” (Ahmed 25) characterized by “the expulsion of difference” (Ahmed 25) to create “purified spaces” (Ahmed 25). Places like Farouq’s shop stand for the possibility of a different kind of coexistence between people of different origins and races, a coexistence in which there is no longer a difference between natives and strangers, a kind of community characterized by friendship and hospitality. However, it is a friendship “of an entirely different kind” (Friendship 35), as defined by Derrida: a friendship that is not based on sameness, fraternity, or commonality, but on the absence of commonalities of race, ethnicity, or national origin. “I Was in No Mood for People Who Tried to Lay Claims on Me”. . . 189 ES REVIEW. SPANISH JOURNAL OF ENGLISH STUDIES 45 (2024): 170–191 E-ISSN 2531-1654 As Julius’s thoughts and reflections on the Statue of Liberty and other parts of the city show, the novel is highly critical of the common notion of New York as a city open and hospitable to all foreigners and migrants. The idea that New York is an open and welcoming city may be true for migrants of European origin. Yet there have also always been communities and racial groups that have been systematically marginalized and excluded in this city: black slaves, the African American community and, more recently, black migrants of African descent. With the image of migratory birds crashing into the Statue of Liberty, Cole undermines the myth of the United States as the promised land for all immigrants and newcomers, highlighting instead the lack of hospitality experienced by migrants like Saidu, especially after 11 September. Julius remains trapped in his role as “the dark, unsmiling, solitary stranger” (Cole 106), a role that is largely forced upon him given the exclusionary spatial, social, and racial configurations that prevail in the urban contexts in which he finds himself. Walking proves to be only a temporary release from such constraints, just as migratory birds find temporary shelter. In New York, it is still possible to be in “all-white spaces” (Cole 252) like Carnegie Hall, whose “homogeneity . . . causes no discomfort to the whites in them” (Cole 252). In such a context, however, Julius experiences Mahler’s music as “not white or black” (Cole 252), suggesting the possibility of overcoming racial discrimination and separation so that, as Farouq puts it, “people can live together” (Cole 112). REFERENCES Ahmed, Sara. Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality. Routledge, 2000. Appiah, Kwame Anthony. Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. W.W. Norton, 2006. Blanchot, Maurice. The Unavowable Community. Translated by Pierre Joris, Station Hills Press, 1988. Certeau, Michel de. The Practice of Everyday Life. Translated by Steven Rendall, University of California Press, 1988. Cole, Teju. Open City. Faber and Faber, 2011. 190 Fatma Akçay ES REVIEW. SPANISH JOURNAL OF ENGLISH STUDIES 45 (2024): 170–191 E-ISSN 2531-1654 Derrida, Jacques. Aporias. Translated by Thomas Dutoit, Stanford UP, 1993. Derrida, Jacques. On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness. Translated by Mark Dooley and Michael Hughes, Routledge, 2001. Derrida, Jacques. The Politics of Friendship. Translated by George Collins, Verso, 2005. Derrida, Jacques, and Anne Dufourmantelle. Of Hospitality. Translated by Rachel Bowlby, Stanford UP, 2000. Fanon, Frantz. Black Skins, White Masks. 1952. Translated by Charles Lam Markmann, Pluto Press, 2008. Fongang, Delphine. “Cosmopolitan Dilemma: Diasporic Subjectivity and Postcolonial Liminality in Teju Cole’s Open City.” Research in African Literatures, vol. 48, no. 4, 2017, pp. 138–54, doi:10.2979/reseafrilite.48.4.10. Gehrmann, Susanne. “Cosmopolitanism with African Roots. Afropolitanism’s Ambivalent Mobilities.” Journal of African Cultural Studies, vol. 28, no. 1, 2016, pp. 61–72, doi: 10.1080/13696815.2015.1112770. Guarracino, Serena. “Writing ‘so raw and true’: Blogging in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah.” Between, vol 4, no. 8, 2014, pp. 1–27, doi.org/10.13125/2039-6597/1320. Hallemeier, Katherine. “Literary Cosmopolitanisms in Teju Cole’s Every day is for the Thief and Open City.” A Review of International English Literature, vol. 44, no. 2–3, 2013, pp. 239–50, doi: 10.1353/ari.2013.0023. Habila, Helon, editor and introduction. The Granta Book of the African Short Story. Granta Books, 2011, pp. vii–xv. “I Was in No Mood for People Who Tried to Lay Claims on Me”. . . 191 ES REVIEW. SPANISH JOURNAL OF ENGLISH STUDIES 45 (2024): 170–191 E-ISSN 2531-1654 Johansen, Emily. “History in Place: Territorialized Cosmopolitanism in Teju Cole’s Open City.” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies, vol. 20, no. 1, 2018, pp. 20–39, doi:10.3138/diaspora.20.1.006. Mózes, Dorottya. “Black Flânerie, Non-White Soundscapes, and the Fantastic in Teju Cole’s Open City.” Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies, vol. 26, no. 2, 2020, pp. 273–98, ojs.lib.unideb.hu/hjeas/article/view/8688/. Nancy, Jean-Luc. The Inoperative Community, edited by Peter Connor. Translated by Peter Connor, Lisa Garbus, Michael Holland, and Simona Sawhney, Minnesota UP, 1991. Oniwe, Bernard Ayo. “Cosmopolitan Conversation and Challenge in Teju Cole’s Open City.” Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies, vol. 39, no. 1, 2016, pp. 43–65, doi:10.5070/F7391029817. Rogers, Andrew P. “Lived Theologies of Place: Finding a Home in the City.” Ecclesial Practices, vol. 6, 2019, pp. 125–46, doi:10.1163/22144471-00602004. Vermeulen, Pieter. “Flights of Memory: Teju Cole’s Open City and the Limits of Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism.” Journal of Modern Literature, vol. 37, no. 1, 2013, pp. 40–57, doi:10.2979/jmodelite.37.1.40.