Poststructuralist ethics: subjectivity, responsibility and the space of community

The theoretical tenets of poststructuralism pose significant challenges to traditional ethical thinking, suggesting the need for an ethics sensitive to openness and difference. Drawing upon the work of Levinas, Derrida and Nancy, I discuss three dimensions of such an ethics: a theory of subjectivity based in a responsibility to the other; a politics of deconstruction within which this responsibility is foregrounded; and a theory of spatiality articulated in the sharing of community. This points toward an ethics of hospitality, in which the space of community is offered as a gift, and in the context of an irrecusable responsibility toward others.