CATHERINE MACMILLAN
Hostility, Hospitality and Autoimmunity in De Bernières’ Captain Corelli’s Mandolin
GLOBAL CONVERSATIONS: An International Journal in Contemporary Philosophy and Culture
Volume III, Number 01 (2020): 9-25

Literature and Remix

HOSTILITY, HOSPITALITY AND AUTOIMMUNITY
IN DE BERNIÈRES’ CAPTAIN CORELLI’S MANDOLIN
Catherine MacMillan

Abstract
The article explores Louis de Bernières’ novel Captain Corelli’s Mandolin from theperspective of Derrida’s concepts of hospitality and autoimmunity. In Derrida’s
work, the concepts of unconditional hospitality and autoimmunity overlap in theirfocus on openness to the Other, which constitutes both a threat and an opportunity,
while destabilizing the binary opposition between friendship and enmity. This paper
claims that the novel, which is set mainly during and following the Italian and Nazi
occupations of the Greek island of Cephalonia in World War II, also deals withsuch themes, questioning and deconstructing the division between friendship andenmity. This is particularly evident, for instance, in the love story between the
Italian soldier Captain Corelli and the local girl Pelagia; there are, however, manyother incidences of friendship between political enemies and enmity between
supposed political friends in the novel. In this regard, this paper focuses on four
episodes/events in the novel which, read through Derrida’s concepts of hospitality
and/or autoimmunity, destabilize the binary opposition between friendship andenmity: the history of Cephalonia as depicted in Dr. Iannis’ ‘A Personal History
of Cephallonia’, Captain Corelli’s relationship with his ‘hosts’ Pelagia and herfather Dr. Iannis, the story of ‘The Good Nazi’ Günter Weber who is forced to shoothis Italian friends and, finally, the disastrous takeover of the island by theCommunist Greek resistance group ELAS.

1. Introduction
British author Louis de Bernières’ 1994 novel Captain Corelli’s Mandolin is set primarily on
the Greek island of Cephalonia, an ‘island seemingly accursed and destined forever to be partof someone else’s game’. 1 The events in the novel take place mostly during the Second World
War and its aftermath, when the island is occupied first by the Italians, then the Nazis andeventually, following the departure of the Nazis, by ELAS, the Greek Communist resistance.
1

Louis de Bernières, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (London: Vintage, 1994), pp. 361-362.

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In this context, the novel focuses on the love story that develops between a local girl, Pelagia,
and a mandolin-playing Italian soldier, Captain Antonio Corelli, who is billeted with her andher father, Dr. Iannis. Indeed, as Sheppard argues, the novel is ‘normally and exclusively readas a love story’.2
In addition to love, however, war is an important theme of the novel: the story of theSecond World War is told from the perspectives of multiple characters, including those of thesoldiers Mandras (Pelagia’s fiancé) and Carlo Guercio, a closet homosexual Italian soldier who,
eventually, sacrifices his own life to save that of Captain Corelli. In addition, the story is also
recounted from the points of view of those who make (and break) history, including, among
others, Mussolini, whose “fateful attempt to restore the Roman empire is presented in the novel
as a tragic farce and a farcical tragedy,” 3 and the dictator Metaxas, 4 who tried to resist
Mussolini’s ultimatum.
Indeed, then, the themes of love and war overlap in the novel, which depicts the love,hospitality and friendship that can flourish even across the borders of political enmity.
However, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin also portrays hostility and aggression amongst those whoare, supposedly, political friends; the Greek resistance group ELAS, for instance, terrorizes thevery islanders whom it is supposed to protect from the fascist occupying forces. Like Derrida,then, de Bernières challenges the idea that friendship and enmity are mutually exclusive
opposites.5
Thus, the novel not only explores the themes of hospitality and hostility, enmity andfriendship as they relate to the borders between states; it also arguably questions the semantic
borders between these binary oppositions: as Sheppard argues, “Within this kind of historicalcontext, things turn into their opposite at every level.” 6 In this sense, the themes of the novel
arguably resonate with Derrida’s deconstructive project, and, more specifically, with his workon hospitality and autoimmunity.
The word hospitality, as Derrida notes, “carries its own contradiction incorporated intoit”; it is “parasitized by its opposite, ‘hostility’, the undesirable guest which it harbors as theself-contradiction in its own body.”7 Hospitality, then, derives from the Latin hospes, meaning‘host, guest or stranger’ which itself derives from hostis, which originally meant a stranger, andcame to refer to an enemy, or ‘hostile’ stranger (hostilis).8 This etymology thus hints at theRichard Sheppard, “Savagery, Salvage, Salves and Salvation: The Historico-Theological Debate of Captain
Corelli’s Mandolin,” Journal of European Studies xxxii (2002), p. 51.
3
Ibid., p. 52
4
It should be emphasized here that, despite the popularity of the novel, it generated a considerable amount ofcontroversy particularly among Cephalonian veterans and survivors of the Acqui division. Among other issues,
such criticism has focused on an arguably idealized and romanticized depiction of Metaxas and of the Italiansoldiers, and an overly harsh portrayal of the Greek resistance. See, for instance Seumas Milne, “Greek Myth”,
The Guardian, 29 July 1997.
5
Antonio Calcagno, Badiou and Derrida: Politics, Events and their Time. (London: Continuum, 2007), p. 46
6Ibid., p. 56.
7Jacques Derrida, “Hostipitality,” Angelaki 5, no.3 (2000), pp. 3-18.
8John Caputo, Deconstruction in a nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida (New York: Fordham
University Press, 1997), p. 110.
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Hostility, Hospitality and Autoimmunity in De Bernières’ Captain Corelli’s Mandolininterchangeable status of host and guest, as well as at how the concept of hospitality isapparently intertwined with that of hostility.9
For Derrida, as explored further below, hospitality is ideally unconditional; thus, theOther must be welcomed no matter who they are, and they should be accepted as they are,without being expected to adapt to the rules or conditions of the host. Thus, unconditional
hospitality implies a risk, as the (uninvited) guest may turn out to be a destructive enemy.
However, the absolute openness to the Other in unconditional hospitality is also, potentially, an
opportunity as the stranger may also be someone who brings friendship and renewal. In thissense, unconditional hospitality can be compared to Derrida’s concept of autoimmunity, which
he describes as “that strange behavior where a living being, in quasi-suicidal fashion, ‘itself’works to destroy its own protection, to immunize itself against its own immunity.” 10 Thus, as
in unconditional hospitality, in autoimmunity the border between self and other disintegrates;
the openness to the Other that this implies can be understood as both a threat and a promise.
In this context, following a brief discussion of Derrida’s concepts of hospitality andautoimmunity, the paper focuses on four episodes/events from Captain Corelli’s Mandolin inorder to explore the inseparability of hostility and hospitality, and that of friendship and enmity
in the novel. Firstly, Cephalonia’s long history of invasion and occupation, through a discussionof Dr. Iannis’ A Personal History of Cephallonia, is examined through the lens of(auto)immunity and unconditional hospitality. The interwoven theme of hospitality andhostility is then discussed in the context of Captain Corelli as (uninvited) guest in Dr. Iannis’
home. Following this, the theme of friendship and enmity is explored in the story of Günter
Weber, the ‘Good Nazi’, who is eventually forced to shoot his Italian ‘friends’. Finally, thecollapse of the distinction between friend and enemy implied in the takeover of the island by
the (supposed) anti-Nazi Greek resistance group ELAS, perhaps the most destructive of all theisland’s occupations, is explored from the perspective of autoimmunity.
2. Derrida on Hospitality and Autoimmunity: The Risk of Welcoming the Other
2a. Hospitality
For Derrida, hospitality is ideally unconditional, involving welcoming the Other without evenasking questions about his or her identity or origins; this can be contrasted with conditional
hospitality, which is restricted and regulated by the state, and grounded in law. 11 Conditional
hospitality, then, requires the guest to adapt to the cultural norms of the host; it implies that thehost maintains control over the guest, and can be understood in terms of closed borders andnationalism.12
However, for Derrida, true hospitality is unconditional; it involves welcoming
whoever, or whatever, may be in need of that hospitality, and relinquishing claims to property
9

Ana Maria Manzanas Calvo and Jesús Benito Sánchez, Hospitality in American Literature and Culture: Spaces,
Bodies, Borders (London: Routledge, 2017), p. 5.
10Giovanna Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jurgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida.
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), p. 100.
11
Marguerite La Caze, “Terrorism and Trauma: Negotiating Derridean ‘Autoimmunity’,” Philosophy and Social
Criticism, Vol. 37, No. 5 (2011), p. 614.
12
Jacques Derrida, Of Hospitality, translated by Anne Dufourmantelle (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000),
p. 135

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and ownership. Thus, unconditional hospitality involves openness to the stranger, whoever heor she may be:a foreigner, an immigrant, an uninvited guest, or an unexpected visitor, whether or not the newarrival is the citizen of another country, a human, animal or divine creature, a living or dead thing,
male or female.13

According to Derrida, then, the Other must be welcomed no matter what thecircumstances and without questioning or even knowing their identity:
I have to – and that’s an unconditional injunction – I have to welcome the Other whoever he or she
is unconditionally, without asking for a document, a name, a context or a passport. That is the very
first opening of my relation to the Other; to open my space, my home – my house, my language, myculture, my nation, my state and myself.14

Thus, in contrast to conditional hospitality, which limits the Other’s stay as a visitor,
demands that they act in certain ways, and recognizes the sovereignty of the host, 15
unconditional hospitality does not require the guest to assimilate or to adapt to the host’s rules.
As Derrida argues, then, “hospitality should be neither assimilation, acculturation, nor simply
the occupation of my space by the Other.” 16
Unconditional hospitality therefore potentially leaves us open to abuse, as we can neverbe sure “whether the one we are welcoming into our home is a friend or an enemy, someone
who will help us or harm us, aid us or destroy us”17: it can thus be compared to a Trojan horse,
as “what seems promising could contain your enemy.” 18 As Derrida emphasizes, then,unconditional hospitality implies a risk: “I have to accept if I offer unconditional hospitalitythat the Other may ruin my own space or impose his or her own culture or his or her own
language” 19; indeed, there is a risk of them “initiating a revolution, stealing everything, or
killing everyone. That is the risk of pure hospitality and pure gift, because a gift might beterrible too.”20 Emphasizing the common root shared by host/guest (hôte) and hostage, Derrida
argues that, in unconditional hospitality, “The one inviting becomes almost the hostage of the
one invited, of the guest, the hostage of the one he receives, the one who keeps him at home.” 21In this context, Derrida emphasizes that an important aporia exists at the heart of theconcept of hospitality. This aporia results from the opposition of “The law (of hospitality), in
its universal singularity, to a plurality that is … a number of laws that distribute their history

13

Ibid., p. 77.
Geoffrey Bennington and Jacques Derrida, “Politics and Friendship: A Discussion with
Jacques Derrida,” 1997.
http://www.dariaroithmayr.com/pdfs/assignments/Politics%20and%20Friendship.pdf
15
Marguerite La Caze, “Terrorism and Trauma,” p. 615.
16
Geoffrey Bennington and Jacques Derrida, “Politics and Friendship.”17
Michael Naas, Derrida from Now On (New York: Fordham University Press, 2009), p. 32.
18
Judith Still, Derrida and Hospitality (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), p. 128.
19
Geoffrey Bennington and Jacques Derrida, “Politics and Friendship.”
20
Jacques Derrida, “Hospitality, Justice and Responsibility,” p. 71.
21Jacques Derrida, Of Hospitality, p. 9.
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and their anthropological geography differently.” In this sense, “The law is above the laws. It
is thus illegal, transgressive, outside the law.”22
Unconditional hospitality is, then, seemingly impossible, as it involves the hostcompletely relinquishing control over the guest, and thus over his own space:
For there to be hospitality there must be a door. But if there is a door, there is no longer hospitality.
There is no hospitable house. There is no house without doors and windows. But as soon as there
are a door and windows, it means that someone has the key to them and consequently controls theconditions of hospitality. There must be a threshold. But if there is a threshold, there is no longer
hospitality.23

As the passage above suggests, for Derrida such unconditionality is fundamental to the conceptof hospitality itself; however, this is a two-way dependence as “the unconditional law of
hospitality needs the laws, it requires them” in order to become “effective, concrete,
determined.”24
Thus, unconditional hospitality will always be haunted by conditional hospitality, andvice versa: “We will always be threatened by this dilemma between, on the one hand, One ofthem can always corrupt the other, and this capacity for perversion remains irreducible. It mustremain so.”25
In this sense, referring to his concept of autoimmunity, which will be further discussed
in the following section, Derrida argues that these contradictions result in hospitality autoimmunizing itself:
Hospitality is a self-contradictory concept and experience which can only self-destruct –put otherwise produce itself as impossible, only be possible on the condition of its impossibility –or protect itself from itself, auto-immunize itself in some way, which is to say, deconstruct itself –
precisely in being put into practice.26

2b. Autoimmunity
Derrida’s concept of autoimmunity was developed throughout the last decade of his life, 27 and,as Inge Mutsaers points out, he “uses the notion of autoimmunity in different ways.” 28 Indeed,
he proposes that the logic of autoimmunity, which is a medical term, albeit one whose roots

22

Ibid., p. 79.
Jacques Derrida, “Hostipitality,” p. 14.
24
Jacques Derrida, Of Hospitality, p. 79.
25
Ibid., p. 135.
26
Jacques Derrida, “Hostipitality,” pp. 4-5.
27
Derrida’s first use of the concept of autoimmunity dates to the 1990s, in Spectres of Marx (1994), Politics ofFriendship (1997) and Faith and Knowledge. However, it arguably becomes central to his philosophy following
the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001, most notably in an interview with Giovanna Borradori (2003), and,
subsequently in Rogues (2005). In these works, Derrida applied his concept of autoimmunity to a variety ofcontexts, including religion and science and, perhaps most famously, in his analyses of reactions to terrorist attacks
and of democracy.
28
Inge Mutsaers, Immunological Discourse in Political Philosophy: Immunisation and its Discontents (London:
Routledge, 2016), p. 103.
23

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Hostility, Hospitality and Autoimmunity in De Bernières’ Captain Corelli’s Mandolinwere originally political, can be extended to “life in general.” 29 Generally speaking, there are
two major, and intertwined, implications to Derrida’s version of autoimmunity. Firstly, it isself-destructive; it is a “quasi-suicidal” drive30 which “amounts to the self’s attacking its own
organs, tissues and processes, including the very immune system which was to have protected
it and its identity.” 31 Secondly, as in absolute hospitality, the destruction of the immune
system32 leaves the self open to the intrusion of the Other.33 Thus, according to the logic ofautoimmunity,
the greatest threat of terror comes from within, in that destruction of the immune system whichallows the relatively strict border between one’s self and the outside to collapse, not because of an
external enemy’s attack but as a result of internal corruption.34

As La Caze points out, autoimmunity can be understood in terms of the integral
protections found at the level of state or community and even at the level of the psyche35: ineffect, it destroys the integrity of all these sovereign forms. In Specters of Marx, for example,
Derrida explains that,the living ego is auto-immune. To protect its life, to constitute itself as unique living ego … it must
… take the immune defenses apparently meant for the non-ego, the enemy, the opposite, theadversary and direct them at once for itself and against itself.36

Thus, for Derrida, whether at the state, community or psychic level, autoimmunity is,fundamentally, a relationship between self and other; however, it also deconstructs the
traditional opposition between self and non-self, 37 so that the relation “is neither one ofexteriority nor one of simple opposition or contradiction.” 38

29

Giovanna Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jurgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), p. 187.
30
Ibid., p. 124.
31
Michael Lewis, “Of (Auto) Immune Life: Derrida, Esposito, Agamben,” in Medicine and Society, New
Perspectives in Continental Philosophy, ed. Darian Meacham (New York: Springer, 2015), p. 216.
32
Derrida’s definition contrasts with the actual medical definition of autoimmune disease, which results not fromthe destruction of the immune system by the body, but rather from the destruction of the bodily tissues by its own
immune system. Indeed, as Timár (2014), for instance, has argued, Derrida’s definition of autoimmunity seems,
rather, closer to the body’s response to infection by the AIDS virus which, as Timár points out, stands in asomewhat spectral relationship to autoimmune disease. See Andrea Timár, “Derrida and the Immune System,” Et
al: Critical Theory Online, 2015, http://etal.hu/en/archive/terrorism-and-aesthetics-2015/derrida-and-theimmune-system
33
Jacques Derrida, Rogues: Two Essays on Reason, translated by Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005), p. 123.
34
Michael Lewis, “Of (Auto) Immune Life: Derrida, Esposito, Agamben,” p. 219.
35
Marguerite La Caze, “Terrorism and Trauma,” p. 606.
36
Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx, translated by Peggy Kamouf (London: Routledge, 1994), p., 177.
37
Andrew Johnson. Viral Politics: Jacques Derrida's Reading of Auto-Immunity and the Political Philosophy ofCarl Schmitt (Lap Lambert Academic Publishing, 2010), p. 12.
38
Giovanna Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of Terror, p. 114.

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In a similar vein, autoimmunity also deconstructs the oppositional structure between
friend and enemy; indeed “One function of the concept of autoimmunity is to act as a third term
between the classical opposition between friend and foe.” In this sense, it can be understood asa “characteristically deconstructive move aimed at displacing the traditional metaphysicaltendency to rely on irreducible pairs.”39
In fact, as Johnson argues, Derrida’s deconstruction of Carl Schmitt’s friend-enemy
dichotomy in Politics of Friendship can also be understood in terms of autoimmunity.40 For
Schmitt, as Derrida points out, the distinction between friend and enemy is the foundation ofpolitics itself; notably, in Schmitt’s theory, enemy is the privileged term of the two; friendshipis defined in relation to enmity. However, as Derrida argues elsewhere, the breakdown of theclear distinction between friend and enemy leads the way to autoimmunity:41
One would then have the time of a world without friends, the time of a world without enemies. The
imminence of a self-destruction by the infinite development of a madness of self-immunity.42

As has already been touched upon, autoimmunity is intimately bound up with theconcept of hospitality 43 in that both involve an openness to the outside which implies risk. As
Michael Naas explains,
If autoimmunity describes the way in which an organism, an individual, a family, or a nation,
compromises its own forces of self-affirmation so as to become open and vulnerable to its outside,then autoimmunity is always a kind of hospitality – the welcoming of an event that might wellchange the very identity of the self, of the autos, the welcoming of an event that may thus bringgood or ill, that may invite a remedy or a poison, a friend or a foe. To be open to the event, to offer
hospitality, it is essential not to know in advance what is what or who is who.44

Thus, immunity can be likened to conditional hospitality where we are able to assert
and defend our sovereignty and thus to protect ourselves from the potential excesses of the
Other. In contrast, although autoimmunity is not entirely equivalent to unconditional
hospitality,45 both share the feature of receptivity or susceptibility to the unexpected. 46 In thisway, then, autoimmunity, like unconditional hospitality, is imbued with both risk andpromise47; it is “a double bind of threat and chance, not alternatively or by turns promise and/or
threat but threat in the promise itself.”48 As Derrida argues, autoimmunity,
39

Ibid., p. 152
Andrew Johnson, Viral Politics, p.33.
41
Ibid., pp. 9-10.
42Jacques Derrida, Politics of Friendship, p. 76.
43
Andrea Timár, “Derrida and the Immune System,” Et al: Critical Theory Online (2015), p. 4,
http://etal.hu/en/archive/terrorism-and-aesthetics-2015/derrida-and-the-immune-system/
44
Michael Naas (2009) Derrida from Now On, p. 32.
45
Marguerite La Caze explains that unconditional hospitality “is a complete defencelessness in the face of the
Other,” while autoimmunity implies “an eroding of our defences through our own decisions to protect ourselves.”
See “Terrorism and Trauma,” p. 115.
46
Ibid., p. 615.
47
Andrea Timár, “Derrida and the Immune System,” p. 5.
48
Giovanna Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of Terror, p. 82.
40

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is not an absolute ill or evil. It enables an exposure to the other, to what and who comes – whichmeans that it must remain incalculable. Without autoimmunity, with absolute immunity, nothing
would ever happen or arrive; we would no longer wait, await, or expect, no longer expect another,or expect any event.49

On this basis, for Derrida, autoimmunity, despite the risk it entails, appears to be vitalfor the health of any community:50 it is thus “both self-protecting and self-destroying, at once
remedy and poison.” 51 In this context, then, according to Naas, both deconstruction as
hospitality and deconstruction as autoimmunity help explain,
Not only how we live, how we remain open to the future and to a renewal of life in the future, how
we remain open to innovation and invention through the reception of others, but how we die, how
we inevitably turn against ourselves, against the very principles that constitute and sustain ourselves
and our identities.52

3. Hospitality and Autoimmunity in Four Episodes from Captain Corelli’s Mandolin
In his A Personal History of Cephallonia, Dr. Iannis describes the island’s long history ofinvasion and domination by various imperial forces, including the Romans, the Venetians, theOttomans and the British. Its openness to outsiders, its lack of immunity and sovereignty, havearguably long obliged the island to an attitude of unconditional hospitality towards thesefrequently destructive strangers:
Because the island is a jewel it has since the time of Odysseus been the plaything of the great, thepowerful, the plutocratic, and the odious … There began a long and lamentable history of its being
passed from hand to hand as a gift, at the same time as it was repeatedly being raided by corsairs
from all the many corners of the malversated Mediterranean Sea … From the time of the Romans,
the only prize for us was survival.53

In this sense, unconditional hospitality can perhaps be enforced; Derrida suggests that“the distinction between invitation and visitation may be the distinction between conditional
hospitality (invitation) and unconditional hospitality.” In this context, a visitation can even be
an invasion; as Derrida notes,
if I accept the coming of the other, the arriving [arrivance] of the other who could come at any
moment without asking my opinion and who could come with the best or worst of intentions: avisitation could be an invasion by the worst. Unconditional hospitality must remain open without
horizon of expectation, without anticipation, to any surprise visitation.54

49

Ibid., p. 152.
In this context, Derrida gives the example of immune-depressants, which prevent the body from rejecting organtransplants; these drugs act against the body’s own immunity to something from the outside.
51
Ibid., p. 124.
52
Michael Naas, Derrida from Now On, p. 33.
53
Louis de Bernières, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, p. 341.
54
Jacques Derrida, “Hostipitality,” p. 17.
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Judith Still also appears to understand Derrida’s conception of unconditional hospitalityas, potentially, a hospitality which is, in some cases, enforced; she notes that “the dangers of
welcoming guests might be illustrated by the fate of Native Americans or that of the indigenous
peoples of many formerly colonized peoples.” 55
However, while the invasions certainly brought their share of death and destruction to
the islanders, they also played an important part in shaping the culture of Cephalonia. The sixhundred-year Venetian occupation, for instance, gave the island a distinctly Italian flavor,
influencing its architecture, which, as Doctor Iannis notes, is “highly conducive to a civilized
and sociable private life.” The occupation also influenced the dialect of the island, rendering it“replete with Italian words and manners of speech,” while “the educated and the aristocracy,”
including Doctor Iannis and Pelagia, speak Italian as a second language. 56 Overall, then, as theDoctor continues, the Venetian occupation left the islanders with “a European rather than aneastern outlook on life,” with a considerably freer attitude towards women than elsewhere in
Greece. Indeed, Dr. Iannis evaluates the Venetian occupation in relatively positive terms; while
the islanders were glad to see the Venetians’ departure, there was far worse to come:they were undoubtedly, along with the British, the most significant force that shaped our history andculture; we found their rule tolerable and occasionally amusing … Above all, they had theinestimable merit of not being Turks.57

In this context, the Venetians left the island with a culture that is arguably hybrid;
Golban, for instance, argues that the identity of Dr. Iannis himself can be understood in termsof hybridity as he “represents a clear case of ‘dislocation’ of the self, his position in relation to
the notion of ‘the Greek’ or ‘the Italian’ describing a situation of inexorable ambiguity.” 58
The double-edged risk of opening to the Other is, however, perhaps most notably
illustrated in Dr. Iannis’ depiction of the British occupation of the island, which, he argues, wasboth beneficial and devastating:
The British were worse than the Turks for some of the time, and the best of all of them for the rest
… It teaches us that to be associated with the British is to be offered the choice of one of two bags
tied at the neck with string. One contains a viper, and the other a bag of gold. 59

In this context, despite some thieving on the part of the occupying soldiers, the 19411943 Italian occupation of Cephalonia was a relatively benign one; according to Dr. Iannis, theislanders even came to feel affection for their Italian oppressors. Indeed, following thedevastating Nazi occupation of 1943, the Doctor remembers the Italian invaders with nostalgia:

55

Judith Still, Derrida and Hospitality, p. 267.
Ibid., p. 146.
57
Ibid., p. 147.
58
Tatiana Golban, “Reconstructing the Ancient Mythemes: Thematic Enclosure of Dr. Iannis as a Postmodern
Odysseus in Captain Corelli’s Mandolin”. Ankara Üniversitesi Dil ve Tarih-Coğrafya Fakültesi Dergisi 54, no.
2(2014), 347.
59
Louis de Bernières, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, 177-178.
56

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Hostility, Hospitality and Autoimmunity in De Bernières’ Captain Corelli’s Mandolin
Now there were no more Italians working amid the vines beside the farmers in order to escape theboredom of garrison life … there were no more tenor voices to send snatches of Neapolitan songand sentimental aria out across the pine of the mountains.60

In contrast to the Italians, whose attempts to cover up their misdemeanors at least“disclosed that they knew that what they did was wrong,”61 the Nazi occupation is portrayed asa brutal one, which the doctor records as “the direst time of all.” 62 The German soldiers’ attitude
to the islanders, in Dr. Iannis’ account, was a callous one; they frequently beat up the islanders
regardless of their age, destroyed their houses, and stole their possessions:
It was amusing and appropriate to humiliate the negroids whose culture was so paltry. Casually they
let the people starve, and made the sign of thumbs up when Greek coffins passed over the stones totombs.63

In the context of the Italian occupation, Dr. Iannis and his daughter, Pelagia, areintroduced to the Italian soldier Captain Corelli when they are ordered to host him for theduration of the occupation. Although Corelli is imposed on them, the hospitality that Dr. Iannis
and Pelagia offer him, despite his status as an enemy soldier, and despite wartime foodshortages, appears at first sight to be unconditional, with Pelagia even giving up her bed for the
Captain. Thus, although Captain Corelli’s stay is enforced on the Doctor and Pelagia, they grant
him access to their living space as though he were a valued guest. For the Doctor, however,such hospitality is a point of honor, something which he does not neglect to point out to Captain
Corelli:
Kyria Pelagia will bring water, some coffee, and some mezedakia to eat. You will find that we do
not lack hospitality. It is our tradition, Captain, to be hospitable even to those who do not merit it. It
is a question of honor, a motive which you might find somewhat foreign and unfamiliar. 64

Indeed, the father and daughter, who both speak Italian as a second language, even adapt
themselves linguistically to their new guest, speaking to him in his own language rather than
forcing him to attempt to communicate in Greek. Notably, for Derrida, language is a vital
component of hospitality; as he argues, the requirement to speak in a foreign language is“usually the first violence to which foreigners are subjected.” 65 Hence, Dr. Iannis and Pelagia’s
willingness to communicate with Corelli in Italian is arguably an indicator of unconditional
hospitality.
However, at least at first, their hospitality is also heavily tinged with hostility,
hospitality’s ‘parasitic double’. 66 In their (understandable) hostility to Captain Corelli, then, the60

Ibid., p. 438.
Ibid., p. 439.
62
Ibid., p. 439
63
Ibid., p.439
64
Ibid., p. 205.
65
Jacques Derrida, Paper Machine, translated by Rachel Bowlby (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005), p.
68.
66
Ana Maria Manzanas Calvo and Benito Sánchez, Hospitality in American Literature and Culture, p. 4.
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Doctor and Pelagia attempt to imbue their hospitality with resistance to the Italian occupationof the island. Indeed, their hospitality is arguably offered in a spirit of hostility in that its goal
appears to be that of making the Captain feel guilty and inferior, as in the following extract:offering Corelli dinner, Dr. Iannis explains that, “This is Cephalonian meat pie […] except that
thanks to your people, it doesn’t have any meat in it.”67
Given Corelli’s pleasant and playful nature, however, their hostility is usuallyof itself playful, although it sometimes seems almost to border on cruelty, and is generally
expressed in misleading the Captain and/or playing practical jokes on him. One of the morehumorous examples of Dr. Iannis’ gentle torture of Captain Corelli is when he teaches him
some Greek swearwords, misinforming him that they are greetings.68 Pelagia also attempts toimitate her father’s treatment of Corelli, trying to treat him “as badly as she could.” In thefollowing passage her behavior towards Corelli can perhaps be described, in Derrida’s terms,
as hostipitable:
If she served him food she would set the plate before him with a great clatter that sent the contentsof the bowl splashing and overflowing, and if by any chance it did spill onto his uniform, she would
fetch a damp clout, omit to wring it out, and smear the soup or stew in a wide circle about his tunic,
all the time apologizing cynically for the terrible mess.69

Golban reads the relationship of hostility/hospitality between Dr. Iannis and Captain
Corelli in terms of the Cyclops episode of the Odyssey, where the Cyclops Polyphemus “is boththe oppressor and the host of the island and cave, while Odysseus is a guest and later an
oppressed subject in the cave.”70 However, for Golban, this relationship is reversed in Captain
Corelli’s Mandolin in that here it is the Odysseus figure Dr. Iannis who is the host, and Corelli,
the Polyphemus figure, who is the (victimized) guest: “the doctor/hero is the host on the island
and a Master in his house, while the invader Captain Corelli/Cyclops (who is supposed todominate the doctor’s space), becomes victimized in the house.” 71
Meanwhile, Pelagia has lost contact with her fiancé, Mandras, since he left for the front,
as she comprehends that their relationship, at least from her perspective, had been based on
physical attraction only. Thus, if Mandras can be read as a postmodern Odysseus figure, 72
Pelagia is arguably a failed Penelope, a comparison that is further entrenched by her
unsuccessful attempt to crochet a cover for their marriage bed which she is constantly forced to
unpick.73 Unlike Odysseus, however, when Mandras returns, he finds that his beloved greets
him not with love but with “despair, unbearable excitement, guilt, pity, revulsion.” 74 Here, then,Corelli can perhaps be compared to Penelope’s suitors; in contrast to the suitors, however,Louis de Bernières, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, pp. 236-237.
Ibid., p. 206.
69
Ibid., p. 246.
70
Tatiana Golban, “Reconstructing the Ancient Mythemes,” p. 353.
71
Ibid., p. 353.
72
Tatiana Golban, “Reconstructing the Odysseus Myth: The Postmodern Condition in Captain Corelli’s
Mandolin,” Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences 23, no.5 (2014), pp. 2497-2512.
73
Emily A. McDermott, “Every Man’s an Odysseus: An Analysis of the Nostos-Theme in Corelli's Mandolin”.
Classical and Modern Literature 20, no. 2(2000), p. 22.
74
Louis de Bernières, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, p. 130.
67
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whom Penelope tries to keep at bay and who are killed by Odysseus upon his return, Corelli
eventually displaces Mandras in Pelagia’s affections.
Corelli’s love for Pelagia, then, is eventually reciprocated; Corelli’s virtuosity on the
mandolin and his composition of Pelagia’s March arguably play an important role in this. The
Doctor, too, also grows fond of Corelli, even entrusting him with “his most precious treasure –his daughter Pelagia – a fact which can be considered as a supreme form of hospitality.”75
However, while Corelli turns out to be, quite unexpectedly, a friendly guest, he remains a
political enemy, at least until the overthrow of Mussolini and the subsequent Nazi invasion of
the island. Thus, while accepting Corelli as a potential son-in-law, Dr. Iannis remains deeply
concerned about the difficulties that Pelagia would face in a marriage with Corelli who is, after
all, a member of the occupying army. As he counsels Pelagia,
Technically the captain is an enemy. Can you conceive the torment that would be inflicted upon you
by others when they judge that you have renounced the love of a patriotic Greek, in favor of aninvader, an oppressor? You will be called a collaborator, a Fascist’s whore and a thousand things
besides …76

In other words, the Doctor implies, Pelagia would be left with the choice of remaining
on her island, where she would be treated as an enemy Other, or emigrating to a strange land,
Italy, where she would be at the mercy of her new hosts, and be required to adapt to their culture,to their rules of hospitality.77
As is further discussed in the following section, the friendship between Pelagia/Dr.
Iannis and Corelli thus apparently deconstructs the binary opposition between friend andenemy, as put forward by Carl Schmitt. As Derrida notes, Schmitt argues that ‘the political’ ischaracterized by the distinction between friend and enemy; 78 for Schmitt, the concept of enmity
is dominant in this regard as “the meaning of ‘friend’ is only determined within the oppositional
distinction ‘friend-enemy’.”79
Thus, as Derrida emphasizes, “one has a feeling that the very sphere of the public
emerges with the figure of the enemy” in Schmitt’s work.80 However, for Schmitt, the enemy
in politics is always the public enemy; i.e. the hostis, rather than the inimicus, with whom wehave a personal relationship of enmity. Here, Derrida notes that Schmitt’s argument flounders
as we can wage war on and destroy our friend while continuing to love him:
The friend (amicus) can be an enemy (hostis). I can be hostile towards my friend, I can be hostile
towards him publicly and, conversely, I can, in privacy, love my enemy. From this, everything would
follow, in orderly, regular fashion, from the distinction between public and private. Another way ofsaying that at every point where this border is threatened, fragile, porous, contestable … theSchmittian discourse collapses.81
Tatiana Golban, “Reconstructing the Ancient Mythemes,” p. 357.
Louis de Bernières, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, p. 344.
77
Ibid., p. 344.
78
Jacques Derrida, Politics of Friendship, p. 373.
79
Ibid., p. 375.
80
Ibid., p. 356.
81
Ibid., p. 88.
75
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In this sense, for Derrida “friend and enemy are not mutually exclusive opposites.” 82
Similarly, as has already been suggested in the case of Corelli’s friendship with Pelagia and Dr.
Iannis, de Bernières also highlights this semantic slippage between (private) friend and (public)
enemy in Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. Perhaps the most notable example of this the novel,
however, is the story of Günter Weber, ‘The Good Nazi’, who is required to shoot his Italianfriends.83
While relations between the German and Italian soldiers garrisoned on the island were“superficially friendly and co-operative,” there was, in reality, no love lost between them, with
the Nazi soldiers regarding the Italians as “racially inferior negroids,” and the Italians perplexedby the Nazis’ “cult of death,” their “iron discipline, their irrational and irritating uniformity ofviews and conversation, and their incomprehensible passion for hegemony.” 84 However,
Captain Corelli, along with his opera club and a group of Italian military whores, does befriend
one young Nazi soldier, Günter Weber, whom they encounter sunbathing on a local beach in a
desperate attempt to become blond. 85 Despite the political differences between them, Corelli
and Weber strike up a friendship, with the latter, despite his inability to sing, even joining
Corelli’s opera club.
Following the fall of Mussolini and the subsequent Nazi occupation of the island,
however, Weber and the Italian soldiers become political enemies as Weber, despite his
protests, is ordered to shoot his Italian friends. However, threatened with being shot by firingsquad himself, and reminded that the Italian soldiers will be shot by someone else in any case,
Weber reluctantly agrees to participate in the massacre. Before the shooting, however, he begs
forgiveness from his (former) friends:‘Antonio, I am very sorry, I tried’…
‘I am sure you did, Günter. I know how it goes…
Weber’s face trembled with suppressed tears and desperation, and at last he said suddenly, ‘Forgiveme.’Carlo sneered, ‘You will never be forgiven.’ But Corelli put his hand up to silence his friend, andsaid quietly, ‘Günter, I forgive you. If I do not, who will’. 86

In addition, the binary opposition between friend and enemy, as well as that between
self and other, is also deconstructed in the episode in the novel, which depicts, in the context of
the Greek Civil War, the takeover of the island by ELAS, the Communist Greek People’s
Liberation Army, following the departure of the Nazis. Arguably, this can be understood in thecontext of an autoimmune logic: indeed, as Johnson argues, civil war is autoimmunity. 87
Derrida himself emphasizes the autoimmune nature of civil war, and the complete breakdownof the division of friend and enemy it entails, even leading people to go against their own allies
as well as against the “principal, declared enemy” in a “quasi-domestic confrontation.” Indeed,82

Antonio Calcagno, Badiou and Derrida: Politics, Events and their Time, p. 46
Louis de Bernières, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, p. 239.
84
Ibid., p. 240.
85
Ibid., p. 240.
86
Ibid., p. 397.
87
Andrew Johnson, Viral Politics, p. 36
83

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Hostility, Hospitality and Autoimmunity in De Bernières’ Captain Corelli’s Mandolinfor Derrida “In all wars, all civil wars, all partisan wars or wars for liberation, the inevitableescalation leads one to go after one’s rival partners no less than one’s so-called principal
adversary.”88
ELAS, the military wing of the EAM, with connections to the Greek Communist party, 89
had supposedly formed a part of the resistance against the fascist occupations; however, despite
the brutality of the Nazi occupation, it is ELAS itself which arguably constitutes the greatest
threat to life on the island. ELAS, according to de Bernières, had learned much from theirformer oppressors:
From a safe distance, they had watched the Nazis for years, and were well versed in all the arts ofatrocity and oppression. Hitler would have been proud of such assiduous pupils. Their secret police(OPLA) identified all Venizelists and Royalists, and marked them down for Fascists.90

Like an immune system gone haywire, then, ELAS, apparently formed to protect Greece
from fascist/Nazi rule, turns against the very people it was supposed to protect. In this way, theautoimmune entity turns on itself, and “must then come to resemble [its] enemies, to corrupt
itself and threaten itself in order to protect itself against their threats.” 91
Having left home for a second time following his rejection by Pelagia, Mandras joinsa small group of andartes, or guerrillas, who were “driven by something from the very depthof the soul, something that commanded them to rid their land of strangers or die in theattempt.”92 Mandras and his comrades are, however, forced at gunpoint to join ELAS when
they are attacked by a group of its members.93 However, they appear almost relieved to be taken
under ELAS’ wing; as Mandras notes,
It was good to have found a leader who might know what ought to be done. It had been demoralizing
to wander like Odysseus from place to place, far from home, improvising a resistance that neverseemed to amount to anything.94

Far from being directed against the Nazis, however, the ruthlessness of ELAS is
primarily focused on EDES, a rival resistance group and, perhaps especially, on the ordinary
inhabitants of the island, the very people whom it was supposed to protect. Notably, following
the departure of the Germans, ELAS “imposed themselves on the people with the aid of Britisharms” and “irreparably blighted” the lives of the islanders. Mandras’ very first mission, forinstance, is to brutally murder an old man, vaguely reminiscent of Dr. Iannis, whose “crime”
was to take a bottle of whiskey from supplies dropped by the British. 95 Mandras’ time with

88

Giovanna Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of Terror, p. 112.
Louis de Bernières, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, p. 229.
90
Ibid., p. 442.
91
Jacques Derrida, Rogues: Two Essays on Reason, translated by Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005), p. 40.
92
Louis de Bernières, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, p. 228.
93
Ibid., p. 229.
94
Ibid., p. 231.
95
Ibid., p. 234.
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ELAS, then, eventually corrupts him completely, turning him into a man capable not only ofstealing from the starving, but of cold-blooded murder and rape.
As has been emphasized above, the division between friend and enemy collapses
completely in civil war; despite their supposedly Communist ideology, ELAS appears to haveno qualms in attacking fellow Communists. After beating up Pelagia, ELAS drag Dr. Iannis
away on suspicion of being a bourgeois fascist; his friend Kokolios’ Communist beliefs do not,however, protect him from sharing the Doctor’s fate:
When Kokolios emerged from his house to defend the doctor, he too was carried away, even though
he was a Communist. By his actions, he had betrayed the impurity of his faith, and he was supported
on the arm of the monarchist Stamatis as all three were herded to the docks for transportation. 96

Indeed, Golban 97 argues that Dr. Iannis’ own psyche, which had remained intact
through the Italian and Nazi occupations, itself undergoes an autoimmune destruction as a resultof his experiences at the hands of ELAS, which leave him “speechless and emotionallyparalyzed”:
He would hear the cries of villagers as their houses burned, the screams of live castration andextracted eyes, and the crackle of shots as stragglers were executed, and he would witness over andover again Stamatis and Kokolios, the monarchist and the Communist, the very image of Greece
itself, dying in each other’s arms… 98

Mandras is also, ultimately, destroyed by his experiences with ELAS, as well as by his
earlier wartime experiences and by Pelagia’s rejection. Returning home after three years with
ELAS, he attempts to rape Pelagia, accusing her of being a “traitor slut.” 99 Shot in thecollarbone by Pelagia, he is then forced out of the house at gunpoint by his mother Drosoula. 100
Returning to the sea, where he had spent many happy hours as a fisherman in his pre-war life,
Mandras decides to commit suicide, rendering him a victim of war as well as a war criminal:
It did not occur to him that he was a statistic, one more life warped and ruined by a war, a tarnishedhero destined for the void. He was aware of nothing but a vanishment of paradise, an optimism that
had turned to dust and ash, a joy that had once shone brighter than the summer sun, but now had
disappeared and melted in the black light and frigid heart of massacre and cumulative remorse.101

As Derrida argues, then, “Autoimmunity is always more or less suicidal, but more
seriously still, it threatens always to rob suicide itself from its meaning and supposed integrity”
as “it consists not only in committing suicide but in compromising sui- or self-referentiality,
the self or sui- of suicide itself.” 102 In this sense, Mandras’ suicide can also perhaps be96

Ibid., p. 444.
Tatiana Golban, “Reconstructing the Ancient Mythemes,” p. 361.
98
Louis de Bernières, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, p. 445.
99
Ibid., p. 449.
100
Ibid., p. 451.
101
Ibid., p. 451.
102
Jacques Derrida, Rogues, p. 44.
97

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understood in terms of autoimmunity, in which the integrity of self-identity itself is threatened;he has merely become a statistic.
4. Conclusion
In conclusion, de Bernières’ Cephalonia is an island which, attractive yet vulnerable, has long
been forced into an attitude of openness, of unconditional hospitality towards the Other. In thissense, the wartime invasions of the island by the Italians and then the Nazis are just the latest
in the island’s long history of domination by outsiders, conquests which, for better or worse,
have shaped the island’s culture. In this context, then, the binary oppositions between hostility
and hospitality, friendship and enmity are constantly challenged in the novel, as unconditional
hospitality brings friends as well as enemies, love as well as war and devastation. Thus, politicalenemies, such as Captain Corelli and Dr. Iannis, become friends or even, as in the case of
Pelagia and Corelli, lovers. In other cases, friendships, such as that between Weber and the
Italian soldiers of the Acqui division, become overwhelmed by political enmity, with tragic
results. Finally, in the takeover of the island by ELAS, the distinction between friend and enemy
collapses in a nightmare of autoimmunity.
The horrors of the civil war destroy the previously patriotic Pelagia’s pride in her Greek
identity to the point where she “pretended to herself that she was Italian.” 103 Ironically, it later
turns out that Corelli, also motivated by shame in his national identity, moved to Athens andbecame a Greek citizen instead of returning to Italy after the war:
After the war all the facts came out. Abysinnia, Libya, persecution of Jews, atrocities, untried
political prisoners by the thousand, everything. I was ashamed of being an invader. I was so ashamedthat I didn’t want to be Italian any more. 104

Tragically, the relationship between Corelli and Pelagia is not revived until their oldage; although Corelli secretly visits the island regularly, leaving what Pelagia perceives asghostly traces, he never approaches her as, seeing her with her (adopted) daughter, he assumes
she has got married. Thus, neither Pelagia nor Antonio ever marry; Corelli later tells Pelagia,“You were always my Beatrice, my Laura. I thought, who wants second best?, ” 105 while
Pelagia confesses that she feels like an “unfinished poem.” 106
Corelli is, however, eventually reunited with an ageing and querulous Pelagia throughher grandson, Iannis, whom Corelli encounters playing Antonia, his beloved mandolin.
Meanwhile, Cephalonia is already subject to a new influx of outsiders; these new and benign‘invaders’ are tourists who bring a new wave of prosperity to the islanders. Pelagia, however,cannot escape from the trauma of her past in her dealings with the tourists who fill her taverna;
while she enjoys speaking Italian with the Italian customers, who remind her of Corelli and herlong-departed Italian friends, her hospitality towards her German guests is, despite her best
intentions, heavily tinted with hostility. As she explains to Corelli,Louis de Bernières, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, pp. 462-463.
Ibid., p. 519.
105
Ibid., p. 521.
106
Ibid., p. 520.
103
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I still have trouble being pleasant to Germans. I keep wanting to blame them for what their
grandfathers did. They’re so polite and the girls are so pretty. Such good mothers. I feel guilty forwanting to kick them.107

107

Ibid., p. 523.

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