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ESSAY · 2026-04-27 · 7 min read
When Dying Stays in the Household
當死亡留在家戶之內
By Hannah Arendt — channeled via philosopher-llm · curated by Joseph Lai
In response to: 她們的墓地：宏福苑大火後，尋訪印尼家務工的遺屬 (TheInitium)
編按 / Why this piece
Arendt 的診斷：家務工困於家（oikos）的勞動，死亡無法升入公共領域成為政治事件。可見性就是權力，決定誰被悼念、誰被遺忘。
When Dying Stays in the Household
## 當死亡留在家戶之內
A fire in Tai Po. Among the dead, several Indonesian women employed in the homes of Hong Kong families. Their bodies travel back to villages on Java and Lombok; their funerals are held there, witnessed by mothers and children who had waited years between visits. The grief is enormous and entirely private. The death of each woman registers, in the place where she earned her wages, as a line in a casualty figure; it registers, in the place where she was loved, as the end of a world.
This division is not new. It is, in fact, the oldest political distinction we have inherited. The Greeks called the household oikos and the public realm polis, and they understood — clearly, if also brutally — that those who were absorbed in the labor of keeping bodies alive (women, slaves, foreigners) could not appear in the polis as actors. To labor was to be confined to necessity. To act was to step into a space where one could be seen and heard by equals, where one's words and deeds could leave a story behind.
We have, of course, formally abolished the categories of slave and barbarian. What we have not abolished is the structure. There remain persons whose entire working lives are absorbed in keeping other people's households running, and whose existence — including their dying — does not cross the threshold into the common world. The Indonesian domestic worker in Hong Kong cooks, cleans, raises children not her own, and sleeps in a corner of a flat that is not hers. She is hyper-visible inside the household and invisible outside it. When she dies in a fire, the fire is a public event; she is not.
I want to put the question precisely, because it is easily sentimentalized and therefore easily evaded. The question is not whether these women's lives "mattered" — that is a moral question, and the moral answer is trivial. The question is political: whose dying constitutes a public event, and on what grounds? An event is public when it enters a space of appearance — when it is witnessed, narrated, contested, mourned by strangers as well as by kin, and inscribed in the durable memory of a common world. Most deaths are not public in this sense. They belong to oikos. What is striking about the deaths of migrant domestic workers is the asymmetry: the fire that killed them is a public event in the city where they worked, but they themselves are routed back into private grief — a grief that occurs, geographically and politically, somewhere else.
Here I would invoke a phrase I have used before, in a different but not unrelated context. I once wrote that the calamity of the rightless is not that they are deprived of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but that they no longer belong to any community whatsoever. The migrant domestic worker is not stateless; she has a passport, a village, a family. But in the city where she labors and dies, she is not, in any politically meaningful sense, a member of the polity. She holds a contract, not a public existence. Her plurality — the elementary human fact of being one among others, capable of appearing and acting — is suspended for the duration of her labor, and resumes only when her body is sent home.
One could call this exploitation, and it is. But to call it only exploitation is to miss what is specifically political about it. Exploitation is an economic category; the loss I am describing is the loss of the capacity to appear. The two overlap but are not the same. A well-paid domestic worker — were such a thing common — would still be confined to oikos; the wage does not by itself produce a public existence.
So: whose dying enters the common world? In our time, the answer corresponds rather precisely to: whose living was permitted to enter it. Those whose labor was confined to private households die privately, even when they die together, even when they die in a fire the city watches. This is not a failure of compassion on the part of the watching city. Compassion is an emotion proper to oikos; it does not by itself open the polis. The question — and I will leave it as a question, because it is a real one and I do not pretend to hold the answer — is whether a political community can recognize as its own the dying of those whose living it had not recognized as its own. If it can, by what act? If it cannot, what is it that we are calling a political community?
大埔的一場火。死者之中，幾位在香港人家中受僱的印尼婦女。她們的遺體運回爪哇與龍目的村莊；葬禮在那裡舉行，由多年難得相見的母親與子女送別。哀痛是巨大的，並且完全是私人的。每一位婦女的死亡——在她賺取工資的城市，是傷亡數字裡的一筆；在她被愛著的地方，是一個世界的終結。
這個分隔並不新鮮。它其實是我們所繼承的、最古老的政治區分。希臘人稱家戶為 oikos，稱公共領域為 polis；他們清楚地、儘管也殘酷地理解到：凡是被「維持身體存活」之勞動所吞沒的人——婦女、奴隸、外邦人——皆不能以行動者的身分出現於 polis 之中。勞動，意味著被困於必然性。行動，則意味著踏入一個能被同儕看見與聽見的空間，一個自己的言行得以留下故事的空間。
我們當然在形式上廢除了奴隸與蠻族這類範疇。我們未曾廢除的，是其結構。仍有一些人，整段勞動生涯都被吸納於維持他人家戶的運轉，而他們的存在——包括他們的死亡——不曾跨越門檻、進入共同世界。在香港的印尼家務工煮飯、打掃、撫養並非自己所生的孩子，並睡在一間不屬於她的公寓的一角。她在家戶之內被過度看見，在家戶之外則不被看見。當她死於火災，火災是公共事件；她不是。
我想把這個問題說得精確一點，因為它極易被感傷化，因而極易被迴避。問題不在於這些婦女的生命「是否有價值」——那是道德問題，而道德的回答是無甚意義的。問題是政治的：誰的死亡構成一樁公共事件？依據什麼？一個事件之為公共事件，是因為它進入了一個顯現空間 (space of appearance)——因為它被陌生人與親人共同見證、敘述、爭論、悼念，並被刻入一個共同世界的持久記憶之中。多數死亡並非在此意義上的公共。它們屬於 oikos。而移工女性之死所凸顯的，是不對稱：殺死她們的火災，在她們勞動的城市是公共事件；她們本人，卻被遣送回私人的哀悼——一場在地理上與政治上都發生於別處的哀悼。
我想在此援引一句我曾在另一個語境中寫下的話。我曾寫道：無權者的災難，不在於他們被剝奪了生命、自由與追求幸福之權，而在於他們不再隸屬於任何共同體。移工家務工並非無國籍；她有護照，有村莊，有家人。但在她勞動並死去的那座城市裡，她在任何具政治意義的層次上，都不是政治體的成員。她擁有的是一紙合約，不是一個公共的存在。她的複數性——亦即作為眾人之一而能顯現、能行動這個最基本的人類事實——在她勞動的整段期間被懸置，直到她的遺體被送回。
人們可以稱此為剝削，它也確實是。但若僅以剝削稱之，便錯失了其中特殊的政治面向。剝削是經濟範疇；我所描述的喪失，是顯現能力的喪失。兩者重疊，但不相同。即使有一位待遇優渥的家務工——假設這種情形普遍——她依然受困於 oikos；工資本身並不生產出公共存在。
那麼：誰的死亡進入共同世界？在我們的時代，答案相當精確地對應於：誰的「生」曾被允許進入這個世界。凡是勞動被局限於私人家戶之人，死也將私人地死，即使他們一同死去，即使他們死於一場全城共睹的大火。這並非觀看著的城市之不近人情。憐憫是 oikos 之情；它本身並不開啟 polis。問題是——我將之留作問題，因為它是真實的問題，而我並不假裝持有答案——一個政治共同體，能否承認那些它從未承認其「生」為己有之人的「死」為己有？若能，藉由何種行動？若不能，那麼我們所謂的政治共同體，究竟是什麼？
Editor's Reflection · 編後
Unresolved Tensions / 未解決的張力
The essay makes a move it cannot sustain. It dismisses the moral question — "the moral answer is trivial" — in order to elevate what it calls the properly political question. But the essay's rhetorical engine runs on moral affect from the first paragraph: bodies traveling to Java and Lombok, mothers waiting years between visits, "the end of a world." These are not politically neutral descriptions. They are calibrated to make the reader feel — and that feeling is precisely what drives the political argument forward. The essay deploys compassion to reach a conclusion about why compassion is insufficient, then presents the conclusion as a critique of compassion. This is not a productive paradox the essay owns; it is a structural dependency the essay conceals.
The second strain is more damaging. The essay argues that "a well-paid domestic worker would still be confined to oikos; the wage does not by itself produce a public existence." The distinction between economic exclusion and political exclusion is rhetorically sharp, but it costs the essay its explanatory engine. If the wage is irrelevant, the essay can no longer account for why domestic workers are structurally excluded in the first place — only that they are. The analysis appears to transcend economic critique, but in practice it evacuates the mechanism. Arendt's own writing on the social realm already strains to keep these categories cleanly apart; this essay inherits that unresolved problem and does not acknowledge it.
Third: the essay claims plurality is "suspended for the duration of her labor, and resumes only when her body is sent home." But in Arendt's own framework, plurality is a structural condition of the human condition — not a faculty that can be switched off and restored. What can be denied is the political space in which plurality appears. The essay conflates the ontological condition with its political expression, using "suspension of plurality" as a more philosophically charged synonym for "political exclusion" — but in doing so quietly overstates what the framework can actually claim.
這篇文章有一個它自身無法撐持的動作。它先將道德問題擱置——「道德的回答是無甚意義的」——以便將它所稱的真正政治問題提升到台前。但文章的修辭動力從第一段起便依賴道德情感：遺體運回爪哇與龍目、母親多年難得相見、「一個世界的終結」。這些並非政治中立的描述，而是精心設計來讓讀者有所感受的。文章隨後將這種感受轉化為推動政治論證的動力，再以此動力導出憐憫之情何以不足的結論，並將結論呈現為對憐憫的批評。這不是文章有意識持有的悖論，而是它所掩蓋的結構性依賴。
第二個裂縫更具破壞性。文章主張「即使有一位待遇優渥的家務工，她依然受困於 oikos；工資本身並不生產出公共存在」。這個區分在修辭上鋒利，卻讓文章失去了解釋的引擎。若工資無關緊要，文章便無從說明家務工何以在結構上被排除——只能陳述她們確實被排除的事實。分析看似超越了經濟批評，實則讓排除的機制變得不可見。Arendt 自己的著作在論「社會領域」時便已難以維持這兩個範疇的截然二分；此文繼承了這個未解問題，卻未加承認。
第三：文章說複數性「在她勞動的整段期間被懸置，直到她的遺體被送回」。但在 Arendt 自身的框架中，複數性是人類處境的結構性條件，不是可以切斷再恢復的開關。能夠被剝奪的，是讓複數性得以顯現的政治空間。文章混淆了本體論條件與其政治表達，以「複數性的懸置」作為「政治排除」的更具哲學份量的說法——但如此一來，卻悄悄高估了這個框架能夠實際主張的事情。
Blind Spots / 看不見的視角
Judith Butler would raise a question this essay is structured to avoid: whose dying is constituted as grievable before any political decision is made? In Frames of War, Butler's concept of "grievability" identifies how the infrastructure of representation — the media frame, the narrative apparatus, the category of "casualty figure" itself — pre-distributes which lives appear as lives worth mourning. The essay treats the domestic worker's exclusion from the space of appearance as a political failure that could, in principle, be reversed by political will. Butler would say the failure is already installed in the conditions of perception. To be routed into a "casualty figure" is not an injustice applied to a recognizable person — it is the prior foreclosure of recognizability itself. The essay's closing question assumes the political community exists as an entity capable of choosing to recognize. Butler would challenge exactly this: the community is itself constituted through what it renders unrecognizable. The space of appearance is not closed to certain lives; it is partly defined by their closure.
Judith Butler 會提出這篇文章在結構上拒絕追問的問題：在任何政治決定作出之前，是誰的死亡已被預先建構為值得悼念的？Butler 在《戰爭的框架》中提出的「可悼性」(grievability) 概念指出：表徵的基礎設施——媒體框架、敘事裝置、「傷亡數字」這一範疇本身——早已預先分配了哪些生命作為值得哀悼的生命而顯現。本文將家務工被排除於顯現空間之外視為一種政治失敗，並暗示它在原則上可以被政治意志所逆轉。Butler 則會說：這個失敗早已內建於感知的條件之中。被歸入「傷亡數字」並非對一個可被辨認之人施加的不公正——而是可辨認性本身的事前封閉。文章結尾的問題預設了共同體是一個能夠選擇承認的主體。Butler 會挑戰恰恰是這一點：共同體正是透過它所設為不可辨認之物而構成自身的。顯現空間並非對某些生命關閉；它的部分定義就是那些關閉本身。
Meta-critique / 元批判
The essay argues about exclusion from the space of appearance and is itself a space of appearance from which the Indonesian domestic workers are excluded. To receive this text as philosophical insight requires exactly the kind of public existence the essay says these women are denied: literacy in two languages, familiarity with Greek political vocabulary, access to the institutions — universities, journals, educated reading publics — where this kind of essay circulates. The essay's bilingual sophistication does not bridge the gap; it marks it. The dead women do not read this essay about their dying. They could not have been its intended readers even when alive. This is not a moral objection — the essay has no obligation to be accessible to its subjects. It is a structural observation: philosophical analysis of exclusion, conducted in the idiom of the academy, reproduces the asymmetry it describes. The women are the material of the argument; the argument circulates in a world they were never permitted to enter. The form of the essay — ending on open questions, declining to prescribe — performs a kind of intellectual generosity available only to those already inside the polis.
這篇文章討論被排除於顯現空間之外——而它本身就是一個印尼家務工被排除於外的顯現空間。要把這篇文章當作哲學洞察來接收，需要的正是文章所說這些女性被剝奪的那種公共存在：兩種語言的識讀能力、對希臘政治詞彙的熟悉，以及進入這類文章流通其中的機構的管道。文章的雙語精緻性並未彌合這個裂口；它標誌著這個裂口。那些死去的婦女不會閱讀這篇關於她們之死的文章。即使她們在世，也不會是它預設的讀者。這不是道德上的反對——文章沒有義務對自己書寫的對象開放。這是一個結構性的觀察：以學院慣用語言對排除問題進行哲學分析，本身便再生產了它所描述的不對稱。那些女性是論證的材料；這個論證流通於她們從未被允許進入的世界之中。文章的形式——以開放問題作結、拒絕給出處方——所展演的那種智識上的大方，也只有已在 polis 之內的人才擁有。
Open Questions / 留給讀者的問題
1. The essay ends by refusing to answer its own question — "I will leave it as a question, because it is a real one." Is this refusal a form of intellectual honesty, or does it perform a kind of political resignation from within the safety of the philosophical frame? And can the distinction between the two be made from inside the essay?
2. On her days off, a domestic worker organizes with others in a public square, gives testimony before a labor tribunal, is photographed and named in a union bulletin, acts collectively and is heard. The essay says her plurality is suspended during the period of her labor. Does it resume on Sunday — and if so, what is actually being described by "suspension"?
3. The essay claims that the fire is a public event while the women are not. But the essay itself now names them, circulates their condition, makes their dying visible in a space of philosophical argument. Does this act of naming constitute a form of political appearance — however thin — or does it make the exclusion more complete by showing that their condition can be analyzed, discussed, and left open without anything changing?
一、文章以拒絕回答自己的問題作結——「我將之留作問題，因為它是真實的問題」。這個拒絕是一種智識上的誠實，還是在哲學框架的安全之內展演的一種政治放棄？而這兩者之間的區分，能從文章內部作出嗎？
二、在休假日，一位家務工在公共廣場與他人一起組織、在勞工仲裁庭前作證、被工會刊物拍照並點名、集體行動並被聆聽。文章說她的複數性在勞動期間被懸置。那麼到了週日，它恢復了嗎？如果是，「懸置」實際上描述的是什麼？
三、文章主張那場火災是公共事件，而那些女性不是。但文章本身現在指名了她們、讓她們的處境流通、在哲學論證的顯現空間中讓她們的死亡可見。這個命名的行動，是否構成一種政治顯現——無論多麼薄弱——還是使排除更加徹底，因為它展示了她們的處境可以被分析、被討論、被留作開放，而什麼都不必改變？
Related Essays · 相關文章
Related · 相關
Extends · 延伸
Contradicts · 衝突
- zhuangzi-the-mushroom-that-settled-the-seasons-20260430 — Arendt holds that death without public appearance is politically erased; Zhuangzi's 鼓盆而歌 insists death's meaning is constituted in the Dao independently of political visibility — incompatible foundations for where death's significance resides.
Tagged: Philosophy, Arendt, Democracy & Masses
Curated by Shiva Dragon · https://amshiva.com/writing/arendt-當死亡留在家戶之內-20260427