CHAPTER III DERRIDAS NOTION OF HOSPITALITY A.

Common Notions of Hospitality Contemporary usage of the word, Hospitality, seems to have lost all its depth. Hospitality as an observed phenomenon around the globe means merely what hotels and restaurants do nowadays: making sure that rich people can enjoy lounging around. It could be synonymous with entertainment, with having chums around for dinner. The word could also be used to describe how corporate freeloaders get to watch live sport.1 In the Philippines, Filipinos celebrate hospitality as a way of life. In fact it has become an important trait which had been highlighted at the helm of a vigorous tourism program on the part of government. Filipinos also celebrate their fiestas to showcase their unique brand of hospitality. The culture of hospitality in the country has evolved into an extravagant barrio-fiesta bonanza of lavish meals and beverages plus entertainment galore and pageantry. In the old Philippine tradition, hospitality welcomes "the stranger" as one worthy of being considered a household member, marking a willingness to make room for another's unique presence. 1. Etymology and the Paradox of Hospitality Hospitality is derived from the Latin word hospes (meaning both guest and host)2 which in turn is formed from two words: hostis which originally meant guest, stranger, foreigner, and later morphed through French into the English word host, (meaning a large body of warlike individuals or army, which eventually came to mean hostile foreigner or enemy) and pets (meaning to have power). So the literal meaning of hospes is lord of strangers. Being a host means having power over guests.
Tobias Jones, Open-door Policy. Internet (12/10/11/ 1:00 pm): http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/feb/13/tobias-jones-life-ordinary-hospitality. 2 Mircea Eliade (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Religion (Volume 6), Macmillan Publishing Company, New York, 1987, p. 470.
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Strangers were at once volatile and attractive. This ambiguity was reflected in the seemingly opposite terms surrounding relations with strangers: hostes, meaning both host and enemy; hostis, with roots in words suggesting both enemy and guest.3 The trunk of hospitem, which literally means lord of strangers shifted through Old French and New French while losing the h and the em, then picked up the h again on reentry into Modern English to hospital, and eventually gives us host, meaning someone who receives guests (guest is from the Germanic side), and also originally meant both host and guest and stranger and enemy). And finally, hostia meant victim or sacrifice and in Late Latin and French became a technical ecclesial term for the Body of Christ served during the Eucharist: the Host.4 2. Greek Mythology: Odysseus and Cyclops Today, those who are supposed to be wise do not open their bolted doors to strangers without proof of identity; we fear hitch-hikers, we advise children not to talk to strangers, and we do not expect visitors to bring a dish or bottle of wine when they come for a visit. Rules of etiquette require us to make our guests feel at home, but not to receive people we do not know as our guests in our house. This was not always the case; there was a time, long before the advent of coins, when hospitality to strangers saved lives. In the Iliad and the Odyssey, the practice of hospitality can be perceived as a cardinal virtue among their characters:
When Odysseus visited the land of the Phaeacians, their elderly hero Echeneus reminded their king: Alcinous, said he, it is not creditable to you that a stranger should be seen sitting among the ashes of your hearth; tell him, then, to rise and take a seat on a stool inlaid with silver and let the housekeeper give him some supper, of whatever there may be in the house. King Alcinous offered hospitality without even knowing who Odysseus is,
Babak Amouoghli, Cache (Hidden): A Tale of Hospitality and Hostility. Internet(12/10/11/ 1:43 pm): http://www.philosophynow.org/issue84/Cache_Hidden 4 For the Love of Words: A [Guest] Sabbath Meditation on Hospitality. Internet (12/10/11/ 1:43 pm): http://schmexas.wordpress.com/2011/07/10/for-the-love-of-words-a-guest-sabbath-meditation-on-hospitality/
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although he suspects his guest of being a god. Not only hospitality, but first his daughter, Nausicaa, and then an escort home, even after the unknown stranger assures him he's only mortal. Menalaus did the same without requiring their names, reminding his men that they were also strangers during their long journeys and often enjoyed the hospitality of other peoples houses before they were able to come home. 5

Odysseus, the great wanderer is himself praised for his exemplary hosting. In both epics, the gods themselves sometimes put on human disguises and assume the role of guests who would later give them good news or extraordinary gifts. Thus, hospitality implies their reverence and respect for the gods that creates a readiness for reciprocal relationships with strangers. Those who do not attain such openness are considered barbarians. A single act of welcoming usually by means of a meal can result in a bond of friendship that lasts for generations.6 Hospitality had rules and the most infamous breakers are the suitors of Penelope, the wife of Odysseus (Ulysses). Odysseus as a philosophical hero is hailed as model of tough friendship (that is, true friendship) by Philodemus, Plutarch and Maximus of Tyre. The unwillingness of Odysseus to accept received opinion at face value plus his creativity and the intelligent originality of his method makes him a moral reformer in a world marred by preconceptions. His unconventional behavior puts our conventional judgments to the question.7 Although he was clever and cunning, he used his craftiness in the pursuit of heroic deeds and never for selfish reasons. The hospitality story of Odysseus and Cyclops is all about meals and strangers, or rather strangers as meals:
This Homeric tale is layered with cultural meanings. The Cyclops, a race of giants, mirrored the custom of family worship, where each extended family-clan maintained independent, severe laws based on the religion of the family gods, the manes. To say the Cyclops had a single eye was to say that they had only one way of seeing things (one track
N.S. Gill, Odysseus the Stranger: The Worlds of Homer and Odysseus. Internet (12/10/11/ 2:00 pm): http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/homerodyssey/a/OdysseusStrange.htmhttp://ancienthistory.about.com/od/homer odyssey/a/OdysseusStrange.htm 6 Mircea Eliade (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Religion, p. 471. 7 Silvia Montiglio, From Villain to Hero: Odysseus in Ancient Thought, University of Michigan, USA, 2001, pp.18-21.
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mind): their only devotion was to their family and race; strangers were not tolerated. In fact, these Cyclops who lived on caves were infamous for their treatment of strangers. Their labyrinthian caves can be compared to the digestive tract (an extended idea of anamorphy by formalizing the element of the double-image as fractal and as a transition from cyclopean to a hospitable society).

In this traveler tale, Odysseus visits the cave of the Cyclops as an experiment to test their custom if he could avail the gift of hospitality which by tradition was intended for strangers. The experiment failed. The golden-tongued Greek was not able to charm the giant, Polyphemus (son of Neptune) who refused to honor the custom of hospitality and instead ate some of the travelers crew. Odysseus did not know that the Cyclops had another custom; the giants were practitioners of cannibalism. The escape of Odysseus comes only after managing a two-stage diversionary trick. Odysseus managed to escape, first, by blinding the giant and next by inventing the name nobody which served a double meaning. Odysseus and the remainder of his crew made their escape underneath sheepskins in order not to attract the neighboring Cyclops. When Polyphemus tried to alert his neighbors for help he shouted: Nobody has blinded me. However, the other giants could not make any sense out of what he was saying. Hospitality in Homers time was well shown during long travels (The Odyssey) through the guest-friend relationship known as xenia. There are many possible reasons why hospitality was more prevalent in those times.
(a) Traveling in Homers time was much more extensive and lengthier. The less advanced methods of transportation such as by boat or by foot were much slower and many more nights were spent away from home in many different locations. There were no hotels or inns where travelers could pay and stay the night. Even if there were, travelers probably could not afford to pay for every night they were gone. Because of this, travelers had to rely on the hospitality of others for shelter, food, and protection. There was, however, some payment for this hospitality in the form of a gift exchange. (b) Another possible reason was the fact that all nations during those times allowed travelers to enter their territory safely. Without such hospitality, strangers could be captured or even killed for entering a foreign land. The Greek guest-friendship xenia may have been formed from this. Xenia is the Greek relationship between two people from different regions. This

allowed for the members of the relationship to safely travel into the other members territory and receive a place to stay and something to eat. (c) Another possible explanation for the amount of hospitality shown is that the Greeks believed the gods wanted them to show hospitality to anyone who showed up at their homes. It was also believed that turning away someone and not providing them this hospitality would result in some form of punishment from the gods. During this time, hospitality was treated as a test from the gods. This means that it is the god, Xenios Zeus, who demands magnificent hospitality upon all mortals. Since hosts had no way of knowing who their visitors were, they were forced to treat every visitor as if they were a god. By treating every guest like a god, there is no mistake of accidentally treating a god differently, just in case one was to show up at their door disguised as a stranger. This appears to be done through fear, not generosity. In fact, many of the hosts ask Odysseus to pray for their happiness to the gods in return for their hospitality. (d) Finally, hospitality could have been used to spread ones name and bring them a sense of fame if they would provide a high standard of hospitality to strangers. It also could have been a way to show how wealthy one was.8

It is said that as the customs of hospitality spread with trade and exploration in the preclassical Mediterranean world, political alliances were extended by the exchange of gifts and intermarriages.9 3. Hospitality, Food, and Consumerism in the Tourism Industry Without hospitality, food is simply nourishment, a satisfaction of a bodily hunger. With hospitality, even on a micro-scale, preparing and eating food becomes the most intensive and direct of any significative medium.
Tourism still offers the potential for the everyday to be transmogrified into the irrational exotic through hospitality as a relational reality between host and guest. Hospitality may be (re)constructed anew. Hospitality, if considered as the permeation of borders and subsequent access into others culture, is ideally situated to offer cultural experiences to tourists. Tourism offers opportunities for hospitality to enhance the concept of otherness. While the tourist as consumer is limited in the ability to cross borders, it is possible to identify the potential performance differences when socialized to become the guest. Hermetic boundary-crossing and the role of the stranger open up cuisine to sophistication, theatricality, a relation to an audience. 10

The tourist as observer consumes hospitality products and services as an interested bystander. While food and the meal have been recognized as the everyday, it is suggested the
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The Value of Hospitality, Internet (12/13/11/9:30 am): http://www1.union.edu/wareht/gkcultur/guide/8/web1.html D. Kunze, The Missing Guest: The Twisted Topology of Hospitality in Eating Architecture by Paulette Singley, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, 2004, p. 169. (See also Internet (12/10/11/ 11:21am): http://art3idea.psu.edu/locus/missing_guest.pdf ) 10 D. Kunze, The Missing Guest: The Twisted Topology of Hospitality, pp. 184-185.

tourist gaze can be turned inwards to look at the familiar and everyday, potentially offering a different kind of experience. As a result, food, the meal experience and hospitality can be assigned cultural meanings and in turn interpret meanings. The tourist both enacts intersubjective hospitality while simultaneously consuming the individuality of the negotiated cultural encounter. The search for the real and authentic experience is realized through her/his socialization as stranger.11
Philoxenia can be seen in many ancient civilizations and in ancient religious scriptures of varied religions, although in its true essence that type of hospitality is given without expecting anything in return, the expectations of profit in the hospitality industry create a paradox that alienates the notion of philoxenia from that of hospitality as an industry.12

4. Religious Presentations of Hospitality The Greek word for hospitality used in the New Testament is philoxenia, meaning literally love of the stranger. And xenos, meaning stranger, in Greek, also means both guest and host. Thus, philoxenia means hospitality for the stranger. It really implies not so much one person doing for another, but an atmosphere that brings people (different people, people who are in some way strangers to each other) together in love. It suggests a kind of mutuality which is very different from charity/volunteer work or any superficial niceness.13
The act of hospitality as practiced by many worldly people today is somehow hallowed; rather than being something frivolous a way to shower around the glitter of consumerism. Hospitality is actually sacramental. And perhaps it is only true hospitality or mystical hospitality when the person being welcomed is not an old friend but actually a stranger or even an enemy. It suggests a bond of equal reciprocity.

St. Francis once said: we are all brothers (dual honoring). We have to offer hospitality towards one another without grumbling (1Peter 4:9).

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David Scott, (Re)Constructing Hospitality as a Relational Reality. Internet (12/10/11/ 2:52 pm): http://schemexa.wordpress.com/2011/07/08/berry-pies-being-rich 12 Ionnis Pantelidis, Spirit of Philoxenia Essence of Hospitality Explained. Internet (12/13/11 1:34 pm): http://spiritofphiloxenia.blogspot.com/p/philoxenia-explained.html 13 Janet Robertson Duggins, Practicing our Faith: Hospitality. Internet (12/12/11/ 1:37 pm): http://wpcportage.org/1-31-10.htm wpcportage.org/1-31-10.htm

In Genesis 18, Abrahams philoxeny is depicted as the believers enjoyment of communion with the divine. Abrahams three guests respond to the lavish banquet with the miraculous news that Sarah would soon bear a son. It is not surprising that in rabbinic Judaism, early Christianity, and in Islam, Abraham becomes a kind of Patron Saint of Hosts. The thought behind this tradition seems to be that hospitality merits a reward from God and must be encouraged. 14

Christian Hospitality is making people feel like they are not strangers, like they 'belong.' In the New Testament, hospitality was expected, at least as the disciples travelled about Judea and Galilee. When Jesus sent out the disciples (Matthew 10:10 - 13), he told them not to take gold or silver, but to find a worthy person and stay in their house while they are in town.
Hospitality is not really about entertaining people's fancy; it is primarily about meeting essential needs (Rom 12:13). Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? Therefore, "when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed" (Luke 14:13, 14).

Hospitality is not so much about how you treat your friends, but how you treat strangers. Though the rich man who ended up in hell in Luke 16 was hospitable to his own, yet he neglected the poor man. Hospitality is particularly a challenge for Christians who grew up in xenophobic cultures. Such Christians may also find it challenging to practice generosity.
Hospitality was recommended towards itinerant evangelists: "Dear friend, you are faithful in what you are doing for the brothers, even though they are strangers to you. They have told the church about your love. You will do well to send them on their way in a manner worthy of God. It was for the sake of the Name that they went out, receiving no help from the pagans. We ought therefore to show hospitality to such men so that we may work together for the truth (3John 1:5-8). This is the particular case Jesus was alluding to in Matt 25:35 "I was a stranger and you invited me in.

Jesus and Paul receive material hospitality but demonstrate by their words and actions that they are actually hosts to their welcomers on behalf of Gods kingdom (Mt. 9:10-13; Lk. 7:36-50; 24:28-35; Acts 20:6-12).15 The intermingling of guest and host roles in the person of Jesus is part of what makes the story of hospitality so compelling for Christians. Jesus welcomes and needs welcome; Jesus requires that followers depend on and provide hospitality. The

14 15

Mircea Eliade (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Religion, p. 471. Mircea Eliade (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Religion, p. 471.

practice of hospitality is always located within the larger picture of Jesus sacrificial welcome to all who come to him.16
There are, certainly, risks involved, but that is why hospitality has always been seen, in every culture, as sacred: in order to honor the stranger, you have to put at risk what's most precious, your home and your family. Being a guest or a host involves sacrifices, but that is precisely why it is sacred: it is an act of worship an offering. 17

In Hinduism offering hospitality is fundamental to Hindu culture and providing food and shelter to a needy stranger was and is a traditional duty of the householder. The unexpected guest is called the atithi, literally meaning without a set time. Scriptures enjoin that the atithi be treated as God. It was especially important to extend hospitality towards brahmanas, sannyasis and other holy people.
Tradition teaches that, no matter how poor one is, one should always offer three items: sweet words, a sitting place, and refreshments (at least a glass of water). The flower garland is offered to special guests and dignitaries, as a symbol of loving exchange. Scripture also enjoins that one should treat visiting enemies so well that they will forget their animosity. 18

Krishna sets the example of how to receive a respectable guest:

Here, in a story from the Bhagavata-Purana, he washes the feet of an impoverished brahmana. A graphic example is that of the warrior class who would fight during the day and in the evening socializes with adversaries. Westerners visiting India (and other places in the East) are often astonished by the welcoming attitude towards guests and visiting strangers.19

In Islam, the fundamental notion underlying the theory and practice of hospitality is refuge and protection.20 Islamic hospitality has played a significant role in bringing people together and contributed to preserving traditions and social ties. In Islam the essence of hospitality is to serve the guests with cheerfulness: when guests arrive there should be no sense

Bob Stone, Priorities for Extraordinary Times, Part 3. Internet (12/10/11/ 4:53 pm): http://www.eagleflight.org/cyberstudies/actions-and-attitudes-of-a-growing-church/151-priorities-forextraordinary-times-part-3 17 Tobias Jones, Open-door Policy. Internet (12/10/11/ 1:00 pm): 18 How Important is Hospitality in Hindu Culture? Internet (12/10/11/ 5:00 pm): http://sawaal.ibibo.com/family/how-important-hospitality-hindu-culture-435466.html 19 Definitions of Hospitality in Religions & Regions. Internet (12/12/11/1:24 pm): http://www.slideshare.net/nayeemk/definitions-of-hospitality-in-religions-regions-presentation 20 Mircea Eliade (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Religion, p. 471.

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of frustration, rather without lavishness whatever best one can arrange should be offered to the guests. The Holy Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be on him) said that hospitality was a symptom of faith. This notion was not limited to one's near and dear ones, rather each guest, regardless of religion, was served well and taken cared of. Sometimes misunderstanding may lead the guests to be unfair. However the host should maintain fortitude. The fundamentals for a host towards a guest are patience, fortitude and courtesy. 21
When one becomes a Muslim, one is henceforth Gods djar (protected neighbor). In Saudi Arabia, the Muslim guest is said to be greeted with this couplet: O Guest of ours, though you have come, though you have visited us, and though you have honored our dwellings, we verily are the real guests and you are the Lord of this house. Virtuous hosts prevail upon their guests to stay longer than the three-day rule under their custom 22

In Judaism, showing hospitality (hakhnasat orchim) to guests is considered a mitzvah. When one knows of strangers who are hungry or need a place to relax, it becomes a legal obligation. Some rabbis consider hakhnasat orchim (literally the bringing in of strangers) to be a part of gemilut hasadim (giving of loving kindness).23
Hospitality is thought to be blessed by bestowal of Gods presence: Three who have eaten at one table and said over it words of Torah are as if they had eaten from the table of God (Avot 3.4) Rabbinic Judaism sometimes employs hospitality as a metaphor for the teaching and learning of Torah: Let thy house be a place of meeting for the wise, and dust thyself with the dust of their feet and drink their words with thirst (Avot 1.4).24

According to Nayeem Khan, regardless of religion or nationality, caste or creed, hospitality is the customers birth right and they shall have it.25 Rev. Janet Robertson Duggins holds that the blurring of the host/guest divide is a mark of true hospitality: nobody's a charity case, nobody's a do-gooder: we are all just getting by together as best we can.26

Merits of Hospitality and Jalsa Salana U.K. Internet (12/11/11/2:26 pm): http://www.alislam.org/archives/2007/summary/FSS20070720-EN.html 22 Mircea Eliade (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Religion, p. 471. 23 Ariel Scheib, Hospitality. Internet (12/08/11/ 2:45 pm): http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/hospitality.html 24 Mircea Eliade (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Religion, p. 471. 25 Definitions of Hospitality in Religions & Regions. Internet (12/12/11/1:24 pm): 26 Janet Robertson Duggins, Practicing our Faith: Hospitality. Internet (12/12/11/ 1:37 pm):

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Should the Church have to welcome others without reserve? These are poignant and valid questions which explores the practical implications of neighborly love, underscoring the centrality of hospitality to Christian faith. Amos Yong is the Pentecostal theologian who reasoned that deconstruction is not a threat to Christianity but a gift inviting us, perhaps, to recover ancient disciplines and to interpret the world--communally--through the lens of God's revelation in the Scriptures. He believed that the pneumatological imagination provides a theological rational for preserving the integrity of difference and otherness, but not at the expense of engagement and understanding. It alerts us and invites us to listen to the plurality of discourses and languages in the hope that even through strange tongues (Acts 2) the voice of the Holy Spirit may still speak and communicate. Theres both solidness and permeability to his thinking a certain hospitality that is not willing to close down the possibility of God.27

In all the culture and traditions examined above, whether as a virtue or as a rite, hospitality through gift exchanges and the sharing of food or shelter, peace and harmony are achieved in what would otherwise be a chaotic world.28 B. The Derridean Concept of Hospitality: The Guest-Host Framework
Hospitality is a very general name for all our relations to the other.

The advent of the stranger, as Dillon states, is fundamentally deconstructive. It always brings to presence the strangeness, heterogeneity, and supplementariety of the human way of being as such, and thereby, also, the political challenge human being faces to address that strangeness in survivable and hospitable ways.29 The relativity of the stranger exists because the stranger is a concept without a counter-concept: the category of the stranger is the counterconcept (or contrary concept) to all concepts of social order. And this, exactly, is the promise of the stranger. Hospitality is a contradictory concept and experience in itself that is possible only on the condition of its impossibility, producing itself as impossible, which is the condition of its possibility.

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Engaging and Understanding Difference and Otherness: Yong and Williams. Internet (12/12/11/2:56 pm): http://prodigal.typepad.com/prodigal_kiwi/2011/06/engaging-and-understanding-difference-and-otherness-yongand-williams.html 28 Mircea Eliade (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Religion, pp. 471-173 29 Mustafa Dike, Pera Peras Poros: Longings for Spaces of Hospitality. Internet (12/12/11/2:14 pm): http://www.uvm.edu/~jwaldron/Theory,%20Culture%20and%20Society/12dikec.pdf

The notion of hospitality also raises difficult questions concerning the distinction between the other and the stranger. The stranger is not necessarily an other although he/she could easily become one. The whole point of trying to advance a notion of hospitality is to welcome the stranger rather than rendering him/her as the other. It refers to solidarity of strangers in that every act of engagement is a form of solidarity. It is aimed at pointing to the perils of closure, at the prevention of closing spaces to the stranger, othering him/her. It is a notion aimed at encouraging engagement with the stranger without losing the spaces for alterity on both sides. The notion of hospitality allows the guest to remain a stranger instead of becoming another (on one extreme), or of being assimilated (on the other). 30 (Incorporation and Introjection in Mourning/Honoring)

Derrida argues in Of Hospitality that hospitality is an aporia, a possible impossibility. He makes a distinction between two forms of hospitality: conditional and unconditional. Thus, Derrida explains the difference between the laws (plural) of hospitality and the law of unlimited hospitality: 1. The Laws of Hospitality (Conditional Hospitality) Those rights and duties that are always conditioned and conditional, defined by GrecoRoman tradition and even the Judeo-Christian one, by all of law and all philosophy of law up to Kant and Hegel in particular, across the family, civil society and the state. For a country to be hospitable towards immigrants, for example, we need guidelines, an immigration process, rights and duties, etc. For that, we need means of identification, such as a birth certificate or other papers. These conditions are synonymous with having the power to control guests. However, as we move further in the direction of conditions, we get further from hospitality.
Too much regulation leads to no hospitality: consider detention centers for immigrants. The imposed conditions can be so severe that the guest virtually becomes a hostage. But on the other hand, no conditions at all also lead to losing all thats necessary for the relationship of hospitality to continue. It is hospitable to welcome a guest into our home without setting conditions; but if this is allowed to an absolute degree, giving the guest everything we own, or if the guest takes over the house by any means, the house and everything else which enabled us to offer hospitality now belong to the guest. We are not at home anymore we are in a house that does not belong to us, and so cannot offer hospitality in it.

Derrida says that hostility is one of the many ways to regulate an undesirable foreigner. According to Derrida, anyone who encroaches on my home, on my ipseity [selfhood], on my

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Mustafa Dikec, Pera Peras Poros: Longings for Spaces of Hospitality. Internet (12/12/11/2:14 pm):

power of hospitality, on my sovereignty as host, I start to regard as an undesirable foreigner, and virtually as an enemy. The irony is that this hostility towards the undesirable foreigner was triggered by the desire to protect what gives one the possibility to host. Derrida also talks of this desire: I want to be master at home, head of house, to be able to receive whomever I like there.31 Derrida further explains that we will regard as a hostile subject anyone who invades and threatens our mastery at home, and we risk becoming their hostage.32
There is a tradition of cosmopolitanism which comes to us from (1) Greek thought with the Stoics, who have a concept of the citizen of the world and from (2) St. Paul in the Christian tradition, a certain call for a citizen of the world as a brother. St. Paul says that we are all brothers, that is as sons of God, so we are not foreigners, we belong to the world as citizens of the world. We could simply dream of a democracy which would be cosmopolitical, a cosmopolitan form and it is in this tradition that we could follow up until Kant for instance, in whose concept of cosmopolitanism we find the conditions for hospitality. But in the concept of the cosmopolitical in Kant there are a number of conditions: first, you should of course welcome the stranger, the foreigner, to the extent that he is a citizen of another country, you grant him the right to visit and not to stay, and there are a number of other conditions. But this concept of the cosmopolitical is a very limited concept, limited precisely by the reference to the political, to the state, to the authority of the state, to citizenship, and to strict control of residency and period of stay.

His point is relatively simple; to be hospitable, it is first necessary that one must have the power to host. Hospitality hence makes claims to property ownership and it also partakes in the desire to establish a form of self-identity. Secondly, in order to be hospitable, the host must also have some kind of control over the people who are being hosted. If the guests take over a house through force, then the host is no longer being hospitable towards them precisely because they are no longer in control of the situation. Any attempt to behave hospitably is partly betrothed to the keeping of guests under control, to the closing of boundaries, to nationalism, and even to the exclusion of particular groups or ethnicities.33 2. The Law of Unlimited Hospitality (Alterity as Non-exclusionary Justice)

Rachel Bowlby (trans.), Of Hospitality/ Anne Dufuormantelle invites Jacques Derrida to respond, Stanford University Press, USA, 2001, p. 53. 32 Babak Amouoghli, Cache (Hidden): A Tale of Hospitality and Hostility. Internet(12/10/11/ 1:43 pm ): 33 Rachel Bowlby (trans.), Of Hospitality/ Anne Dufuormantelle invites Jacques Derrida to respond, pp. 151-5.

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To give the new arrival all of ones home and oneself, to give him or her ones own, our own, without asking a name or compensation, or fulfillment of even the smallest condition.34
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, my culture, my nation, my state, and myself. I don't have to open it, because it is open, it is open before I make a decision about it: then I have to keep it open or try to keep it open unconditionally. But of course this unconditionality is a frightening thing, it's scary. If we decide everyone will be able to enter my space, my house, my home, my city, my state, my language, and if we think what I think, namely that this is entering my space unconditionally may well be able to displace everything in my space, to upset, to undermine, to even destroy, then the worst may happen and I am open to this, the best and the worst. Since this unconditional hospitality may lead to a perversion of this ethics of friendship, we have to condition this unconditionality, to negotiate the relation between this unconditional injunction and the necessary condition, to organize this hospitality, which means laws, rights, conventions, borders of course, laws on immigration and so on and so forth.

If we contemplate giving up everything that we seek to possess and call our own, then most of us can empathize with just how difficult enacting any absolute hospitality would be. Despite this, however, Derrida insists that the whole idea of hospitality depends upon such an altruistic concept and is inconceivable without it. In fact, it is this internal tension that keeps the concept alive.35
Alterity is not only interruptive but constitutive as well. The point, then, it seems to me, is to take the question of the stranger, and the question of the stranger not as nuisances to be avoided, but rather as potentially liberating challenges, liberating in their capacity to question and urge one to question the closures that are comfortably taken for granted as safe spaces those safe spaces called home. Hospitality is also about recognition that we are hosts and guests at the same time in multiple and shifting ways. Hospitality, in this sense, is a refusal to conceive the host and the guest as pre-constituted identities. It is about the recognition that they are mutually constitutive of each other, and thus, relational and shifting as all identities are.36

34

Rachel Bowlby (trans.), Of Hospitality/ Anne Dufuormantelle invites Jacques Derrida to respond, p. 77. Jacques Derrida. Internet (08/11/11/2:00 am): http://www.iep.utm.edu/derrida 36 Mustafa Dikec, Pera Peras Poros: Longings for Spaces of Hospitality. Internet (12/12/11/2:14 pm):
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The following is a condensed excerpt from one of the interviews with Derrida37 which shows how hospitality is connected with his political ethics as a deconstructive philosophy and why it should prompt us to begin our own deconstructive work and re-think our identity:
We all have, especially in Europe, this problem of immigration, to what extent we should welcome the Other so in order to think of a new politics of hospitality, a new relationship to citizenship, to have to re-think all these problems. I think that is what I try to call how a New International in Spectres of Marx should go beyond the concept of the cosmopolitical strictly speaking. We have to do a lot of things, and to work of course within that space within what we call politics today (whether in the domestic or international sphere). We must think and be oriented by something which is more than cosmopolitical, more than citizenship, beyond the classical concept of democracy. So you see how strange is this itinerary calling for a new concept of democracy grounded - assuming this is a ground, and I am not sure it is - grounded on this groundless experience of friendship, which should not be limited in the way it has been, and a concept of democracy which would re-define the political not only beyond the nation-state but beyond the cosmopolitical itself. Democracy should not be limited by the classical concept of citizenship, by the concept of border and immigration. There is an urgent task to re-elaborate, to re-think, to re-engage and to be committed differently with these issues. On the notion of welcoming someone, of being hospitable to them: well, firstly, welcoming to what? To a thing, whatever that might be? But secondly, it seems to me that it implies a form of acceptance and maybe inclusion and I think that the notion of inclusion is problematic because it tends to imply some form of assimilation, and again assimilating someone to what? Which carries us on to the notion of equality, which can be coercive, and I wondered what you thought about the notion of coercion and equality: people are not necessarily equal, nations are not equal, states are not equal and what is the form of agency that will make them equal and therefore perhaps avoid assimilation? I have to accept if I offer unconditional hospitality that the Other may ruin my own space or impose his or her own culture or his or her own language. That is the problem: hospitality should be neither assimilation, acculturation, nor simply the occupation of my space by the Other. That is why it has to be negotiated at every instant, and the decision for hospitality, the best rule for this negotiation, has to be invented at every second with all the risks involved, and it is very risky without a pre-given rule. That is what we have to invent - a new language for instance - to invent a new way of translating in which translation does not simply go one way but both ways, and how can we do that? That is the aporia, and this is political, the new form - but it had always been a form - of politics, but today it has, because of the development of communication, of crossing borders, of telecommunications, it has new forms of urgency. Everything I have said up to now was referring to what you called globalization, what we call in French mondialization. But why did I not use the name 'globalization'? Because today it is a confused concept and it is the screen for a number of non-concepts and sometimes of political tricks and political strategies; ofcourse something like globalization is happening - not only today ofcourse, it started a long time ago - but today there is an acceleration of this mondialization, but as you know, using this word, this key word, allows a number of political appropriations - in the name of the free market for instance. People
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Geoffrey Bennington, Politics and Friendship: A Discussion with Jacques Derrida. Internet (1 December 1997): http://hydra.humanities.uci.edu/derrida/pol+fr.html

try to have us swallow the idea that globalization means the free market, or that the concentration of tele-technological communications beyond the States is what makes globalization possible, and what should be supported or simply accepted. I would not simply rely upon the word 'globalization' in order to name this phenomenon because I do not think globalization is a ground, but this is the space in which these problems take their shape. The transformation of international law implies a transformation of the global market, and you cannot touch the global market without touching capitalism. Capitalism is precisely tied to this organization of the political, the classical organization of the political. At the same time I think it is a little more complex than that: the development of new forms of capitalism is responsible for, on the one hand, the consolidation of the old concepts of politics, democracy, friendship, etc., but at the same time undermining this tradition. It is because of new developments of capitalism that everything is shaken. When you see that for instance the concentration of the powers of the media and tele-technologies goes beyond state power, becomes international, on the one hand it confirms the traditional structures of politics, and on the other it deconstructs them. There is a deconstructing effect of capitalism that is why the approach to capitalism is very complex it is a central problem. When I am not giving a lecture I try to do my best as a French citizen to fight for the transformation of the laws. In this field of concrete and urgent questions, we have to do both, to speak and to act. Democracy means, minimally, equality - and here you see why friendship is an important key, because in friendship, even in classical friendship, what is involved is reciprocity, equality, symmetry, and so on and so forth. There is no democracy except as equality among everyone. Q8: Do you think that in some ways because there is this interplay of the Other and yourself in friendship that you are in some ways the Other and that the Other is in you? JD: Yes, it complicates the issue, because the Other is not simply the Other as coming from the outside so to speak. One is the one, I am the one, one is more or less the one and everyone is more or less the one and more or less one with him or herself, which means that the Other is already inside, and has to be sheltered and welcomed in a certain way. We also have to negotiate that is a complicated unconscious operation, to negotiate the hospitality within ourselves - to this one in ourselves, to this image that might exclude this other one or be allergic to this other one. We know that someone who does not negotiate this hospitality in him or herself in a certain way cannot be hospitable to the Other, that is what the Greeks taught us. That you have to solve the problem within yourself, and it is already a society, a multiplicity of heterogeneous singularities, to be really smiling to the Other. If you are at war with yourself you may be allergic to the Other, that is what complicates the issue.

(Emphasis supplied)