Description
The emergent paradigm of hospitality studies does not have a coherent philosophical
foundation. In seeking to identify a philosophy of hospitality this paper explores Derrida’s
contribution, along with other writers in philosophy and postcolonial theory, who are either writing in
the field or have developed his works
International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research
The hospitality phenomenon: philosophical enlightenment?
Kevin D. O'Gorman
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Kevin D. O'Gorman, (2007),"The hospitality phenomenon: philosophical enlightenment?", International
J ournal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research, Vol. 1 Iss 3 pp. 189 - 202
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Conrad Lashley, (2007),"Discovering hospitality: observations from recent research",
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Conrad Lashley, (2007),"Studying hospitality: beyond the envelope", International J ournal of Culture,
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The hospitality phenomenon:
philosophical enlightenment?
Kevin D. O’Gorman
Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management,
The University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK
Abstract
Purpose – The emergent paradigm of hospitality studies does not have a coherent philosophical
foundation. In seeking to identify a philosophy of hospitality this paper explores Derrida’s
contribution, along with other writers in philosophy and postcolonial theory, who are either writing in
the ?eld or have developed his works.
Design/methodology/approach – Derrida and others are often cited within the context of the
emerging paradigm of hospitality studies. In order to examine and critically evaluate the possibility of
the construct of a philosophy of the phenomenon of hospitality, the review of the philosophical
concepts is set within three perspectives: individual moral philosophy; hospitality and the nation
states, and hospitality and language.
Findings – Although examining the writings of Derrida and others provides an insight into the
phenomenon of hospitality, a coherent philosophy of hospitality seems to be an enigma; possibly
because hospitality is not a matter of objective knowledge.
Research limitations/implications – In order to inform the emergent paradigm of hospitality
studies there needs to be a continuing multi-disciplinary study of hospitality; further inter and intra
disciplinary research and investigation is required.
Originality/value – The paper illustrates that critical analysis is more important than the
unquestioning acceptance of the views of philosophical theorists.
Keywords Hospitality services, Hospitality management, Philosophical concepts
Paper type Conceptual paper
Introduction
Since, the publication of In Search of Hospitality – Theoretical Perspectives and Debates
(Telfer, 2000), there has been an increasingly wide-ranging inter-disciplinary
perspective to the exploration of the concept of hospitality. There is already
considerable asserts that there is already considerable justi?cation for the study of
hospitality as “a core cultural and social concept in higher education” and supports this
by citing various authors as advocates of this approach. Lashley (2004, p. 13) supports
this view in succinctly stating: “the study of hospitality allows for a general broad
spectrum of enquiry, and the study for allows studies that support the management of
hospitality” (Lashley, 2004, p. 15).
Morrison and O’Gorman (2006, p. 4) note that Lashley’s statement explicitly
acknowledges that the intellectual growth and progression of hospitality as an
academic ?eld of study is best served through the critical analysis of the concept of
hospitality as broadly conceived:
Academic reputation can be enhanced through the celebration of its diversity and
multi-disciplinary as a specialist ?eld of study, with systematic, vibrant partnering and
intellectual exchange of hospitality and of discipline-based academics, unfettered by
arti?cially created boundaries that serve to isolate and perpetuate insularity in the process of
knowledge creation and higher education.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/1750-6182.htm
The hospitality
phenomenon
189
Received January 2007
Revised March 2007
Accepted April 2007
International Journal of Culture,
Tourism and Hospitality Research
Vol. 1 No. 3, 2007
pp. 189-202
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
1750-6182
DOI 10.1108/17506180710817729
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Hospitality is no longer synonymous with hospitality management and the hospitality
industry. The phenomenon of hospitality is becoming a recognized ?eld of study. This
has been further supported with the publication of Hospitality: A Social Lens where
Lashley et al. (2007) argue that hospitality research has gained a more
multidisciplinary perspective.
Despite the increasing multidisciplinary study of the phenomenon of hospitality,
although a clear and coherent philosophy of hospitality has not yet been proposed, the
writings of Jacques Derrida on hospitality have been in?uential. Derrida’s writings
have had an impact on a wide range of disciplines and areas of study including
education, gender, law, literature, mathematics, politics, psychology, race and
theology. This paper explores Derrida’s contribution to the philosophy of hospitality,
picking up on some other writers in philosophy and postcolonial theory who are either
writing in the ?eld or have developed his writing. After a short biography, the paper
focuses on three separate issues: moral philosophy of hospitality from the perspective
of the guest host relationship; hospitality between peoples and nation states; and the
use of language in hospitality provision and consumption.
Who was Derrida?
The of?ce of the President of France announced the death Jacques Derrida in 2004,
saying “in him France gave the world one of the major ?gures of the intellectual life of
our times.” Internationally, Deutscher (2005) notes that Derrida was widely considered
the most important French philosopher of the late twentieth century; he was also the
subject of three ?lms and a number of media controversies. Derrida was credited as the
inventor of “deconstruction,” the practice of dismantling texts by revealing their
assumptions and contradictions. Normally, life is lived at the level where things are
presumed and people are accustomed to think in narrow ways. Deconstruction
attempts to highlight just how much is taken for granted in contemporary conceptual
thought and language. In 1967, Derrida’s (1973, 1976, 1978) international reputation
had been secured by the publication of three books, and he went on to publish
40 different works.
Derrida grew up as a Jew in Algeria in the 1940s, during and after the anti-Semitic
French colonial regime. He had been excluded in his youth from his school after it had
reduced the quotas for Jews. Confronted with violent racism, he avoided school during
the period when he was obliged to attend a school for Jewish students and teachers.
He eventually managed to gain entry to study philosophy in Paris at the E
´
cole Normale
Supe´rieur. However, Deutscher (2005, p. 10) records that:
. . . his subsequent experiences as a young student in Paris were isolated and unhappy,
consisting of intermittent depression, nervous anxiety and a seesaw between sleeping tablets
and amphetamines resulted in exam failures in the early 1950s.
He then studied in University of Louvain in Belgium where he wrote his thesis on
Husserl (Derrida, 2003); later taught at the Sorbonne, and then returned to the E
´
cole
Normale Supe´rieur as a lecturer. In 1983, Stocker (2006) records that Derrida became
the founding director of the Colle `ge International de Philosophie, where open lecture
courses were given by a volunteer body of philosophers.
Various philosophers have tried to attach different labels to Derrida: a pragmatist
(Rorty, 1982); a post-Kantian transcendentalist (Gasche´ 1986), and a linguistic
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philosopher (Norris, 1987) showing the dif?culty in locating deconstructionalism
within philosophy, let alone an academic discipline. As well as being one of the most
cited modern scholars in the humanities, he was undoubtedly one of the most
controversial. In 1992, a proposal to award him an honorary doctorate at Cambridge
University caused such uproar that, for the ?rst time in 30 years, the university
was forced to put the matter to a ballot; with the degree only being awarded by a
majority vote.
From various biographies and obituaries, it is clear that Derrida was undoubtedly a
controversial character; his dramatic early failures were contrasted by the outstanding
successes in later life. His work advanced the deconstruction of the very concepts of
knowledge and truth, and provoked strong feelings within his readers who, just like
the Senate of Cambridge University, are often divided over his writings, considering
them to be on the one hand absurd, vapid and pernicious or on the other hand logical,
momentous and lively.
Individual moral philosophy: host
Derrida (2000a) de?nes hospitality as inviting and welcoming the “stranger.” This takes
place on two levels: the personal level where the “stranger” is welcomed into the home;
and at the level of individual countries. His interest was heightened by the etymology of
Benveniste (1969) who analyzed “hospitality,” as being from a Latin root, but derived
from two proto Indo-European words that have the meanings of “stranger,” “guest” and
“power.” Thus, in the “destruction” of the word, there can be seen:
. . . an essential “self limitation” built right into the idea of hospitality, which preserves the
distance between one’s own and the “stranger,” between owning one’s own property and
inviting the “other” into one’s home (Caputo, 2002, p. 110).
So, as Derrida (2000a, p. 13) observes there is always a little hostility in all hosting and
hospitality, constituting what he called a certain “hostipitality”:
If I say “Welcome,” I am not renouncing my mastery, something that becomes transparent in
people whose hospitality is a way of showing off how much they own or who make their
guests uncomfortable and afraid to touch a thing.
To Derrida then, the notion of having and retaining the mastery of the house underlies
hospitality:
Make yourself at home’ this is a self-limiting invitation . . . it means: please feel at home, act as
if you were at home, but, remember, that is not true, this is not your home but mine, and you
are expected to respect my property (Caputo, 2002, p. 111).
Telfer (2000) also explores this issue when discussing the motivation behind
hospitality. There is a limitation to the amount of hospitality that “hosts” can and wish
to offer, just as important are the intentions that that lie behind any hospitable act:
there surely is a distinction to be made between hospitality for pleasure and hospitality
that is born out of a sense of duty. She considers hospitality to be a moral virtue, and
articulates hospitable motives to be:
That in which concern for the guests’ pleasure and welfare, for its own sake, is
predominant. These can include entertaining for pleasure where that pleasure largely
depends on knowing that one is pleasing the guests, and sense of duty where there is also
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concern for the guests themselves. And hospitable people, those who possess the trait of
hospitableness, are those who often entertain from one or more of these motives, or from
mixed motives in which one of these motives is predominant (Telfer, 1996, p. 82).
People choose to pursue the virtue of hospitableness because they are attracted by an
ideal of hospitality, as Telfer (1996, p. 101) states “The ideal of hospitality, like all
ideals, presents itself as joyful rather than onerous, and provides the inspiration for the
pursuit of the virtue or virtues of hospitableness.” There is a distinction made between
hospitality offered for pleasure and hospitality that is born out of a sense of duty.
Telfer (1996) also develops this classi?cation to include the type of guest to whom a
host would offer hospitality. This classi?cation is summarized as:
.
Those in a relationship to the host. This includes guests within a social circle,
that the host is obliged to offer hospitality to, e.g. colleagues, neighbours, fellow
parishioners, parents whose children are friends and relatives.
.
Those in need. This Telfer (1996, p. 91f) terms “good-Samaritan hospitality,” this
encapsulates all who are in need of hospitality. It may be a need for food and
drink, however, it also includes “a psychological need of a kind which can be met
particularly well by hospitality, such as loneliness or the need to feel valued as an
individual.”
.
Friends of the host. Hospitality is shown to friends because “liking and affection
are inherent in friendship; the liking produces a wish for the friends’ company (as
distinct from company in general), the affection a desire to please them” (Telfer,
1996, p. 93).
On several occasions Telfer (1996) arguments are based on simple assertions rather
than an elaboration of philosophical underpinnings, or on the use of descriptive
categories as universals of human conduct. For example, Telfer (1996, p. 107) notes
gluttony may come in several forms but always involves “caring too much for the
pleasures of eating and drinking”; this seems to be a rather sweeping statement to
cover all of human society.
Telfer (1996, p. 93) argues that a special link exists between friendship and
hospitality because it involves the home of the host: “hospitality (provided it is not too
formal) is an invitation to intimacy, an offer of a share in the host’s private life.” This
can cause a paradox when the friends start visiting without invitation and therefore
they stop being guests and start to become like part of the family. Telfer (1996, p. 93)
then asks “Is turning friends into family the essence of this kind of hospitality, or does
it go beyond hospitality?” Hospitality in this situation is double edged: the host can
either make a special fuss over them or the special fuss can be deliberately avoided to
allow them to feel at home. Telfer (1996, p. 101) concludes that the reason why hosts
choose to pursue the virtue of hospitableness is that they are attracted by an ideal of
hospitality. “The ideal of hospitality, like all ideals, presents itself as joyful rather than
onerous, and provides the inspiration for the pursuit of the virtue or virtues of
hospitableness.”
In stark contrast to the individualistic perspective offered by Telfer on hospitality in
a domestic context, Derrida (2000b) offers a more encompassing philosophy of
hospitality. In an attempt to clarify terminology, this section adopts Derrida’s (2000b,
p. 77) differentiation between the “law of hospitality” and “laws of hospitality”:
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The law of unlimited hospitality (to give the new arrival all of one’s home and oneself, to give
him or her one’s own, our own, without asking a name, or compensation, or the ful?lment of
even the smallest condition), and on the other hand, the laws (in the plural), those rights and
duties that are always conditioned and conditional, as they are de?ned by the Greco-Roman
tradition and even the Judaeo-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.
This distinction is useful because clari?es that there is a universal truth of hospitality,
however the way that hospitality is offered is normally governed by a set of man made
rules dependent on the context: domestic, civic or commercial.
In his discussions, Derrida (2000b) makes a distinction between unconditional
hospitality, which he considers impossible, and hospitality that is always conditional.
A distinctive aspect of Derrida’s approach to the phenomenon of hospitality is his
re?ection on how achieving an absolute hospitality is impossible. In trying to imagine
the extremes of a hospitality to which no conditions are set, there is a realisation that
unconditional hospitality could never be accomplished. It is not so much an ideal: it is
an impossible ideal. The phenomenon of hospitality necessarily contains the concept of
the other or foreigner within it, since hospitality requires, a priori, a concept of the
outsider or guest. From the perspective of the host, Derrida (2000b), p. 59f distinguishes
between a guest and a parasite:
In principle, the difference is straightforward, but for that you need a law; hospitality,
reception, the welcome offered has to be submitted to a basic and limiting jurisdiction. Not all
new arrivals are received as guests if they don’t have the bene?t of the right to hospitality or
the right of asylum, etc. Without this right, a new arrival can only be introduced “in my
home,” in the host’s “at home,” as a parasite, a guest who is wrong, illegitimate, clandestine,
and liable to expulsion or arrest.
Derrida (2000b) argues that hospitality is therefore conditional in the sense that the
outsider or foreigner has to meet the criteria of the a priori “other.” He is implying that
hospitality is not given to a guest that is absolutely unknown or anonymous, because
the host has no idea of how they will respond:
Absolute hospitality requires that I open up my home and that I give not only to the foreigner
(provided with a family name, with the social status of being a foreigner, etc.), but to the
absolute, unknown, anonymous other, and that I give place to them, that I let them come, that
I let them arrive, and take place in the place I offer them, without asking of them either
reciprocity (entering into a pact) or even their names. The law of absolute hospitality
commands a break with hospitality by right, with law or justice as rights (2000b, p. 25)
Derrida (1999a) also observes that absolute hospitality requires the host to allow the
guest to behave as they wish; there must be no pressure or obligation to behave in any
particular manner. Absolute hospitality does not make a demand of the guest that
would force them to reciprocate by way of imposing an obligation. The language used
by Derrida could be held to imply that make a guest conform to any rules or norms is a
bad thing.
Hospitality and the nation states
As well as the guest host relationship at the individual level, the relationship can also
exists on a wider scale: hospitality between peoples and states. By using the illustrative
example of the French Revolution and the declaration of national hospitality as
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providing a case example of hospitality offered by the states. Immanuel Kant argued
that individuals had a universal right to shelter in any country, but for a limited time
period and not if they would jeopardize the security of the country in question. This
philosophy was codi?ed in French national hospitality during the revolution when
1793 Saint-Just in the Essai de Constitution states:
The French people declare it to be the friend of all peoples; it will religiously respect treaties and
?ags; it offers asylum in its harbours to ships from all over the world; it offers asylum to great
menandvirtuous unfortunates of all countries; its ships at sea will protect foreignships against
storms. Foreigners and their customs will be respected in its bosom (Duval, 1984, p. 441).
This quote illustrates the original rhetorical gestures used to present the French
Republic as generous and hospitable; the promise a generous and welcoming attitude
to all strangers.
When reviewing French revolutionary hospitality, Wahnich (1997a, p. 346)
identi?es that its raison d’e ˆtre was in offering sanctuary and security to all: “?rst and
foremost, citizens are men, and the purpose of national law is not to identify the frontier
but to guarantee universal law, without limits.” However, as soon as this principle of
hospitality was established it was betrayed. Wahnich (1997a, p. 347) asserts that “the
enigma of a hospitality subverted by suspicion, of friendship experienced in terms of
treason, and of a fraternity that invents the most radical forms of exclusion.” Wahnich
(1997b) also highlights a modern hospitality enigma: the situation where nation states
want their emigrants treated as sacred guests but pay scant attention to their own laws
of hospitality regarding immigrants. In contemporary times, nations admit a certain
number of immigrants – conditionally. This is echoed in the writings of Sche´rer (1993,
p. 7) registering his concern that hospitality has become an impossible luxury:
Isn’t hospitality the madness of our contemporary world? To praise hospitality just when, in
France and almost everywhere else in the world, the main concern is to restrict it, from the
right to asylum to the code of nationality! Disturbing, excessive, like madness, it resists all
forms of reason, including raison d’e ˆtre.
Studying hospitality and the nation states, Derrida (1999a) notes that to the best of his
knowledge there is no country in the world that allows unconditional immigration.
Individuals may consider themselves to be practically hospitable, however, they will
not leave their doors open to all who might come, to take or do anything, without
condition or limit. Derrida argues the same can be said about nation states; conditional
hospitality takes place only in the shadow of the impossibility of the ideal version.
Derrida (1998b, p. 70) re?ects on the conceptual possibility of unconditional hospitality
in order “to understand and to inform what is going on today in our world”. This is
re?ected in the following quote:
Unconditional hospitality implies that you don’t ask the other, the newcomer, the guest to
give anything back, or even to identify him or her. Even if the other deprives you of your
mastery or your home, you have to accept this. It is terrible to accept this, but that is the
condition of unconditional hospitality: that you give up the mastery of your space, your home,
your nation. It is unbearable. If, however, there is pure hospitality, it should be pushed to this
extreme (Derrida, 1998b, p. 71).
Derrida (1998b, p. 70) also questions the restricted nature of national hospitality to
legal and illegal immigrants:
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We know that there are numerous what we call “displaced persons” who are applying for the
right to asylum without being citizens, without being identi?ed as citizens. It is not for
speculative or ethical reasons that I am interested in unconditional hospitality, but in order to
understand and to transform what is going on today in our world.
In Derrida’s later works, he is interested in many unconditional: such as an
unconditional gift, an unconditional pardon and an unconditional mourning. As each of
these is deemed impossible, impossibility takes on an increasingly strong resonance in
his late work. Derrida’s views on hospitality illuminate a transition in his philosophical
project from earlier writings (Derrida, 1981, 1997b). Whilst considering hospitality,
there is a progression of thought in relation to “ideals” and depiction of the “other”; the
preceding Derridean writings concerning depictions of maternity, gender, nature,
community and family values in popular culture an “ideal” version is considered
impossible. With hospitality, Derrida stresses impossibility in a different way and
makes an alternative use of the idea that ideals are impossible. This impossibility
amounts to an “otherness” with which there is an everyday relation. Derrida (1999a)
quotes former French minister of immigration Michel Rocard who in 1993 stated, with
respect to immigration quotas, that France could not offer a home to everybody in the
world who suffered. Derrida (1999a) asserts that Rocard’s immigration quota is set
through mediation with a threshold of impossibility. For Derrida impossibility opens
up possibilities of transformation, the case of Rocard highlighted the fragility of brutal
authority. Some of the French “hosts” might respond with quick agreement about the
strict limitations on “guests,” however, others might be provoked into asking why
more and better hospitality should not be offered, and what does set the limit.
In considering hospitality more generally Derrida (1981, p. 163) identi?es
“otherness” in reference to “the other, the newcomer, the guest”; interrogating
humanities ethical relationship with itself, receptiveness and in relationship with
others: strangers; foreigners; immigrants; and friends – guests:
For pure hospitality or a pure gift to occur, however, there must be an absolute surprise. The
other, like the Messiah, must arrive whenever he or she wants. She [sic ] may even not arrive.
I would oppose, therefore, the traditional and religious concept of “visitation” to “invitation”:
visitation implies the arrival of someone who is not expected, who can show up at any time.
If I am unconditionally hospitable I should welcome the visitation, not the invited guest, but
the visitor. I must be unprepared, or prepared to be unprepared, for the unexpected arrival of
any other. Is this possible? I don’t know. If, however, there is pure hospitality, or a pure gift, it
should consist in this opening without horizon, without horizon of expectation, an opening to
the newcomer whoever that may be. It may be terrible because the newcomer may be a good
person, or may be the devil (Derrida 1998b, p. 70).
This quote demonstrates an important distinction between messianic and messianism,
another way of reading his “impossibility” and related notion of otherness.
A messianism is considered by Derrida (1994), p. 89 as a kind of dogmatism,
subjecting the divine other to “metaphysico-religious determination” forcing the
ultimate guest, the Messiah, to conform or at least converge to the host’s
preconceptions of them. When imagining the coming of the Messiah the host
attributes a new kind of origin and centrism to a divine other and assumes the latter
suits their imaginative picture.
Faith for Derrida (1997a, p. 120) is undeconstructible, while religion, like law,
is deconstructible. Faith is “something that is presupposed by the most radical
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deconstructive gesture. You cannot address the other; speak to the other, without an
act of faith, without testimony.” To speak to another is to ask them to trust you.
As soon as you address the other, as soon as you are open to the future, as soon as you have a
temporal experience of waiting for the future, of waiting for someone to come; that is the
opening of experience. Someone is to come, is now to come (Derrida 1997a, p. 123)
The faith in the other to come, according to Derrida, is absolutely universal, thus the
universal structure of faith is an undeconstructible. In contrast, Derrida suggests
invoking messianicity: as:
. . . the unexpected surprise . . . If I could anticipate, if I had a horizon of anticipation, if I could
see what is coming or who is coming, there would be no coming.
Derrida’s view of messianicity is not limited to a religious context, but extends to his
depiction of otherness more generally. His comments about the other apply to a friend,
someone culturally different, a parent, a child; where the issue arises of whether the
host is capable of recognizing them, of respecting their difference, and of how the host
may be surprised by them. Thus, Derrida allows for a pure form of hospitality.
However, in the case of surprise the unsuspected guest is received on the terms of the
host; unconditional hospitality is still impossible. Similarly when a country’s borders
are open to guests or immigrants, conditional hospitality places the country in relation
to the impossible; the impossible greater generosity inhabits the act of conditional
hospitality. Derrida’s use of the host-guest relationship has in?uenced writers like Molz
(2005) and Garcia and Crang (2005) to examine how the hospitality relationship
in?uences host communities with their “guests” immigrants, asylum seekers and
refugees. Gibson (2005) explores the relationships between prisoners and their guards
through the concept of hospitality.
Engaging with Derrida (2000a, b) and Rosello (2001) adopts a postcolonial
philosophical stance. A brief historical inquiry into the nature of French hospitality as
a metaphor for public acceptance of the other is combined with a close textual analysis
of several recent French and francophone novels and ?lms as a basis for addressing
what issues might be at stake if the immigrant were considered a guest. Examining
France’s traditional role as the terre d’asile (land of sanctuary) for political refugees,
Rosello (2001) shows how this image of a welcoming France is now contrasted with
France as part of the “Fortress Europe” (a land that seeks to close its borders to
unwelcome immigrants). Rosello’s (2001) analysis also discusses the entire decade of
the 1990s in France, when media reports of demonstrations and sit-ins by hundreds
of sanspapiers (immigrants without papers) demanding amnesty and regularisation of
their status, ?lled newspapers almost every week.
Rosello develops her strati?cation, of private concepts to public or state hospitality
by examining the novel Un Aller Simple (One-Way Ticket). This novel, written by van
Cauwelaert (1994), is a humorous story about a young man (born in France, raised by
Gypsies) deported to a nonexistent Moroccan village because his fake passport names
this ?ctional place as that of his birth. Rosello links this story to French and European
Union immigration laws and treaties of the same decade (1990s). The absurdity of
immigration laws that seek to reduce individuals to their of?cial documentary identity,
without regard to the ?uctuating and ethereal nature of national identities are
highlighted within the novel by van Cauwelaert. Rosello’s textual analysis reveals
different hospitality scenarios between groups and between individuals, especially the
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notion of hosts and guests and their respective responsibilities. Emphasising this
Rosello (2002, p. 176) notes:
The very precondition of hospitality may require that, in some ways, both the host and the
guest accept, in different ways, the uncomfortable and sometimes painful possibility of being
changed by the other.
Within “Fortress Europe” there does not seem to be the political will to allow increased
immigration and the thought of European hosts being changed is an anathema. Rosello
expresses grave concerns regarding the future of immigrants in Western Europe. It is
unlikely that they be perceived of as honoured guests deserving of consideration,
whereas it is more probable that they be likened to guests who have fallen into
the category of parasite; they have overstayed their welcome and must be brutally
ushered out.
Rosello’s philosophical concerns are also re?ected in the writings of another
postcolonial theorist Tahar Ben Jelloun; a Moroccan who immigrated to France in 1971.
Drawing upon his personal encounters with racism he uses the metaphor of hospitality
to elucidate the racial divisions that plague contemporary France. Ben Jelloun (1999)
states that laws of hospitality are a fundamental mark of civilisation, observing that he
comes from a poor and relatively unsophisticated country, where the stranger’s right to
protection and shelter has been practiced since time immemorial. On moving to France,
Ben Jelloun discovered that hospitality was not reciprocal, despite the bene?ts that
France had clearly gained from her former colonies. Although France had enjoyed one
side of the reciprocal arrangement, hospitality was not reciprocated to those who
wished to come as guest to France; the former hosts were not welcomed as guests.
Hospitality was conditional; a right to visit was not a right to stay. Ben Jelloun (1999, p.
39) wishes to “open windows in the house of silence, indifference and fear,” French
society seems to remain inhospitable, even frightened by immigrants. Ben Jelloun
(1999, p. 116) suggests that former colonials feel abandoned by the authorities of their
own countries and in France, live in fear of being returned to them:
. . . in France he dreams of the country he left behind. In his own country, he dreams of France
. . . he thumps back and forth a bag full of small possessions and of grand illusion.
Despite having lived for about 30 years in France the author himself states that: “Yet
sometimes I feel I am a stranger here. That happens whenever racism occurs, whether
it is virulent or latent, and whenever someone lays down limits that mustn’t be
transgressed” (Ben Jelloun, 1999, p. 133). Ben Jelloun (1999) concludes with a plea
aimed at policymakers, instead of laws that restrict hospitality, i.e. entry and residence,
he advocates a policy that establishes links between morals and everyone’s right to
acceptance and equity.
For current postcolonial philosophical theory, hospitality is a multifaceted
phenomenon. What are commonly referred to as “laws of hospitality” are largely
unwritten and thereby subject to ?ux and interpretation. For Rosello, what makes the
phenomenon of hospitality relevant for philosophical investigation is the potential for
rede?nition in the traditional roles and duties of the guest and the host. Alternating
between notions of duty and voluntary charity, hospitality between individuals and
states of different racial, ethnic, or religious, backgrounds entails its own rami?cations.
Ben Jelloun (1999) argues that racism is caused by the existence of hospitality
thresholds and boundaries.
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Hospitality and language
The underlying principal is that during any hospitality relationship the host and guest
inhabit the same moral universe and are subject to transcendent laws of hospitality.
However, the hospitality relationship is complicated by the use of language and
culture. Ben Jelloun (1999, p. 3) highlights the problem of language and cultural
difference within different laws of hospitality:
In an unpublished novella called “The Invitation” I tell the true story of a television crew who
went to Algeria to produce a program about an immigrant who had gone home. The shooting
lasted a week, and throughout the whole time the villagers entertained the crew. The
immigrant’s father went into debt to provide presents and sumptuous meals all around. The
director, touched by such warmth and generosity, gave the old man his business card. “If ever
you’re in Paris,” he said in typical Parisian style, “be sure to come and see me!” But when one
evening six months later the old man rang at his doorbell, it took the director some time to
realize who he was. Very embarrassing for all concerned.
Ben Jelloun (1999, p. 3) notes that this illustration shows “hospitality does not always
imply reciprocity,” however, what this story also highlights is the embarrassment of
the difference between expectations and behaviour. Both the guest and the host speak
the same language, but are from different cultural backgrounds and their language
and cultural differences led to confusion between how to extend and accept invitations.
Derrida (2000a, b, p. 21) proposes that issues of language cannot be dissociated from
the most basic level of hospitality; guests can be discomforted and fundamentally
disadvantaged by the host’s language:
The question of hospitality starts here: must we require the strange to understand us, to
speak our language in all the meanings of the words, in all its possible extensions, before
being able to, in order to be able to, welcome him or her.
Derrida argues that this imposition and use of language is the ?rst barrier to
hospitality that is imposed by the host on the guest. Using Ancient Athens, Derrida
(2000b, p. 16) notes “the foreigner had some rights,” the threshold of the host’s domain
establishes a social relation by delimiting the difference between those who are and are
not of Athens. In the case of language, the social relations and understanding
distinguish between sameness and difference; hospitality is extended on the host’s
terms and not those of the guest:
Because intentionality is hospitality, it resists thematization. Act without activity, reason as
receptivity, a sensible and rational experience of receiving, a gesture of welcoming, a welcome
offered to the other as stranger, hospitality opens up as intentionality, but it cannot become
an object, thing, or theme. Thematization, on the contrary, already presupposes hospitality,
welcoming, intentionality, the face. The closing of the door, inhospitality, war, and allergy
already imply, as their possibility, a hospitality offered or received: an original or, more
precisely, pre-originary declaration of peace (Derrida 1999a, b, c, p. 48).
When M. Rocard closed the door on unconditional hospitality, Derrida (1999a, b, c)
argues that he opened up a conceptual paradox; similarly with this pre-originary
hospitable declaration of peace there is another paradox at work. For the declaration to
be understood, it has to be, a priori, inherently and universally understandable to
everyone. This means, in turn, that a monolingual communication is required. In this
situation, Derrida (1998a) considers hospitality from the punitive side of what he refers
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to as a politics of language, within which monolinguism is imposed as a precondition
for hospitality.
According to Derrida (1998a, p. 10) monolinguism refers to a paradox that formed
what he calls the rule of language:
We only ever speak one language . . .
(Yes, but)
We never speak only one language.
Derrida was noticing in Ancient Athens where the foreigner was welcomed according
to the duties and obligations that appropriate the foreigner in advance within Athenian
law. This is a sovereign law that belongs to Athens, certainly, but that as in the case of
all monolinguisms seem to originate from somewhere else, since even the native
Athenians are always striving to appropriate it to themselves in the name of becoming
the perfect and most native of citizens:
First and foremost, the monolingualism of the other would be that sovereignty, that law
originating from elsewhere, certainly, but also primarily the very language of the Law. Its
experience would be ostensibly autonomous, because I have to speak this law and
appropriate it in order to understand it as if I was giving it to myself, but it remains
necessarily heteronomous, for such is, at bottom, the essence of any law. The madness of the
law places its possibility lastingly inside the dwelling of this auto-heteronomy (Derrida
1998b, p. 39).
Belonging to the monolinguism of a native tongue is dif?cult for the simple reason that
this language is not entirely perfectible; therefore, there is always the slight sense of
being a stranger or foreigner to it. This self-perception of being alien or foreign despite
your native tongue or status is what Derrida calls auto-heteronomy. For Derrida the
identi?cation with the native tongue is important because being a native speaker is a
sign of political identity and the consequential legal rights. Speaking a language,
therefore, is a means of dwelling or remaining within a political identity even when you
are a foreigner abroad.
The politics of language can protect, since it is politics that prepare the way for
hospitality in the Athenian sense, in which citizens and foreigners are both known
quantities with formal contractual relations of hosting and being a guest. However,
Derrida (2000a, b, p. 132) notes that the law under which people gather themselves to
that language, gives them their political identity and security, is not as hospitable as
one might like to imagine, precisely because it is political:
[Language is] one of the numerous dif?culties before us, as with settling the extension of the
concept of hospitality . . . In the broad sense, the language in which the foreigner is addressed
or in which he is heard, if he is, is the ensemble of culture, it is the values, the norms, the
meanings that inhabit the language.
In terms of language and hospitality, if language shelters the guest, it does not
incorporate or assimilate the guest into itself. Derrida (1998a) notes that at the same
time “we speak only one language . . . ” because there is always the possibility of
speaking otherwise, a speaking differently that is the condition of the essence of
speaking one language properly. O’Gorman (2005, 2007) shows that English is made up
of different languages that, over time, has not only become incorporated into the native
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language but also has been so incorporated as to become indistinguishable. This
illustrates Derrida’s observation that in speaking a single language it is impossible to
speak one language alone. Derrida emphasizes the dif?culty of establishing a hard and
fast difference between the native and the foreign.
Discussion and conclusions
This paper considers Derrida and other writers in order to review the current thinking
of philosophers about hospitality. It presented three issues: moral philosophy of
hospitality from the perspective of the guest host relationship; hospitality between
peoples and nation states; and the use of language in hospitality provision and
consumption. This separation, although arti?cial (because the distinctions are not
entirely delimited), served as a useful way to gain an overview of the interrelated ideas.
Discontentment and bias are two of the issues that arise from the writing of Derrida,
Rosello and Ben Jelloun, it comes across clearly, for example, in the writings of Ben
Jelloun, in his homesickness and general discontent with his host country. Derrida too
was an immigrant to France and his background could also have had a strong in?uence
on his thinking and writing. This does not prove that either Derrida or Ben Jelloun have
any political bias or underlying propagandist tendency; however the fact that neither of
them seems to explicitly discuss their potential bias does leave room for doubt. In
addition, in investigating the hospitality of the classical Greco-Roman world Derrida
was then drawing conclusions and writing for the modern age. Telfer, through her
treatment of domestic hospitality, and Derrida, Rosello and Ben Jelloun with their
investigation of the state and the relationship to the individual, all to a greater or lesser
extent seem to expect that the hospitality relationship should be the same. There is
limited consideration given to the motivations of either the guest or the host, and even
less recognition given to the fact that the hospitality relationship exists in dissimilar
contexts: domestic, civic or commercial, each with their own different sets of laws.
For Derrida the hospitality given to the “other” is an ethical marker, both for an
individual and a country. Everyday engagement with the “other” is fraught with
dif?culties; sometimes the “other” is devalued or in extreme cases rejected. In the case of
hospitality, the “other” is often forced to take on the perceptions of the “host.” The
“guests” are unable to be themselves; they must transform their “otherness.” For
Derrida, being open and accepting the “other” on their terms opens the host to new
experiences, what Pope John Paul II (1994, p. 1) prophetically described as the possibility
of “crossing thresholds of hope.” Even when they have the true gift of hospitality is an
act of generosity experienced by the “guest,” which turns a stranger into a friend for a
limited period of time the best of intentions people fail in their attempts to behave
hospitably and this adds to the complexity of the hospitality relationship:
We do not know what hospitality is.
Not yet.
Not yet, but will we ever know? (Derrida, 2000b, p. 6)
The purpose of this paper was to explore Derrida’s contribution, along with other
writers in philosophy and postcolonial theory, in order to identify a philosophical
foundation for the emergent paradigm of hospitality studies. However, it seems that
true hospitality is somewhat of an enigma, this is not due to any philosophical
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conundrum, but perhaps because hospitality is not a matter of objective knowledge.
Hospitality exists within lived experience; it is a gift given by the “host” to the “guest,”
and then shared between them. Hospitality cannot be resolved on the pages of an
academic journal; the true gift of hospitality is an act of generosity experienced by the
“guest,” which turns a stranger into a friend for a limited period of time.
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Corresponding author
Kevin D. O’Gorman can be contacted at: [email protected]
To purchase reprints of this article please e-mail: [email protected]
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doc_475497835.pdf
The emergent paradigm of hospitality studies does not have a coherent philosophical
foundation. In seeking to identify a philosophy of hospitality this paper explores Derrida’s
contribution, along with other writers in philosophy and postcolonial theory, who are either writing in
the field or have developed his works
International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research
The hospitality phenomenon: philosophical enlightenment?
Kevin D. O'Gorman
Article information:
To cite this document:
Kevin D. O'Gorman, (2007),"The hospitality phenomenon: philosophical enlightenment?", International
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The hospitality phenomenon:
philosophical enlightenment?
Kevin D. O’Gorman
Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management,
The University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK
Abstract
Purpose – The emergent paradigm of hospitality studies does not have a coherent philosophical
foundation. In seeking to identify a philosophy of hospitality this paper explores Derrida’s
contribution, along with other writers in philosophy and postcolonial theory, who are either writing in
the ?eld or have developed his works.
Design/methodology/approach – Derrida and others are often cited within the context of the
emerging paradigm of hospitality studies. In order to examine and critically evaluate the possibility of
the construct of a philosophy of the phenomenon of hospitality, the review of the philosophical
concepts is set within three perspectives: individual moral philosophy; hospitality and the nation
states, and hospitality and language.
Findings – Although examining the writings of Derrida and others provides an insight into the
phenomenon of hospitality, a coherent philosophy of hospitality seems to be an enigma; possibly
because hospitality is not a matter of objective knowledge.
Research limitations/implications – In order to inform the emergent paradigm of hospitality
studies there needs to be a continuing multi-disciplinary study of hospitality; further inter and intra
disciplinary research and investigation is required.
Originality/value – The paper illustrates that critical analysis is more important than the
unquestioning acceptance of the views of philosophical theorists.
Keywords Hospitality services, Hospitality management, Philosophical concepts
Paper type Conceptual paper
Introduction
Since, the publication of In Search of Hospitality – Theoretical Perspectives and Debates
(Telfer, 2000), there has been an increasingly wide-ranging inter-disciplinary
perspective to the exploration of the concept of hospitality. There is already
considerable asserts that there is already considerable justi?cation for the study of
hospitality as “a core cultural and social concept in higher education” and supports this
by citing various authors as advocates of this approach. Lashley (2004, p. 13) supports
this view in succinctly stating: “the study of hospitality allows for a general broad
spectrum of enquiry, and the study for allows studies that support the management of
hospitality” (Lashley, 2004, p. 15).
Morrison and O’Gorman (2006, p. 4) note that Lashley’s statement explicitly
acknowledges that the intellectual growth and progression of hospitality as an
academic ?eld of study is best served through the critical analysis of the concept of
hospitality as broadly conceived:
Academic reputation can be enhanced through the celebration of its diversity and
multi-disciplinary as a specialist ?eld of study, with systematic, vibrant partnering and
intellectual exchange of hospitality and of discipline-based academics, unfettered by
arti?cially created boundaries that serve to isolate and perpetuate insularity in the process of
knowledge creation and higher education.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/1750-6182.htm
The hospitality
phenomenon
189
Received January 2007
Revised March 2007
Accepted April 2007
International Journal of Culture,
Tourism and Hospitality Research
Vol. 1 No. 3, 2007
pp. 189-202
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
1750-6182
DOI 10.1108/17506180710817729
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Hospitality is no longer synonymous with hospitality management and the hospitality
industry. The phenomenon of hospitality is becoming a recognized ?eld of study. This
has been further supported with the publication of Hospitality: A Social Lens where
Lashley et al. (2007) argue that hospitality research has gained a more
multidisciplinary perspective.
Despite the increasing multidisciplinary study of the phenomenon of hospitality,
although a clear and coherent philosophy of hospitality has not yet been proposed, the
writings of Jacques Derrida on hospitality have been in?uential. Derrida’s writings
have had an impact on a wide range of disciplines and areas of study including
education, gender, law, literature, mathematics, politics, psychology, race and
theology. This paper explores Derrida’s contribution to the philosophy of hospitality,
picking up on some other writers in philosophy and postcolonial theory who are either
writing in the ?eld or have developed his writing. After a short biography, the paper
focuses on three separate issues: moral philosophy of hospitality from the perspective
of the guest host relationship; hospitality between peoples and nation states; and the
use of language in hospitality provision and consumption.
Who was Derrida?
The of?ce of the President of France announced the death Jacques Derrida in 2004,
saying “in him France gave the world one of the major ?gures of the intellectual life of
our times.” Internationally, Deutscher (2005) notes that Derrida was widely considered
the most important French philosopher of the late twentieth century; he was also the
subject of three ?lms and a number of media controversies. Derrida was credited as the
inventor of “deconstruction,” the practice of dismantling texts by revealing their
assumptions and contradictions. Normally, life is lived at the level where things are
presumed and people are accustomed to think in narrow ways. Deconstruction
attempts to highlight just how much is taken for granted in contemporary conceptual
thought and language. In 1967, Derrida’s (1973, 1976, 1978) international reputation
had been secured by the publication of three books, and he went on to publish
40 different works.
Derrida grew up as a Jew in Algeria in the 1940s, during and after the anti-Semitic
French colonial regime. He had been excluded in his youth from his school after it had
reduced the quotas for Jews. Confronted with violent racism, he avoided school during
the period when he was obliged to attend a school for Jewish students and teachers.
He eventually managed to gain entry to study philosophy in Paris at the E
´
cole Normale
Supe´rieur. However, Deutscher (2005, p. 10) records that:
. . . his subsequent experiences as a young student in Paris were isolated and unhappy,
consisting of intermittent depression, nervous anxiety and a seesaw between sleeping tablets
and amphetamines resulted in exam failures in the early 1950s.
He then studied in University of Louvain in Belgium where he wrote his thesis on
Husserl (Derrida, 2003); later taught at the Sorbonne, and then returned to the E
´
cole
Normale Supe´rieur as a lecturer. In 1983, Stocker (2006) records that Derrida became
the founding director of the Colle `ge International de Philosophie, where open lecture
courses were given by a volunteer body of philosophers.
Various philosophers have tried to attach different labels to Derrida: a pragmatist
(Rorty, 1982); a post-Kantian transcendentalist (Gasche´ 1986), and a linguistic
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philosopher (Norris, 1987) showing the dif?culty in locating deconstructionalism
within philosophy, let alone an academic discipline. As well as being one of the most
cited modern scholars in the humanities, he was undoubtedly one of the most
controversial. In 1992, a proposal to award him an honorary doctorate at Cambridge
University caused such uproar that, for the ?rst time in 30 years, the university
was forced to put the matter to a ballot; with the degree only being awarded by a
majority vote.
From various biographies and obituaries, it is clear that Derrida was undoubtedly a
controversial character; his dramatic early failures were contrasted by the outstanding
successes in later life. His work advanced the deconstruction of the very concepts of
knowledge and truth, and provoked strong feelings within his readers who, just like
the Senate of Cambridge University, are often divided over his writings, considering
them to be on the one hand absurd, vapid and pernicious or on the other hand logical,
momentous and lively.
Individual moral philosophy: host
Derrida (2000a) de?nes hospitality as inviting and welcoming the “stranger.” This takes
place on two levels: the personal level where the “stranger” is welcomed into the home;
and at the level of individual countries. His interest was heightened by the etymology of
Benveniste (1969) who analyzed “hospitality,” as being from a Latin root, but derived
from two proto Indo-European words that have the meanings of “stranger,” “guest” and
“power.” Thus, in the “destruction” of the word, there can be seen:
. . . an essential “self limitation” built right into the idea of hospitality, which preserves the
distance between one’s own and the “stranger,” between owning one’s own property and
inviting the “other” into one’s home (Caputo, 2002, p. 110).
So, as Derrida (2000a, p. 13) observes there is always a little hostility in all hosting and
hospitality, constituting what he called a certain “hostipitality”:
If I say “Welcome,” I am not renouncing my mastery, something that becomes transparent in
people whose hospitality is a way of showing off how much they own or who make their
guests uncomfortable and afraid to touch a thing.
To Derrida then, the notion of having and retaining the mastery of the house underlies
hospitality:
Make yourself at home’ this is a self-limiting invitation . . . it means: please feel at home, act as
if you were at home, but, remember, that is not true, this is not your home but mine, and you
are expected to respect my property (Caputo, 2002, p. 111).
Telfer (2000) also explores this issue when discussing the motivation behind
hospitality. There is a limitation to the amount of hospitality that “hosts” can and wish
to offer, just as important are the intentions that that lie behind any hospitable act:
there surely is a distinction to be made between hospitality for pleasure and hospitality
that is born out of a sense of duty. She considers hospitality to be a moral virtue, and
articulates hospitable motives to be:
That in which concern for the guests’ pleasure and welfare, for its own sake, is
predominant. These can include entertaining for pleasure where that pleasure largely
depends on knowing that one is pleasing the guests, and sense of duty where there is also
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concern for the guests themselves. And hospitable people, those who possess the trait of
hospitableness, are those who often entertain from one or more of these motives, or from
mixed motives in which one of these motives is predominant (Telfer, 1996, p. 82).
People choose to pursue the virtue of hospitableness because they are attracted by an
ideal of hospitality, as Telfer (1996, p. 101) states “The ideal of hospitality, like all
ideals, presents itself as joyful rather than onerous, and provides the inspiration for the
pursuit of the virtue or virtues of hospitableness.” There is a distinction made between
hospitality offered for pleasure and hospitality that is born out of a sense of duty.
Telfer (1996) also develops this classi?cation to include the type of guest to whom a
host would offer hospitality. This classi?cation is summarized as:
.
Those in a relationship to the host. This includes guests within a social circle,
that the host is obliged to offer hospitality to, e.g. colleagues, neighbours, fellow
parishioners, parents whose children are friends and relatives.
.
Those in need. This Telfer (1996, p. 91f) terms “good-Samaritan hospitality,” this
encapsulates all who are in need of hospitality. It may be a need for food and
drink, however, it also includes “a psychological need of a kind which can be met
particularly well by hospitality, such as loneliness or the need to feel valued as an
individual.”
.
Friends of the host. Hospitality is shown to friends because “liking and affection
are inherent in friendship; the liking produces a wish for the friends’ company (as
distinct from company in general), the affection a desire to please them” (Telfer,
1996, p. 93).
On several occasions Telfer (1996) arguments are based on simple assertions rather
than an elaboration of philosophical underpinnings, or on the use of descriptive
categories as universals of human conduct. For example, Telfer (1996, p. 107) notes
gluttony may come in several forms but always involves “caring too much for the
pleasures of eating and drinking”; this seems to be a rather sweeping statement to
cover all of human society.
Telfer (1996, p. 93) argues that a special link exists between friendship and
hospitality because it involves the home of the host: “hospitality (provided it is not too
formal) is an invitation to intimacy, an offer of a share in the host’s private life.” This
can cause a paradox when the friends start visiting without invitation and therefore
they stop being guests and start to become like part of the family. Telfer (1996, p. 93)
then asks “Is turning friends into family the essence of this kind of hospitality, or does
it go beyond hospitality?” Hospitality in this situation is double edged: the host can
either make a special fuss over them or the special fuss can be deliberately avoided to
allow them to feel at home. Telfer (1996, p. 101) concludes that the reason why hosts
choose to pursue the virtue of hospitableness is that they are attracted by an ideal of
hospitality. “The ideal of hospitality, like all ideals, presents itself as joyful rather than
onerous, and provides the inspiration for the pursuit of the virtue or virtues of
hospitableness.”
In stark contrast to the individualistic perspective offered by Telfer on hospitality in
a domestic context, Derrida (2000b) offers a more encompassing philosophy of
hospitality. In an attempt to clarify terminology, this section adopts Derrida’s (2000b,
p. 77) differentiation between the “law of hospitality” and “laws of hospitality”:
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The law of unlimited hospitality (to give the new arrival all of one’s home and oneself, to give
him or her one’s own, our own, without asking a name, or compensation, or the ful?lment of
even the smallest condition), and on the other hand, the laws (in the plural), those rights and
duties that are always conditioned and conditional, as they are de?ned by the Greco-Roman
tradition and even the Judaeo-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.
This distinction is useful because clari?es that there is a universal truth of hospitality,
however the way that hospitality is offered is normally governed by a set of man made
rules dependent on the context: domestic, civic or commercial.
In his discussions, Derrida (2000b) makes a distinction between unconditional
hospitality, which he considers impossible, and hospitality that is always conditional.
A distinctive aspect of Derrida’s approach to the phenomenon of hospitality is his
re?ection on how achieving an absolute hospitality is impossible. In trying to imagine
the extremes of a hospitality to which no conditions are set, there is a realisation that
unconditional hospitality could never be accomplished. It is not so much an ideal: it is
an impossible ideal. The phenomenon of hospitality necessarily contains the concept of
the other or foreigner within it, since hospitality requires, a priori, a concept of the
outsider or guest. From the perspective of the host, Derrida (2000b), p. 59f distinguishes
between a guest and a parasite:
In principle, the difference is straightforward, but for that you need a law; hospitality,
reception, the welcome offered has to be submitted to a basic and limiting jurisdiction. Not all
new arrivals are received as guests if they don’t have the bene?t of the right to hospitality or
the right of asylum, etc. Without this right, a new arrival can only be introduced “in my
home,” in the host’s “at home,” as a parasite, a guest who is wrong, illegitimate, clandestine,
and liable to expulsion or arrest.
Derrida (2000b) argues that hospitality is therefore conditional in the sense that the
outsider or foreigner has to meet the criteria of the a priori “other.” He is implying that
hospitality is not given to a guest that is absolutely unknown or anonymous, because
the host has no idea of how they will respond:
Absolute hospitality requires that I open up my home and that I give not only to the foreigner
(provided with a family name, with the social status of being a foreigner, etc.), but to the
absolute, unknown, anonymous other, and that I give place to them, that I let them come, that
I let them arrive, and take place in the place I offer them, without asking of them either
reciprocity (entering into a pact) or even their names. The law of absolute hospitality
commands a break with hospitality by right, with law or justice as rights (2000b, p. 25)
Derrida (1999a) also observes that absolute hospitality requires the host to allow the
guest to behave as they wish; there must be no pressure or obligation to behave in any
particular manner. Absolute hospitality does not make a demand of the guest that
would force them to reciprocate by way of imposing an obligation. The language used
by Derrida could be held to imply that make a guest conform to any rules or norms is a
bad thing.
Hospitality and the nation states
As well as the guest host relationship at the individual level, the relationship can also
exists on a wider scale: hospitality between peoples and states. By using the illustrative
example of the French Revolution and the declaration of national hospitality as
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providing a case example of hospitality offered by the states. Immanuel Kant argued
that individuals had a universal right to shelter in any country, but for a limited time
period and not if they would jeopardize the security of the country in question. This
philosophy was codi?ed in French national hospitality during the revolution when
1793 Saint-Just in the Essai de Constitution states:
The French people declare it to be the friend of all peoples; it will religiously respect treaties and
?ags; it offers asylum in its harbours to ships from all over the world; it offers asylum to great
menandvirtuous unfortunates of all countries; its ships at sea will protect foreignships against
storms. Foreigners and their customs will be respected in its bosom (Duval, 1984, p. 441).
This quote illustrates the original rhetorical gestures used to present the French
Republic as generous and hospitable; the promise a generous and welcoming attitude
to all strangers.
When reviewing French revolutionary hospitality, Wahnich (1997a, p. 346)
identi?es that its raison d’e ˆtre was in offering sanctuary and security to all: “?rst and
foremost, citizens are men, and the purpose of national law is not to identify the frontier
but to guarantee universal law, without limits.” However, as soon as this principle of
hospitality was established it was betrayed. Wahnich (1997a, p. 347) asserts that “the
enigma of a hospitality subverted by suspicion, of friendship experienced in terms of
treason, and of a fraternity that invents the most radical forms of exclusion.” Wahnich
(1997b) also highlights a modern hospitality enigma: the situation where nation states
want their emigrants treated as sacred guests but pay scant attention to their own laws
of hospitality regarding immigrants. In contemporary times, nations admit a certain
number of immigrants – conditionally. This is echoed in the writings of Sche´rer (1993,
p. 7) registering his concern that hospitality has become an impossible luxury:
Isn’t hospitality the madness of our contemporary world? To praise hospitality just when, in
France and almost everywhere else in the world, the main concern is to restrict it, from the
right to asylum to the code of nationality! Disturbing, excessive, like madness, it resists all
forms of reason, including raison d’e ˆtre.
Studying hospitality and the nation states, Derrida (1999a) notes that to the best of his
knowledge there is no country in the world that allows unconditional immigration.
Individuals may consider themselves to be practically hospitable, however, they will
not leave their doors open to all who might come, to take or do anything, without
condition or limit. Derrida argues the same can be said about nation states; conditional
hospitality takes place only in the shadow of the impossibility of the ideal version.
Derrida (1998b, p. 70) re?ects on the conceptual possibility of unconditional hospitality
in order “to understand and to inform what is going on today in our world”. This is
re?ected in the following quote:
Unconditional hospitality implies that you don’t ask the other, the newcomer, the guest to
give anything back, or even to identify him or her. Even if the other deprives you of your
mastery or your home, you have to accept this. It is terrible to accept this, but that is the
condition of unconditional hospitality: that you give up the mastery of your space, your home,
your nation. It is unbearable. If, however, there is pure hospitality, it should be pushed to this
extreme (Derrida, 1998b, p. 71).
Derrida (1998b, p. 70) also questions the restricted nature of national hospitality to
legal and illegal immigrants:
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We know that there are numerous what we call “displaced persons” who are applying for the
right to asylum without being citizens, without being identi?ed as citizens. It is not for
speculative or ethical reasons that I am interested in unconditional hospitality, but in order to
understand and to transform what is going on today in our world.
In Derrida’s later works, he is interested in many unconditional: such as an
unconditional gift, an unconditional pardon and an unconditional mourning. As each of
these is deemed impossible, impossibility takes on an increasingly strong resonance in
his late work. Derrida’s views on hospitality illuminate a transition in his philosophical
project from earlier writings (Derrida, 1981, 1997b). Whilst considering hospitality,
there is a progression of thought in relation to “ideals” and depiction of the “other”; the
preceding Derridean writings concerning depictions of maternity, gender, nature,
community and family values in popular culture an “ideal” version is considered
impossible. With hospitality, Derrida stresses impossibility in a different way and
makes an alternative use of the idea that ideals are impossible. This impossibility
amounts to an “otherness” with which there is an everyday relation. Derrida (1999a)
quotes former French minister of immigration Michel Rocard who in 1993 stated, with
respect to immigration quotas, that France could not offer a home to everybody in the
world who suffered. Derrida (1999a) asserts that Rocard’s immigration quota is set
through mediation with a threshold of impossibility. For Derrida impossibility opens
up possibilities of transformation, the case of Rocard highlighted the fragility of brutal
authority. Some of the French “hosts” might respond with quick agreement about the
strict limitations on “guests,” however, others might be provoked into asking why
more and better hospitality should not be offered, and what does set the limit.
In considering hospitality more generally Derrida (1981, p. 163) identi?es
“otherness” in reference to “the other, the newcomer, the guest”; interrogating
humanities ethical relationship with itself, receptiveness and in relationship with
others: strangers; foreigners; immigrants; and friends – guests:
For pure hospitality or a pure gift to occur, however, there must be an absolute surprise. The
other, like the Messiah, must arrive whenever he or she wants. She [sic ] may even not arrive.
I would oppose, therefore, the traditional and religious concept of “visitation” to “invitation”:
visitation implies the arrival of someone who is not expected, who can show up at any time.
If I am unconditionally hospitable I should welcome the visitation, not the invited guest, but
the visitor. I must be unprepared, or prepared to be unprepared, for the unexpected arrival of
any other. Is this possible? I don’t know. If, however, there is pure hospitality, or a pure gift, it
should consist in this opening without horizon, without horizon of expectation, an opening to
the newcomer whoever that may be. It may be terrible because the newcomer may be a good
person, or may be the devil (Derrida 1998b, p. 70).
This quote demonstrates an important distinction between messianic and messianism,
another way of reading his “impossibility” and related notion of otherness.
A messianism is considered by Derrida (1994), p. 89 as a kind of dogmatism,
subjecting the divine other to “metaphysico-religious determination” forcing the
ultimate guest, the Messiah, to conform or at least converge to the host’s
preconceptions of them. When imagining the coming of the Messiah the host
attributes a new kind of origin and centrism to a divine other and assumes the latter
suits their imaginative picture.
Faith for Derrida (1997a, p. 120) is undeconstructible, while religion, like law,
is deconstructible. Faith is “something that is presupposed by the most radical
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deconstructive gesture. You cannot address the other; speak to the other, without an
act of faith, without testimony.” To speak to another is to ask them to trust you.
As soon as you address the other, as soon as you are open to the future, as soon as you have a
temporal experience of waiting for the future, of waiting for someone to come; that is the
opening of experience. Someone is to come, is now to come (Derrida 1997a, p. 123)
The faith in the other to come, according to Derrida, is absolutely universal, thus the
universal structure of faith is an undeconstructible. In contrast, Derrida suggests
invoking messianicity: as:
. . . the unexpected surprise . . . If I could anticipate, if I had a horizon of anticipation, if I could
see what is coming or who is coming, there would be no coming.
Derrida’s view of messianicity is not limited to a religious context, but extends to his
depiction of otherness more generally. His comments about the other apply to a friend,
someone culturally different, a parent, a child; where the issue arises of whether the
host is capable of recognizing them, of respecting their difference, and of how the host
may be surprised by them. Thus, Derrida allows for a pure form of hospitality.
However, in the case of surprise the unsuspected guest is received on the terms of the
host; unconditional hospitality is still impossible. Similarly when a country’s borders
are open to guests or immigrants, conditional hospitality places the country in relation
to the impossible; the impossible greater generosity inhabits the act of conditional
hospitality. Derrida’s use of the host-guest relationship has in?uenced writers like Molz
(2005) and Garcia and Crang (2005) to examine how the hospitality relationship
in?uences host communities with their “guests” immigrants, asylum seekers and
refugees. Gibson (2005) explores the relationships between prisoners and their guards
through the concept of hospitality.
Engaging with Derrida (2000a, b) and Rosello (2001) adopts a postcolonial
philosophical stance. A brief historical inquiry into the nature of French hospitality as
a metaphor for public acceptance of the other is combined with a close textual analysis
of several recent French and francophone novels and ?lms as a basis for addressing
what issues might be at stake if the immigrant were considered a guest. Examining
France’s traditional role as the terre d’asile (land of sanctuary) for political refugees,
Rosello (2001) shows how this image of a welcoming France is now contrasted with
France as part of the “Fortress Europe” (a land that seeks to close its borders to
unwelcome immigrants). Rosello’s (2001) analysis also discusses the entire decade of
the 1990s in France, when media reports of demonstrations and sit-ins by hundreds
of sanspapiers (immigrants without papers) demanding amnesty and regularisation of
their status, ?lled newspapers almost every week.
Rosello develops her strati?cation, of private concepts to public or state hospitality
by examining the novel Un Aller Simple (One-Way Ticket). This novel, written by van
Cauwelaert (1994), is a humorous story about a young man (born in France, raised by
Gypsies) deported to a nonexistent Moroccan village because his fake passport names
this ?ctional place as that of his birth. Rosello links this story to French and European
Union immigration laws and treaties of the same decade (1990s). The absurdity of
immigration laws that seek to reduce individuals to their of?cial documentary identity,
without regard to the ?uctuating and ethereal nature of national identities are
highlighted within the novel by van Cauwelaert. Rosello’s textual analysis reveals
different hospitality scenarios between groups and between individuals, especially the
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notion of hosts and guests and their respective responsibilities. Emphasising this
Rosello (2002, p. 176) notes:
The very precondition of hospitality may require that, in some ways, both the host and the
guest accept, in different ways, the uncomfortable and sometimes painful possibility of being
changed by the other.
Within “Fortress Europe” there does not seem to be the political will to allow increased
immigration and the thought of European hosts being changed is an anathema. Rosello
expresses grave concerns regarding the future of immigrants in Western Europe. It is
unlikely that they be perceived of as honoured guests deserving of consideration,
whereas it is more probable that they be likened to guests who have fallen into
the category of parasite; they have overstayed their welcome and must be brutally
ushered out.
Rosello’s philosophical concerns are also re?ected in the writings of another
postcolonial theorist Tahar Ben Jelloun; a Moroccan who immigrated to France in 1971.
Drawing upon his personal encounters with racism he uses the metaphor of hospitality
to elucidate the racial divisions that plague contemporary France. Ben Jelloun (1999)
states that laws of hospitality are a fundamental mark of civilisation, observing that he
comes from a poor and relatively unsophisticated country, where the stranger’s right to
protection and shelter has been practiced since time immemorial. On moving to France,
Ben Jelloun discovered that hospitality was not reciprocal, despite the bene?ts that
France had clearly gained from her former colonies. Although France had enjoyed one
side of the reciprocal arrangement, hospitality was not reciprocated to those who
wished to come as guest to France; the former hosts were not welcomed as guests.
Hospitality was conditional; a right to visit was not a right to stay. Ben Jelloun (1999, p.
39) wishes to “open windows in the house of silence, indifference and fear,” French
society seems to remain inhospitable, even frightened by immigrants. Ben Jelloun
(1999, p. 116) suggests that former colonials feel abandoned by the authorities of their
own countries and in France, live in fear of being returned to them:
. . . in France he dreams of the country he left behind. In his own country, he dreams of France
. . . he thumps back and forth a bag full of small possessions and of grand illusion.
Despite having lived for about 30 years in France the author himself states that: “Yet
sometimes I feel I am a stranger here. That happens whenever racism occurs, whether
it is virulent or latent, and whenever someone lays down limits that mustn’t be
transgressed” (Ben Jelloun, 1999, p. 133). Ben Jelloun (1999) concludes with a plea
aimed at policymakers, instead of laws that restrict hospitality, i.e. entry and residence,
he advocates a policy that establishes links between morals and everyone’s right to
acceptance and equity.
For current postcolonial philosophical theory, hospitality is a multifaceted
phenomenon. What are commonly referred to as “laws of hospitality” are largely
unwritten and thereby subject to ?ux and interpretation. For Rosello, what makes the
phenomenon of hospitality relevant for philosophical investigation is the potential for
rede?nition in the traditional roles and duties of the guest and the host. Alternating
between notions of duty and voluntary charity, hospitality between individuals and
states of different racial, ethnic, or religious, backgrounds entails its own rami?cations.
Ben Jelloun (1999) argues that racism is caused by the existence of hospitality
thresholds and boundaries.
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Hospitality and language
The underlying principal is that during any hospitality relationship the host and guest
inhabit the same moral universe and are subject to transcendent laws of hospitality.
However, the hospitality relationship is complicated by the use of language and
culture. Ben Jelloun (1999, p. 3) highlights the problem of language and cultural
difference within different laws of hospitality:
In an unpublished novella called “The Invitation” I tell the true story of a television crew who
went to Algeria to produce a program about an immigrant who had gone home. The shooting
lasted a week, and throughout the whole time the villagers entertained the crew. The
immigrant’s father went into debt to provide presents and sumptuous meals all around. The
director, touched by such warmth and generosity, gave the old man his business card. “If ever
you’re in Paris,” he said in typical Parisian style, “be sure to come and see me!” But when one
evening six months later the old man rang at his doorbell, it took the director some time to
realize who he was. Very embarrassing for all concerned.
Ben Jelloun (1999, p. 3) notes that this illustration shows “hospitality does not always
imply reciprocity,” however, what this story also highlights is the embarrassment of
the difference between expectations and behaviour. Both the guest and the host speak
the same language, but are from different cultural backgrounds and their language
and cultural differences led to confusion between how to extend and accept invitations.
Derrida (2000a, b, p. 21) proposes that issues of language cannot be dissociated from
the most basic level of hospitality; guests can be discomforted and fundamentally
disadvantaged by the host’s language:
The question of hospitality starts here: must we require the strange to understand us, to
speak our language in all the meanings of the words, in all its possible extensions, before
being able to, in order to be able to, welcome him or her.
Derrida argues that this imposition and use of language is the ?rst barrier to
hospitality that is imposed by the host on the guest. Using Ancient Athens, Derrida
(2000b, p. 16) notes “the foreigner had some rights,” the threshold of the host’s domain
establishes a social relation by delimiting the difference between those who are and are
not of Athens. In the case of language, the social relations and understanding
distinguish between sameness and difference; hospitality is extended on the host’s
terms and not those of the guest:
Because intentionality is hospitality, it resists thematization. Act without activity, reason as
receptivity, a sensible and rational experience of receiving, a gesture of welcoming, a welcome
offered to the other as stranger, hospitality opens up as intentionality, but it cannot become
an object, thing, or theme. Thematization, on the contrary, already presupposes hospitality,
welcoming, intentionality, the face. The closing of the door, inhospitality, war, and allergy
already imply, as their possibility, a hospitality offered or received: an original or, more
precisely, pre-originary declaration of peace (Derrida 1999a, b, c, p. 48).
When M. Rocard closed the door on unconditional hospitality, Derrida (1999a, b, c)
argues that he opened up a conceptual paradox; similarly with this pre-originary
hospitable declaration of peace there is another paradox at work. For the declaration to
be understood, it has to be, a priori, inherently and universally understandable to
everyone. This means, in turn, that a monolingual communication is required. In this
situation, Derrida (1998a) considers hospitality from the punitive side of what he refers
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to as a politics of language, within which monolinguism is imposed as a precondition
for hospitality.
According to Derrida (1998a, p. 10) monolinguism refers to a paradox that formed
what he calls the rule of language:
We only ever speak one language . . .
(Yes, but)
We never speak only one language.
Derrida was noticing in Ancient Athens where the foreigner was welcomed according
to the duties and obligations that appropriate the foreigner in advance within Athenian
law. This is a sovereign law that belongs to Athens, certainly, but that as in the case of
all monolinguisms seem to originate from somewhere else, since even the native
Athenians are always striving to appropriate it to themselves in the name of becoming
the perfect and most native of citizens:
First and foremost, the monolingualism of the other would be that sovereignty, that law
originating from elsewhere, certainly, but also primarily the very language of the Law. Its
experience would be ostensibly autonomous, because I have to speak this law and
appropriate it in order to understand it as if I was giving it to myself, but it remains
necessarily heteronomous, for such is, at bottom, the essence of any law. The madness of the
law places its possibility lastingly inside the dwelling of this auto-heteronomy (Derrida
1998b, p. 39).
Belonging to the monolinguism of a native tongue is dif?cult for the simple reason that
this language is not entirely perfectible; therefore, there is always the slight sense of
being a stranger or foreigner to it. This self-perception of being alien or foreign despite
your native tongue or status is what Derrida calls auto-heteronomy. For Derrida the
identi?cation with the native tongue is important because being a native speaker is a
sign of political identity and the consequential legal rights. Speaking a language,
therefore, is a means of dwelling or remaining within a political identity even when you
are a foreigner abroad.
The politics of language can protect, since it is politics that prepare the way for
hospitality in the Athenian sense, in which citizens and foreigners are both known
quantities with formal contractual relations of hosting and being a guest. However,
Derrida (2000a, b, p. 132) notes that the law under which people gather themselves to
that language, gives them their political identity and security, is not as hospitable as
one might like to imagine, precisely because it is political:
[Language is] one of the numerous dif?culties before us, as with settling the extension of the
concept of hospitality . . . In the broad sense, the language in which the foreigner is addressed
or in which he is heard, if he is, is the ensemble of culture, it is the values, the norms, the
meanings that inhabit the language.
In terms of language and hospitality, if language shelters the guest, it does not
incorporate or assimilate the guest into itself. Derrida (1998a) notes that at the same
time “we speak only one language . . . ” because there is always the possibility of
speaking otherwise, a speaking differently that is the condition of the essence of
speaking one language properly. O’Gorman (2005, 2007) shows that English is made up
of different languages that, over time, has not only become incorporated into the native
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language but also has been so incorporated as to become indistinguishable. This
illustrates Derrida’s observation that in speaking a single language it is impossible to
speak one language alone. Derrida emphasizes the dif?culty of establishing a hard and
fast difference between the native and the foreign.
Discussion and conclusions
This paper considers Derrida and other writers in order to review the current thinking
of philosophers about hospitality. It presented three issues: moral philosophy of
hospitality from the perspective of the guest host relationship; hospitality between
peoples and nation states; and the use of language in hospitality provision and
consumption. This separation, although arti?cial (because the distinctions are not
entirely delimited), served as a useful way to gain an overview of the interrelated ideas.
Discontentment and bias are two of the issues that arise from the writing of Derrida,
Rosello and Ben Jelloun, it comes across clearly, for example, in the writings of Ben
Jelloun, in his homesickness and general discontent with his host country. Derrida too
was an immigrant to France and his background could also have had a strong in?uence
on his thinking and writing. This does not prove that either Derrida or Ben Jelloun have
any political bias or underlying propagandist tendency; however the fact that neither of
them seems to explicitly discuss their potential bias does leave room for doubt. In
addition, in investigating the hospitality of the classical Greco-Roman world Derrida
was then drawing conclusions and writing for the modern age. Telfer, through her
treatment of domestic hospitality, and Derrida, Rosello and Ben Jelloun with their
investigation of the state and the relationship to the individual, all to a greater or lesser
extent seem to expect that the hospitality relationship should be the same. There is
limited consideration given to the motivations of either the guest or the host, and even
less recognition given to the fact that the hospitality relationship exists in dissimilar
contexts: domestic, civic or commercial, each with their own different sets of laws.
For Derrida the hospitality given to the “other” is an ethical marker, both for an
individual and a country. Everyday engagement with the “other” is fraught with
dif?culties; sometimes the “other” is devalued or in extreme cases rejected. In the case of
hospitality, the “other” is often forced to take on the perceptions of the “host.” The
“guests” are unable to be themselves; they must transform their “otherness.” For
Derrida, being open and accepting the “other” on their terms opens the host to new
experiences, what Pope John Paul II (1994, p. 1) prophetically described as the possibility
of “crossing thresholds of hope.” Even when they have the true gift of hospitality is an
act of generosity experienced by the “guest,” which turns a stranger into a friend for a
limited period of time the best of intentions people fail in their attempts to behave
hospitably and this adds to the complexity of the hospitality relationship:
We do not know what hospitality is.
Not yet.
Not yet, but will we ever know? (Derrida, 2000b, p. 6)
The purpose of this paper was to explore Derrida’s contribution, along with other
writers in philosophy and postcolonial theory, in order to identify a philosophical
foundation for the emergent paradigm of hospitality studies. However, it seems that
true hospitality is somewhat of an enigma, this is not due to any philosophical
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conundrum, but perhaps because hospitality is not a matter of objective knowledge.
Hospitality exists within lived experience; it is a gift given by the “host” to the “guest,”
and then shared between them. Hospitality cannot be resolved on the pages of an
academic journal; the true gift of hospitality is an act of generosity experienced by the
“guest,” which turns a stranger into a friend for a limited period of time.
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Corresponding author
Kevin D. O’Gorman can be contacted at: [email protected]
To purchase reprints of this article please e-mail: [email protected]
Or visit our web site for further details: www.emeraldinsight.com/reprints
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