Research: The hospitality phenomenon: Philosophical enlightenment

Paper (2007) by: Kevin D O’Gorman. Source: https://doi.org/10.1108/17506180710817729.

I have read the paper so you don't have to. The 5 biggest lessons that teach you about the essence of  hospitality, tourism and leisure management.

Derrida (2000a) defined hospitality as inviting and welcoming the ‘stranger’. This takes place on different 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 analysed ‘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 2002:110)

So, as Derrida (2000a:13) observed there is always a little hostility in all hosting and hospitality, constituting what he called a certain ‘hostipitality’.

In his discussions Derrida (2000b), makes a distinction between unconditional hospitality, which he considers impossible, and hospitality that is always conditional.

Derrida (2000b) argues that hospitality is […] 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: 25)

Derrida (1999a) 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.

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.

“Unconditional hospitality implies that you don’t ask the other, the newcomer, the guest to give anything back, or even to identify himself or herself. 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:71)

Derrida’s [take on the] differentiation between the ‘law of hospitality’ and ‘laws of hospitality’:

“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 fulfilment 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 defined 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.”(Derrida 2000b:77)

This distinction is useful because clarifies 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.

[Derrida highlights] the complexity of the hospitality relationship:

“We do not know what hospitality is.
Not yet.
Not yet, but will we ever know?” (Derrida 2000b:6)

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.

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 influenced writers like Molz (2005) and Garcia and Crang (2005) to examine how the hospitality relationship influences host communities with their ‘guests’ immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees. Gibson (2005) explored the relationships between prisoners and their guards through the concept of hospitality.

The absurdity of immigration laws that seek to reduce individuals to their official documentary identity, without regard to the fluctuating 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 notion of hosts and guests and their respective responsibilities. Emphasising this Rosello (2000:176) 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.”

The hospitality relationship is complicated by the use of language and culture.

[If] 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 (2000) 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 2000:21)

Derrida (2000c) argues that this imposition and use of language is the first barrier to hospitality that is imposed by the host on the guest. of violence that is inflicted on the guest by the host.

“[Language is] one of the numerous difficulties 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.” (Derrida 2000:132)

For Derrida, being open and accepting the ‘other’ on their terms opens the host to new experiences.