Derrida and Hospitality
Theory and Practice
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Winner of the R. H. Gapper Book Prize 2011. Judith Still sets Derrida's work in a series of contexts including the socio-political history of France, especially in relation to Algeria, and his relationship to other writers, most importantly Helene Cixous, Luce Irigaray and Emmanuel Levinas - key thinkers of hospitality. Still also follows the thread of sexual difference in Derrida's writing in order to shed light on his exploration of the complex and delicate, strange yet familiar, political and ethical dilemmas of how to be those impossible things, a good host and a good guest. Hospitality is critically important in Derrida's writings, and his insights in this have been influential across a range of disciplines from geography, politics and sociology to literary studies and philosophy. It functions as a way of both thinking about relations between individuals, and analysing the community or state's often inhospitable reception of outsiders, such as refugees or migrants.
About this Author
Judith Still is Chair of French and Critical Theory at the University of Nottingham.
Reviews
An important, intelligent book on the context of Derrida's thinking about hospitality ... This indispensable volume enhances understanding of the French cultural and political context of Derrida's thinking. Summing Up: Highly Recommended.
Still has written a learned, scholarly work on feminism and hospitality, read as readers of Derrida tend to read: with care, attention to detail, and openness to a wide range of thinkers, concentrating on but absolutely not limited to, Derrida.
Still succeeds admirably, in my view, in exploring the traditional model of hospitality with reference to the Odyssey and the Old Testament (chapter 2); and in response to that, the implications of a maternal model of hospitality, first for friendship, which is traditionally viewed as existing only between men (chapter 3); then for naming as an issue of hospitality in the colonial context (chapter 4); thereafter for the welcoming to Europe of migrants with their Gods (chapter 5); and last, for our relation to non-human animals (chapter 6). In each instance, Still convincingly shows the link with hospitality, which may not be immediately obvious to the reader. There are many gems in this book.
This impressive book expertly welcomes the reader into the difficulties of the question of hospitality. While interpreting work on this topic by Derrida and Lévinas, Cixous and Irigaray, Still also opens new doors onto issues in feminism and post-colonialism. She refers to telling examples in contemporary politics, and unfailingly reflects on the way her own work is performatively implicated in the structures of hospitality she is drawing out.
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