In order to elaborate Derrida‘s concept of hospitality, I will first introduce the etymology of the word ―hospitality‖ and its cultural implications throughout different
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periods of time. Hospitality originates from the Latin word ―hospes,‖ which means host, guest, or stranger. The word ―hospes‖ is the combination of the two roots ―hostis‖
and ―potis.‖ While the former refers to ―stranger‖ or ―enemy,‖ the latter connotes
―power.‖ Therefore, the word ―hospitality‖ indicates the granting of ―equal rights‖ to the stranger without expecting the return of a gift in the sphere of home (Still 16). The concept of hospitality derives from as early as ancient Greek and Roman cultures. At that time, reciprocity serves as the key to the maintenance of the hospitable relation between the host and the guest. In other words, suppose the host provides tangible or intangible kindness to the guest, the host expects that the guest, by any means, returns the favor. On the other hand, hospitality in Christian tradition suggests the welcoming of unidentified strangers without asking or expecting any reciprocal exchange,
tangibly or intangibly. On the surface, hospitality is a welcoming attitude describing the generosity offered by the host of a house to the guest. However, hospitality in a broader sense represents more than the host-guest relation within the sphere of an actual residence; it also crosses the intangible boundary between Self and Other, private and public, and inside and outside. For Derrida, hospitality relates to the negotiations between two seemingly contradicting but overlapping conceptions: one is the conditional hospitality, the laws of hospitality that welcome someone with an identity and an origin. Another is the unconditional hospitality, the Law of hospitality to welcome the Other unconditionally. In what follows, I will first elaborate on the contrast between conditional hospitality and unconditional hospitality.
In terms of conditional hospitality, the host expects and welcomes someone with an identity or origin. Derrida states that:
This right to hospitality offered to a foreigner ‗as a family,‘ represented and protected by his or her family name, is at once what makes hospitality possible. . .[,] [b]ecause hospitality, in this situation, is not offered to an
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anonymous new arrival and someone who has no name and social status, and who is therefore treated not as a foreigner but as another barbarian.
(Derrida, Of Hospitality 25)
Accordingly, the guest welcomed in the conditional hospitality must be recognized by his identity and origin in that the host needs to ―expect‖ his guest prior to the guest‘s arrival. However, such an invitation contradicts with the very concept of hospitality.
Therefore, some degree of hostility always hides in conditional ―hospitality.‖ In other words, the host only welcomes the guest who has a name or social identity. This self-limiting invitation illustrates itself when the host says:
‗Make yourself at home,‘ actually, the underlying meaning is that 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. (Derrida, Deconstruction in a Nutshell
111)
As a result, in the situation of conditional hospitality, the subjectivity is thus formed in this exclusion of difference and otherness that prevents itself from the exposure and the acceptance of otherness and strangeness. Due to the imposition of boundaries and limitations by the host to the guest, Derrida coins the word ―hostipitality‖ (110). To summarize the interrelation between hostility and hospitality, Derrida indicates that:
There is an essential ‗self-limitation‘ built right into the idea of hospitality, which preserves the distance between one‘s own and the stranger,
between owing one‘s own property and inviting the other into one‘s home.
So, there is always a little hostility in all hosting and hospitality, constituting a certain ‗hostil/pitality. (110)
That is to say, the word hostipitality combines ―hostility‖ and ―hospitality,‖ in order to exemplify the underlying hostility that lies underneath the seeming hospitality.
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Literally speaking, the word ―hostility‖ describes a strong unfriendliness towards somebody/something, and the resentment may be so extreme as to involve physical violence as a form of outburst. Nonetheless, in the discourse of Derridean hospitality, both the host and the guest display hostility against the other than oneself. Boundaries set by the owner of the premises to prevent the fully infiltration of the other and the attempted invasion into the premise by the alterity could be deemed as on-going violent tendencies that potentially violate or threaten each other‘s subjectivity in the premises.
Metaphorically speaking, the host‘s hostility elucidates restrictions and
boundaries set in the property to ensure the mastery and power in the house to prevent the guest‘s transgression. To the host, potential dangers lurk when the host opens the door and receives a guest. These dangers stand for dissimilarities between the host and the guest and could result in potential collisions between two sides. In other words, to welcome someone other than oneself represents invasion of the subjectivity by the alterity. These divisions and differences between the host and the guest lead to mutual hostility in the sphere of home. However, it is inevitable that the house or the host undergoes some alterations once the other is let into the house. Such potential alterations serve as forms of violence that threaten the host‘s subjectivity and mastery in the domain of home. While the host reveals hostility toward to alterity by striving to discipline the Other that is allowed in the house, the guest also embodies hostility by means of the attempted infiltration into the house. Since this transgression inevitably alters the host‘s domination and transforms the house into a state of in-betweenness, it represents a form of violence to the host of the premises as well.
Therefore, both the host and the guest demonstrate hostility in the domain of home. While the former disciplines the visitation of the other in order to ensure
mastery, the latter inevitably alters the very nature of the host‘s subjectivity because of
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the invasion of otherness. The hostility between two sides result in the on-going Self-Other power negotiations in the domain of home in the discourse of Derrida‘s hospitality. Consequently, hospitable as it seems for the host to receive the guest, conditional hospitality is established upon the hostility. Rather than the form of physical violence, this hostility manifests itself through limitations set by the host in order to protect himself from the over-exposure to the alterity.
Nonetheless, different from conditional hospitality that acknowledges the guest through one‘s identity and origin, unconditional hospitality stresses the welcoming of the Other before any acknowledgement of the Other is given, including identities and names. In ―Hostipitality,‖ Derrida explains that the essence of unconditional
hospitality means to embrace and welcome the stranger and the Other not ―out of mere duty‖ (361) but accepts their differences without terms and conditions. In other words, the spirit of unconditional hospitality emphasizes that the host must be open-minded and accept many possibilities. Rather than restraining himself within a fixed frame, the host must be ready to be ―overtaken‖ (361) by the things for which he is unprepared. That is to say, hospitality only exists under the condition that the host still welcomes the Other even though he is thrown into the total strangeness. This strangeness may even prevent the host‘s predication from the acknowledgment of the uninvited guest‘s identity and origin. However, in order to realize the ideal of
unconditional hospitality, the host must accept and welcome the guest that is impossible for the host to welcome.
Thus, in order to potentiate the absolute hospitality, the host must renounce his own subjectivity and ―become[s] capable of that which I am incapable of,‖ (364) which is to become the Other itself. In this sense, ―the host must. . . tear up the understanding between him and the guest, act with ‗excess,‘ make an absolute gift of his property. . . . which is the only way the guest can go away feeling as if he was
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really made at home‖ (Derrida, Deconstruction in a Nutshell 111). Nevertheless, such absolute hospitality is impossible. Suppose the host (the self) unlimitedly welcomes the guest and even permits the full infiltration of the guest (the Other) without the restrictions of any terms and conditions, the host encounters challenges regarding identity and subjectivity from the guest. The guest, who is the Other, would keep trespassing the rules and boundaries within the house set by the host so that the very existence of the Self is threatened by the otherness. Overtaken by the supposedly guest, who is gradually becoming the new host, the host is otherized and marginalized.
Consequently, the role between the host and the guest is reversed. The host risks becoming the hostage, for the Self is overtaken by the Other, leading to the imminent deconstruction of ―the home.‖ Both the host and the house would lose meaning and subjectivity and turn into the status of in-betweeness. This in-betweeness neither possesses the full subjectivity of the house, nor transforms into complete otherness, for it still carries some of the characters established by the former host. Blurring the boundaries between the self and the Other, this in-between strangeness causes ambiguity and complexity within the deconstructed house. Thus, the difficulty of unconditional hospitality lies in the impossible achievement of this absolute hospitality. To the host and the guest:
Hospitality is inhabited from within, inwardly disturbed by these tensions, but he does this precisely in order to open hospitality up, to keep it on guard against itself, . . . to push — it beyond itself. For it is only that internal tension and instability that keeps the idea of hospitality alive, open, loose. If it is not beyond itself, it falls back into itself and becomes a bit of ungracious
meanness, that is, hostile. (Derrida, Deconstruction in a Nutshell 112)
The above passage exactly pinpoints the contradictory but interrelated nature of
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Derridean hospitality. The host and the guest can hardly achieve unconditional hospitality since neither of them intends to be assimilated by otherness. However, such inward hostility of limitations and boundaries potentiates the realization of conditional hospitality. In this sense, both parties expose themselves to the alterity with a disciplined level. Paradoxically, conditional hospitality would not sustain without the hostile nature of hospitality. It is because of this self-limited hostility with which the host draws the Self-Other boundary that the alterity initiates infiltration into the house in the maximum controlled order. As a result, the impossibility of
unconditional hospitality does not exclude the alterity; it promises the potential realization of conditional hospitality.