To introduce Derrida‘s concept of hospitality, I will first refer to his Politics of Friendship. The work can be regarded as the prelude to Derridean hospitality which contains writings on friendship from Greek and Roman philosophers (Plato, Aristotle and Cicero) and Montaigne to Maurice Blanchot and Levinas. Through the work, he
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reflects on the interlocking relation between politics and the ethics of friendship. Due to such an extensive scope, it would be almost impossible to analyze the canon in detail covering every aspect. Therefore, I will mainly focus on friendship regarding the interrelated negotiations between the host and guest in the structure of hospitality.
Derridean hospitality often emphasizes the welcoming of the unexpected stranger that is the Other than the master of the house. Nevertheless, according to Levinas and Derrida, hospitality and friendship intertwine with each other. Despite its radicalness owing to receiving an unknown stranger by the house‘s master, hospitality usually involves reciprocal exchanges between relatives and friends in daily lives. The accumulations of small acts of hospitality then prompt the growth of friendships.
Derrida traces back the writings on friendship over the centuries and concludes that most friendships take place in two types of models. The first one is called ―the Graeco-Roman model, which seems to be governed by the value of reciprocity, by homological, immanentistm, finitist—and rather politest—concord‖ (Derrida, Politics of Friendship 290). In other words, friends who follow this model share similarities
and are able to connect with each other because their resemblance to each other draws them together as if the friend mirrored another self. Exactly contrary to the first one, the second model of friendship establishes itself through ―heterology, transcendence, dissymmetry and infininity, hence a Christian type of logic‖ (291). Hence, unlike friends who share commonalities, people who fall into the category of the second model of friendship develop their relations as a result of differences and ―are separated by distance‖ (Haddad, ―Friendship‖ 69). In the traditional perception on friendship, the first model predominates, whereas the second one exists in a more subtle way. In ―Friendship,‖ Samir Haddad indicates that ―the division between models is not a clean one: as aporetic, friendship must involve both, simultaneously‖
(69). According to the first model, one shares spiritual sameness and proximity with
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the other in order to achieve a perfect friendship. Nevertheless, in terms of physical aspect, they remain separated and different as independent entities. Consequently, the most intimate friend is eventually an other to the self. Thus, friendship and hospitality reinforce each other in the way that friendship embraces hospitality because one
―interiorize[s]‖ the other within the self (Still, ―Friendship and Sexual Difference‖ 95).
In this sense, hospitality leads to the potential realization of friendship On the surface, the ethics of friendship seems to bring openness in terms of
interpersonal relations as it deals with aporetic relation between sameness and differences. However, based on the texts and sources on friendship in Politics of Friendship that stretch for centuries, I argue that the nature of those modalities
confines itself within homsociality. Derrida himself also acknowledges the fact that the interchanges of friendship between writers, scholars or philosophers over the centuries have largely been masculine. The exclusion of sexual differences elucidates itself as Derrida and philosophers of various historical times use another synonym for friendship — fraternity. The word underlies male-dominated friendship that ostracizes sexual difference as Still indicates that ―friendship thus structured is by definition between men‖ (104). In other words, the ethics of friendship remains androcentric that negates sexual difference as Haddad points out that ―friendship seems impossible between a man and a woman, and between women‖ (―Friendship‖ 71). Alex Thomson also asserts that ―the problem Derrida poses through his insistence on this exclusion is whether politics itself, all the concepts and models we have of politics, might not be founded on the absence of women, or at least on the neutralization of sexual
difference‖ (Deconstruction and Democracy 20). Therefore, in the Western
philosophical convention, the notion of friendship paradoxically problematizes the realization of hospitality as it only includes and interiorizes the other on condition that the other remains masculine. Such a homosocial discourse not only excludes sexual
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difference, but also hinders cultural diversity. In reflecting on the friendship model and its relation to politics, Derrida points out that such a problematic ―political phallogocentrism‖ hinders the realization of true democracy, especially a cosmopolitical one that include differences and possibilities.
In a time of globalization when refugees, immigrants, and asylum seekers move from country to country, interpersonal relations not only go beyond the interchanges between genders, but also cross cultural, ethical, and national borders. Realizing the inadequacy to fulfill democracy based on the ―exclusionary history‖ of friendship (Haddad 75), Derrida asks: ―Is it possible to think and to implement democracy, that which would keep the old name ‗democracy,‘ while uprooting from it all these figures of friendship (philosophical and religious) which prescribe fraternity: the family and the androcentric ethnic group?‖ (Politics of Friendship 306). Without answering the question, he does not use the vocabulary ―friendship‖ in his later works. Apparently, over the course of Western philosophic tradition, the ethics of friendship restricts itself within the framework of patriarchy without inclusion of sexual difference and
possibilities that transcend national/cultural boundaries. Even though the ethics of friendship prevails in a time when interactions between people are generalized as commonplace, it fails to address cross-cultural/national interpersonal relations
communications due to its exclusionary nature. Due to its inadequacy and irrelevance when it comes to global interchanges between people of various cultural backgrounds, Derrida shifts his research to the domain of hospitality to explore
transnational/transcultural communication instead of the homosocial discourse of friendship.