Derrida and Hospitality

This book is the first full-length study of hospitality in the writings of Jacques Derrida. 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 (often inhospitable) reception of outsiders, such as refugees or migrants, by the community or state. 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. This book sets Derrida's work in a series of contexts including the socio-political history of France, especially in relation to Algeria, and the writing on hospitality of other key thinkers, most importantly Helene Cixous, Luce Irigaray and Emmanuel Levinas.