Decolonial Hospitality: The Disruptive Aporia in Derrida

• Main Author: Renan Rocha
• Format: Article
• Language: Catalan
• Published: Universitat de Barcelona 2020-07-01
• Series: Oxímora. Revista Internacional de Ética y Política
• Subjects: hospitalité; pouvoir; décolonial; derrida; aporie; disruption.
• Online Access: https://revistes.ub.edu/index.php/oximora/article/view/31217

What are the political implications of hospitality in the context of colonial domination? What are the issues involved in determining the identity of the other as part of institutional politics? This article poses these questions, relying on the aporetic dimension intrinsic to the notion of Derridian hospitality. It questions the colonial perspective of welcome. Derrida's thinking on hospitality is therefore, above all, an enquiry into the very concept of hospitality, which is always placed on the side of the one with the «strongest or dominating reason». The author questions even the most generous welcome, highlighting the ambiguity that is established between hospitality and power. This aporia establishes an offer of hospitality that is inescapably linked to the point of view of the dominant, i.e. the colonizer. The one who, imposes his views on the other when it comes to the concept of «I welcome you into my home» or rather hospitality, due to the unequal or asymmetrical distribution of power.