Abstracts

Thomas Froy (Bio)

The Subject of Hospitality: Is Heideggerian Hospitality Possible?

Heidegger’s fundamental ontology can be understood as an attempt to think hospitably. Being and Time defines itself as a reflection on existence without the (Cartesian) subject. The removal of subjectivity found there aims, in Heidegger’s mid- to-late work (Origin of the Work of Art and ‘Building Dwelling Thinking’), to open a space which can provide hospitality for new and unfamiliar ways of building-thinking-dwelling. With Heidegger, therefore, we think of hospitality as a cleared space, open to the strange and the other. In this way, Heidegger’s ontology can be understood as a pre- or proto-Derridean reflection on hospitality.

But is hospitality possible in a space which is defined by the absence of the subject? Do Derrida’s recently published Hospitality seminars demonstrate that a deconstructed subjectivity is entirely necessary for thinking hospitality? In the context of discussions of both conditional and unconditional hospitality, the absence of some notion of subjectivity implies the possibility of the disappearance of hospitality itself. For Derrida, it seems, subject-less hospitality risks becoming its absence, perhaps even hostility. Does hospitality therefore require a host?

This presentation critically compares one understanding of the Heideggerian project – an attempt to think hospitality without the subject – with a certain notion of host-subjectivity which appears in Derrida’s recently published seminars. Are we hosts? Are we guests? Can a space be a host? Can Heidegger? Can Derrida?