Description
Book SynopsisThese two lectures by Jacques Derrida, Foreigner Question and Step of Hospitality/No Hospitality, derive from a series of seminars on hospitality conducted by Derrida in Paris, January 1996. His seminars, in France and in America, have become something of an institution over the years, the place where he presents the ongoing evolution of his thought in a remarkable combination of thoroughly mapped-out positions, sketches of new material, and exchanges with students and interlocutors.
As has become a pattern in Derrida''s recent work, the form of this presentation is a self-conscious enactment of its content. The book consists of two texts on facing pages. Invitation by Anne Dufourmantelle appears on the left (an invitation that of course originates in a response), clarifying and inflecting Derrida''s response on the right. The interaction between them not only enacts the hospitality under discussion, but preserves something of the rhythms of teaching.
The volume also cha
Trade Review
"Of Hospitality provides us with a glimpse of Jacques Derrida as not only the brilliant thinker and writer readers have long admired but as the masterful lecturer and pedagogue his students have long known. . . . Of Hospitality should find a welcome audience not only among faithful readers of Derrida but among all those who are open enough to hear the knock at their borders or their doors."—L'Esprit Créateur
"Both lectures [in the book] deserve credit not only for representing a significant step in Derrida's reflection on ethics and politics but also for prompting us to begin our own deconstructive work and rethink our identity."—Symploke
"The book clearly shows the political and ethical seriousness of Derrida's philosophical thought, and it is an important work for anyone who is working with those notions in light of thought about 'the other.'"—Religious Studies Review
Table of Contents
Translator's note; 1. Invitation Anne Dufourmantelle; 2. Foreigner question Jacques Derrida; 3. Step of hospitality/no hospitality Jacques Derrida; Notes.
