Deconstructing the Ethical and the Political in Postcolonial Hospitality

The present condition of globalization has created a unique predicament for the postcolonial society. Those who were once colonized have come face to face with their colonizers resulting in making a new postcolonial dyad of guest/host. Hospitality provides for the possibility of coexistence and assimilation. But this is possible only if we leave the question of identity aside, rather than latching on to it. Assimilation is a fundamental need for society today, which will create a community and it is also desirable in a community. Deconstruction of hospitality is an absolute aporia as two things try to function together – the unconditional hospitality which is sought by asylum seekers, refugees, and former colonized peoples, and on the other hand the risk and internal conflicts that hospitality carries with it, that of a risk to its own citizens. The flow of people into the host country is inescapably restrained and limited at the political and subjective levels. There is a double bind in hospitality – one which acknowledges risks and the other which is vigilant. An ethics of negotiation is necessary to reach the limits of a normative unconditional hospitality. Derrida’s deconstructionist approach to hospitality creates an aporia within the concept of hospitality. The stranger, the host, the immigrant, the asylum seeker, the refugee all need to be in a balance, which is the condition of possibility for unconditional hospitality. For Derrida, hospitality should be unconditional which is to say nothing should come in the way of taking the decision of inviting or accepting the guest. The present paper discusses the notion of Derrida’s hostipitality (hostility + hospitality) to understand the contemporary postcolonial condition of conviviality