Chapter 1 Introduction: Hospitality in American Literature and Culture
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Abstract
The introduction to this volume makes a brief survey of the concept of hospitality in history, focusing on Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida, and describes the content of the chapters. Starting with Immanuel Kant and his notion of hospitality based on reciprocity, the authors of the introduction move towards Levinas’s ethical hospitality as it shapes our identity, since we are constituted by the Other’s self. For Levinas, hospitality is defined in terms of space and of care, while Jacques Derrida attempted to reconcile the ethical and the political in his theorization of the concept in the light of contemporary needs. For him, it is absolutely necessary a negotiation between the law of the nation and the Law of hospitality, otherwise hospitality will always be conditioned.
This first chapter also summarizes how the authors of the book have written on the reflection of hospitality in American literature and culture, the way it has shifted to a discussion on race, culture and identity, and also the way it explains a new Other. The authors agree that literature and culture create a space that becomes a refuge for hospitality. Thus, language, space, and hospitality structure the book, since hospitality, though represented in terms of space, starts with linguistic interaction. The introduction also deals with the construction of dominant and subordinate identities in a space that is familiar and that eventually becomes the place of interaction, negotiation, social action, and linguistic hospitality. Finally, it also surveys briefly how hospitality has been represented in American literature across the centuries, and the ways in which American authors have responded to the political pressures of their times by representing either conditioned or unconditioned hospitality.