Chapter 8 Eating, Ethics, and Strangers: Hospitality and Food in Ruth Ozeki’s Novels1
In: The Poetics and Politics of Hospitality in U.S. Literature and CultureSearch for other papers by Cristina Garrigós in
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Abstract
The following essay discusses the notion of the ethics of hospitality in relation to food and eating in the work of Ruth L. Ozeki. Hospitality is present in the three novels that the Asian American author has published to date: My Year of Meats (1998), All Over Creation (2003), and A Tale for the Time Being (2013). In all these cases, Ozeki points out the difficulties of open and unconditional hospitality, to use Derrida’s concept. From her Zen Buddhist perspective, unconditional hospitality is the most perfect state, but it is difficult to attain in our society because it would imply accepting the Other in us. To address this issue in her fiction, the essay analyses the role of food as a tool of communication and communion with the other, and thus as a metaphor for hospitality.
The first novel, My Year of Meats, exposes the lies behind the appearance of hospitality both in the TV food programs and in the food processing. The author points to the need to dismantle false myths and go back to the real, which is where radical hospitality is to be found. Ozeki’s second work, All Over Creation, also has food as the central element of the narrative, and again, eating becomes a metaphor for the relationships between hosts and strangers. The analysis of this novel focuses on the idea of strangers as parasites (Serres), that is, people who arrive unexpectedly and do not offer anything in exchange for the food they eat. However, the narrative proves that, as Levinas said, hospitality is an act of ethics. It implies accepting the Others and understanding that there is a connection between all human beings that goes beyond the notion of place, property, and belonging. Thus, the novel questions the notion of the host, the guest, and the meaning of parasitism. In Ozeki’s third novel, A Tale for the Time Being, hospitality is conceived as something that includes the spiritual and the physical, transcending both. In this work, the author is moving beyond known theories of hospitality to include cyborgs or egoless subjectivities. She opens our understanding of hospitality by going beyond humanistic philosophies and ethics. Moreover, she articulates the idea of hospitality/hostility related to cannibalism. According to Jean Baudrillard, cannibalism is a radical form of hospitality. It rewrites the discourse of hospitality, for it implies the total dissolution of boundaries and reverses the meaning of sharing food as a hospitable act.
Thus, this chapter explores the evolution of the notion of hospitality in Ozeki’s fiction through the metaphor of eating. Whereas the first two novels explore hospitality as a Levinasian act of ethics, in the sense of offering and sharing with the Other, and the idea of reciprocity, Ozeki’s last novel gives another turn to the concept of hospitality beyond the humanist approaches of Kant, Levinas, or Derrida to rely on Buddhism and radical hospitality and approach hospitality through disembodiment.