Derrida and Hospitality

Reviews / Votes

An important, intelligent book on the context of Derrida's thinking about hospitality ... This indispensable volume enhances understanding of the French cultural and political context of Derrida's thinking. Summing Up: Highly Recommended. -- N. Lukacher, University of Illinois at Chicago * Choice * Still has written a learned, scholarly work on feminism and hospitality, read as readers of Derrida tend to read: with care, attention to detail, and openness to a wide range of thinkers, concentrating on but absolutely not limited to, Derrida. -- Maebh Long, The University of the South Pacific * Derrida Today * Still succeeds admirably, in my view, in exploring the traditional model of hospitality with reference to the Odyssey and the Old Testament (chapter 2); and in response to that, the implications of a maternal model of hospitality, first for friendship, which is traditionally viewed as existing only between men (chapter 3); then for naming as an issue of hospitality in the colonial context (chapter 4); thereafter for the welcoming to Europe of migrants with their Gods (chapter 5); and last, for our relation to non-human animals (chapter 6). In each instance, Still convincingly shows the link with hospitality, which may not be immediately obvious to the reader. There are many gems in this book. -- Jacques de Ville, University of the Western Cape * Oxford Literary Review * This impressive book expertly welcomes the reader into the difficulties of the question of hospitality. While interpreting work on this topic by Derrida and Levinas, Cixous and Irigaray, Still also opens new doors onto issues in feminism and post-colonialism. She refers to telling examples in contemporary politics, and unfailingly reflects on the way her own work is performatively implicated in the structures of hospitality she is drawing out. -- Geoffrey Bennington, Asa G. Candler Professor of Modern French Thought, Emory University