Of Hospitality

These 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.