Derrida and hospitality : theory and practice / Judith Still.

"First published in hardback ... 2010"--Title page verso.

"Text for paperback edition contains corrections and amendments to hardback text."--Title page verso.

Introduction to the question of hospitality : ethics and politics -- Patriarchs and their women, some inaugural intertexts of hospitality : the Odyssey, Abraham, Lot and the Levite of Ephraim -- Friendship and sexual difference : hospitality from brotherhood to motherhood and beyond -- Frenchalgeria, (not) asking for a name, naming, calling by name in tales of Algerians -- The dangers of hospitality : the French state, cultural difference and gods -- Animals and what is human -- Concluding around hospitality.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 268-282) and index.

"Hospitality is critically important in Derrida's writings, and his work in this field has been influential across a range of disciplines from geography, politics and sociology to literary studies and philosophy. While it is part of everyday experience, and every society has a code of hospitality by which behaviour is judged, Derrida also argues for the impossibility of true hospitality.

Judith Still shows how this functions as a way of thinking about relations between individuals, and also as a way of analysing the (often inhospitable) reception of outsiders, such as refugees or migrants, by the community or state. She also follows the thread of sexual difference in Derrida's writing in order to shed light on his exploration of the complex and delicate, strange yet familiar, political and ethical dilemmas of how to be those impossible things, a good host and a good guest. Hospitality to animals is taken as a limit case in defining what it is to be human."--Page 4 of cover.

Text in English with some also in French.