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From Hosting Words to Hosting Civilizations: Towards a Theory of ‘Guardianship’ and ‘Deep Hospitality’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 May 2023

Tamara Albertini
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Abstract

In this paper, I cover some ideas first developed during a research year that took me, among other countries, to Bulgaria, where I enjoyed a Fulbright scholarship in 2018–2019. At a conference in Plovdiv (ancient Philippopolis), I gave a talk entitled ‘Neither Clash Nor Dialogue: We Are Each Other's Guardians’.2 A journalist in the audience became irritated and asked me, ‘What do you mean by “neither/nor”? What else is there?’ I answered that the explanation was in the subtitle ‘We Are Each Other's Guardians’. It proposes a third course, one resting on the notion of ‘guardianship’ – as a moral obligation. In what follows, I elaborate further on this concept by relating it to the notion of hospitality, not the Derridian variant, but one that is conceptualized as a transformative event for both the host and the guest, which is why I call it ‘deep hospitality’.

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Paper
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Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 93: Expanding Horizons , May 2023 , pp. 231 - 254
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2023

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Footnotes

I thank Dr Julian Baggini for his gracious invitation. It was truly an honour to be invited to the Royal Institute of Philosophy where Bertrand Russell and many more brilliant philosophers once lectured. I may not have been at the Institute in person, but contemporary technology made it possible for my voice and image to be ‘hosted’. The lecture is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97ZpPfZDI-E.

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