1.
Derrida's Philosophy of Hospitality:
In “The Reluctant Fundamentalist”:
by
Mohsin Hamid

2.
Hospitality
• The concept of hospitality – which by definition refers to
‘the reception or entertainment of guests or strangers with liberality and
goodwill’
has become of increasing relevance to the contemporary global scene.
• Jacques Derrida, in his book Of Hospitality (2000), offers a particularly
illuminating insight on the treatment of the ‘outsider’ by the state or community.
• He cites hospitality as an ethical problem by distinguishing between a ‘law of
unconditional hospitality’ and the conditional ‘laws of hospitality’ – the latter
as transgressions of the former.

3.
Derrida's Philosophy of Hospitality:
• Derrida emphasizes that
• a home must have some kind of opening in order to be a home, meaning that the host
must be hospitable to preserve his identity as a host.
• Derrida deined hospitality as inviting and welcoming the ‘stranger’, this takes place on
diferent levels:
• The personal level where the ‘stranger’ is welcomed into the home; and the level of
individual countries.
• His interest was heightened by the etymology of ‘hospitality’,being from a Latin root, but
derived from two proto-Indo-European words which have the meanings of ‘stranger’,
‘guest’ and ‘power’. Thus, in the ‘destruction’ of the word, there can be seen
• “an essential ‘self limitation’ built right into the idea of hospitality, which preserves the
distance between one’s own and the ‘stranger’, between owning one’s own property
and inviting the ‘other’ into one’s home.
• So, as Derrida observed, there is always a little hostility in all hosting and hospitality,
constituting what he called a certain ‘hostipitality’

4.
Derrida's Philosophy of Hospitality:
• Derrida emphasizes that a home must have some kind of opening in order to be
a home, meaning that the host must be hospitable to preserve his identity
as a host. Thus the stranger is the crucial character in the social order that will
otherwise regard her as a parasite.
• “If I say ‘Welcome’, I am not renouncing my mastery,
something that becomes transparent in people whose
hospitality is a way of showing of how much they
own or who make their guests uncomfortable and
afraid to touch a thing.”
“Hospitality may require that…both host and guest
accept…the uncomfortable and sometimes painful
possibility of being changed by the other”

5.
Kinds of Hospitality: The conditional hospitality:
• Derrida distinguishes between to kinds of hospitality:
1. The conditional hospitality:
Grounded in the law and the right, for instance the asylum right.
• Here the guest is forced to ask for hospitality in a language which, in a broad sense, is not her own.
This allows the host to come up with questions that the guest must answer faithfully according to the
law:
What is your name? Where do you come from?
• In other words this classical form of hospitality presupposes (national) sovereignty: It recognizes
and tolerates the guest, but it also reminds the guest that she is not in her own house.

6.
Kinds of Hospitality: An Unconditional hospitality:
2: An unconditional hospitality:
“Does not demand that the guest’s identity is maintained as, for instance, a foreigner
with a motive of asylum, but signifies a radical openness to an absolute,
indistinguishable other.”
In this way it breaks with the law and the (asylum) right, and does not refer to duty.
In this perspective, the guest is viewed as a liberator that brings the keys to the prison of the
nation or the family.
In this sense, the host is the deficient being who views himself as a parasite – and eagerly
encourages the awaited guest to step inside as the host of the host.

7.
Derridian notions of hospitality in “The Reluctant
Fundamentalist”:
• In what follows, I will draw on Derridian notions of hospitality to explore how the host/guest dichotomy is
imagined in Mohsin Hamid’s post-9/11 novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007).
• Broadly, the novel recounts America’s attempt to reassume its position as “master of the house”
following the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre.
• However, narrated through the eyes of Pakistani migrant Changez, the novel is also deeply concerned with
the precarious status of the “guest”.
• I shall argue that the hospitality offered by the US as nation “host” to the foreign “guest” in the RF is a false
hospitality; a falsity that becomes transparent in the wake of 9/11.
• The State’s hospitable gestures, inscribed in the social/political order and driven by chauvinistic interest,
are conditional as opposed to absolute or “pure” hospitality, which is
• ‘a law without imperative, without order and without duty.’
• I shall also illustrate how the dramatic monologue that drives the narrative functions as a satirical critique of
this false hospitality, as Changez reproduces and reverses it onto the American stranger.

8.
Derridian notions of hospitality in “The Reluctant
Fundamentalist”:
• The notion of hospitality as a conditional gesture is established from the novel’s opening lines as
Changez offers his ‘services’ to an American stranger whom he finds wandering the Old Anarkali district
of Lahore, Pakistan.
• By use of the word ‘service’, Hamid instantly sets up the idea of hospitality as a duty of the ‘native’ as
opposed to a genuine openness to the Other.
• It is by similar obligation that Changez is initially permitted to reside in the host’s home, as ‘sourced
from around the globe’ he is granted scholarship to the prestigious Princeton University in New York.
• One of only two Pakistani’s in his entering class, Changez had been sifted by ‘well-honed
standardized tests’ and ‘painstakingly customized evaluations’.
• Yet this sifting process, according to Derrida, merely reinforces the imbalance of power between host
and guest, as
‘sovereignty can only be exercised by filtering, choosing, and thus by excluding and doing
violence.’

9.
Derridian notions of hospitality in “The Reluctant
Fundamentalist”:
• Whilst this exposes the violent limits of hospitality, the welcoming
of the ‘chosen’ is by no means absolute or unconditional.
• Changez is granted a visa and ‘invited into the ranks of the
meritocracy’ only in return for ‘contributing his talents to the
society.’
• In this way, hospitality becomes little more than an exchange, or what
Derrida would refer to as a “Pact”, which is a
‘contract of hospitality that links to the foreigner and which
reciprocally links the foreigner.’

10.
Derridian notions of hospitality in “The Reluctant
Fundamentalist”:
• The hollowness of the State’s hospitality towards the outsider is truly laid bare in the
wake of 9/11, where shifts in attitudes toward cultural difference leave Changez wandering
an insular and unwelcoming New York.
• A concept that, according to Morey, suggests
‘the nation-state is far from dead.’
• On returning from a business trip to the Philippines, Changez is accosted by airport
security as he is escorted by armed guards into a room and forced to strip down to his
boxer shorts. Whilst this is a clear example of host interrogation.
• Derrida believes the most violent form of inhospitable practice occurs in the form of
questioning.
• At the airport, the immigration officer repeatedly asks Changez ‘What is the purpose of
your trip to the United States?’ – an inquiry which Derrida believes to epitomize the
unwelcome reception.

11.
Conclusion:
• To conclude, Hamid’s novel reinforces the idea that in the contemporary global world,
hospitality is conceived as a conditional right or duty as opposed to an absolute and
unlimited openness to the Other.
•
• Derrida’s underlying query of how one distinguishes between a “guest” and a “parasite” –
or “terrorist” in the case of the novel – sheds a particularly interesting light on recent events
in Europe.
• Whether new arrivals are welcomed as guest or enemy is largely dependent on one’s legal
right to hospitality or asylum, irrespective of any pure ethic of hospitality.
• The “master of the house” is a term which Derrida uses to describe he who is authoritative
in hosting the “Foreigner”, which in this case is the nation host, America

12.
Thank You