Alain Montandon (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS Le Livre de Vhospitalite: accueil de Vetrangerdans l'histoire et les cultures. Ed. by Alain Montandon. Paris: Bayard. 2004. 2036 pp. ?59. ISBN 2-227-47207-3. Hospitality is a basic fact of social living. Hospes: host, or guest. To complicate fur? ther,Derrida coined the term hostipitalite, forthere is an etymological link with hostis: enemy. Think of hospital or hospice, but also of hostage. This ponderous pave of a book would shake the frame of any literate cyclist but, as it presents itself as a dic? tionnaire raisonne, there is something here for everyone. The international team of around eighty tackles hospitality through history and mythology, across countries, and in umpteen manifestations, physical or mental. Literature, philosophy (Kant, Levinas, Derrida), and anthropology provide multiple angles of approach. The hospitality of the rich (conspicuous consumption) differsfromthat ofthe poor, who share what little they have. It often involves the exchange of gifts (Mauss peeps out here), sometimes to the extent of competition, as in the potlatch, for gifts are power, or more gently attempts to purchase affection. In ancient cultures, offerings were simultaneously made to the gods, thus inserting an element of sacred duty. The Christian Heaven, on the other hand, with its bouncer Peter, can be an unwelcoming place. Captain Cook was firstroyally welcomed by Pacific islanders, then slaughtered. As ethnography moved from the armchair a la Rousseau to on-the-spot investigative reportage a la Levi-Strauss in his youth, its practitioners have had to learn not only local languages but also the social codes governing visitors and hosts. For his part, Michel Leiris's research trips turned into voyages of self-discovery, for to a large extent we remain always strangers to ourselves. Putting oneself out for incomers by putting people up involves putting up with people, hence the need forcivility and respect, the bedrock of civilization. The guest has to tread warily,lest the host has metaphorical corns waiting to be trodden on. The guest is a passer-through housed by the sedentary; the peripatetic (as with pilgrims) meets the pantouflard. No doubt the risk of letting in unsafe visitors has much diminished in our privatized and barricaded society, but even so the spontaneous battles with the dutiful. One visit can generate a 'revenge match', in the cycle of turn-andturn -about, or at least bread-and-butter letters. Probably all cultures have felta need to ritualize and codify all aspects of receiving and being received, though no doubt ethical imperatives on the doorstep are no more welcome than conjugal diktats in bed. Everybody here kowtows to Derrida, the spectre at this feast. One reverentlyquotes a typical cryptogram: 'Un acte d'hospitalite ne peut etre que poetique', and another, even dafter: 'L'hospitalite est infinie ou elle n'est pas' (p. 1400). Well, it is certainly a very big subject. Today, the widespread obstacles to immigration and the concomitant regrowth of nationalisms militate against the openness, the curiosity even, inherent in acts of hos? pitality. We will have to relearn these, before atomization, rather than globalization, wrecks all fellowship. There are interesting essays on exoticism, especially Marie-Pierre Jaouan-Sanchez on European and Holly woodian dreams of South Sea islands, all grass skirtsand ukeleles and locked smiles. Iraq is the polar opposite. She is especially astute on Diderot, not just the Supplement au voyage de Bougainville, but his whole oeuvre, which she sees as 'hospitaliereaux pensees qui s'entrechoquentdans l'enthousiasmeet la verve' (p. 419). The open heart needs an open mind which entertains ideas as much as visitors. As well as the mercantile hospitality of inns or boxes at Wimbledon, various essays deal with the good, bad, or indifferentwork of sheltering and caring for the needy, the sick or dying, the abandoned, the battered, the mentally ill, not forgetting that Anglo-Dutch invention, the workhouse. There are shocking pages on how many such MLRy 100.2, 2005 465 institutions, publicly or privately funded, have so often and so tragically been ghettoes or knackers' yards. Hospitals, rooted in the basic concept of this book, are where we hand ourselves over to be seen to, like passive habitues of brothels. Less threatening than all the foregoing houses...