ABSTRACT
Jacques Derrida’s exploration of the paradoxes of hospitality starts with another paradox. He investigates the etymology of ‘host’, which refers both to the guest who receives hospitality and the host who gives hospitality. There is a belonging together of opposing terms, which exist through exclusion of the other term. As they depend on the exclusion of the other term, they also include the other term in themselves. The idea of a guest is the idea of someone who crosses the threshold of the host’s home, in a crossing which denies the distinction between host and guest while confirming it. The guest provides a paradoxical mediation between the host and the hostile enemy of the host. A mediation which does not end the conflict, but rather provides a violent moment of challenge to that opposition as the necessary condition of hospitality.
