Indebtedness and Complicity: The Ethics of Hospitality in Education for Social Justice

• In Event: Alterity, Others, and Teaching

Abstract

In recent years the ethics of hospitality as outlined by Jacques Derrida has been proposed as an ethical framework for education. Hospitality, in this ethics, gives unconditional place to the Other. This paper examines what, if anything, the ethics of hospitality can contribute to educational practices that contest social inequality. Since the concept of “complicity” has been used in such practices, it will investigate whether and, if so, how an ethics of hospitality can contribute to the examination of complicity in students with unearned social privilege. The paper discusses the difference between invasion and visitation, hospitality as asymmetrical ethics, and the ethical role of guilt, and concludes that the ethics of hospitality can support educational practices that contest social inequality.

Author

• Claudia W. Ruitenberg, The University of British Columbia