Conjunctures of Hospitality: Conditions, Articulations, and Affects of Border Encounters
Conjunctures of Hospitality: Conditions, Articulations, and Affects of Border Encounters
7-8 November 2024 Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Lisbon, Portugal
| CFP
The “Conjunctures of Hospitality” conference aims to provide a space for an interdisciplinary inquiry into the conditions, articulations and affects of hospitality in different temporal and geographical settings. Inspired by Stuart Hall’s work, we are interested in broadly defined “conjunctural analysis” that shed light on or map the cultural-historical contexts in which cultural artefacts, artistic practices, activism or theories take shape. The conference will take place at the Universidade Católica Portuguesa, in Lisbon, Portugal, on the 7-8 November 2024. Hospitality has been an object of reflection and debate for centuries. And yet, in a world of increasing border anxieties, perpetual “migration crises”, “culture wars” and the renegotiation of the human/non-human divide, the encounter and welcoming of strangers continues to be of utmost topicality. Despite an ongoing or even increased academic interest, the definition and theorization of hospitality are anything but obvious. Research on hospitality ranges from the research on the accommodation, food or drink industries in Tourism and Management sciences to philosophical inquiries about its relation to citizenship, human rights and the encounter with others in the Humanities and Social Sciences (Lynch et al. 2011). However, the difficulty of defining the concept and practice of hospitality stems not only from disciplinary diversity, but also from its intrinsic polyvalence and contradictions. Hospitality bears on many problematics: from identity, difference, and belonging to the relationship between host and guest, individual and collective, as well as questions of inequality, human rights, and (political) power. Drawing on the etymological study of Benveniste, Derrida emphasized that hospitality is structured by a paradox: in order to welcome the stranger, one must be the master of one’s own home. Beneath its welcoming surface, hospitality thus inscribes not only forms of violence in the encounter with strangers, but also the limits of its own unconditionality (Derrida). As it regulates the relationship between inside and outside, hospitality is not only at stake when borders are crossed, confused or readjusted, but also in the very process of their drawing (Still 20210). Since, as Sara Ahmed suggests, it might well be “the processes of expelling or welcoming the one who is recognised as a stranger that produce the figure of the stranger in the first place” (2000, 4).
This conference aims to bring together interdisciplinary inquiries into particular articulations, conditions, and conjunctures of hospitality. While we welcome a wide range of theoretical and methodological approaches, we particularly encourage a reflection about hospitality and its relationship to processes of bordering and hierarchization. This also implies a particular interest in “histories of determination” (Ahmed 2000) and their affective dimensions.
Possible topics may include, but are not limited to:
- Hospitality and (anthropological) difference
- Hospitality and border(ing)/border regimes
- Hospitality and (im)migration
- Hospitality and affect
- (Linguistic) hospitality and translation
- Hospitality and the politics of translation
- Queer hospitality
- Aesthetics of hospitality
- Politics of hospitality
- Ethics of hospitality
- Arts of hospitality
- Hospitality and violence
- Hospitality and biopolitics
- Hospitality and governmentality
- Hospitality and Posthumanism
- Hospitality and memory
- Hospitality and area studies
| Keynote Speakers
Michel Agier (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales)
Encarnación Gutiérrez Rodríguez (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt)
Alexandra Lopes (Universidade Católica Portuguesa)
Alexander Ghedi Weheliye (Brown University)
| Scientific Committee
Diana Gonçalves | Annimari Juvonen | Andreas Langenohl | Verena Lindemann Lino | Marília Lopes | Adriana Martins | Rita Bueno Maia | Paulo de Medeiros | Joana Moura | Dzifa Peters | Sofia Pinto | Luísa Santos | Loredana Polezzi | Márcio Seligmann-Silva
| Organizing Committee
Annimari Juvonen | Verena Lindemann Lino | Sofia Pinto
| Practicalities
Abstracts should be sent to hospitalityconf2024@gmail.com no later than 15 March 2024 and include paper title, abstract in English (max. 250 words), name, e-mail address, institutional affiliation, and a brief bio (max. 100 words) mentioning ongoing research. Notification of acceptance will be sent by 31 April 2024 at the latest.
We invite abstracts for individual and joint presentations and also welcome artistic interventions and co-creative, performative presentations. Accepted participants will be asked to register for the conference and provide some personal details for that purpose. The conference will take place on site, at Universidade Católica Portuguesa. For more information about the conference please go to: https://conjuncturesofhospitality.wordpress.com/