Toward a New Relation of Hospitality in the Academy

In this article I will propose some thoughts for working toward academic hospitality that would enable the recognition of Indigenous epistemologies in an appropriate manner. These suggestions will always remain partial and are by no means intended to be taken as a comprehensive, exhaustive consideration of possible measures. To suggest otherwise would inevitably contradict and negate the idea of hospitality, the fundamental openness to the other. Clearly, the question of hospitality will not and should never come to a close because in the moment we assume the problem solved, we arrive at a totalizing closure—another symptom of the colonial. Instead of yearning for an ultimate answer and solution, we need to accept that, necessarily, hospitality is a continuous, never-ending process of negotiation—a productive crisis in which we work continuously toward a new way of thinking and ultimately a new relationship in which the academy is compelled to recognize and accept its responsibility toward the other.

I will first address the problematic and contentious question of knowing the "other"—a question riddled with dangers of arrogant assumptions and ethnocentrism (which particularly takes the form of Euro-centrism). I consider the issue from the perspectives of both Indigenous scholarship and critical race theories/anti-racist pedagogies. Second, I will bring forth the suggestion of doing one's homework as proposed particularly by Gayatri Spivak. Finally, I will return to the question of hospitality and responsibility toward the other.

Knowing The Other

It is a widely recognized fact that any attempt or claim to know (about) other peoples and cultures is loaded with problems and dangers. A well-meaning but patronizing humanist-liberalist assumption that a mere cultivation of understanding will facilitate the encounter with the "other"—or even worse, eradicate the systemic social and power inequalities endemic also in the academy—has been seriously challenged by various scholars and discourses.¹ Spivak calls such a view the Eurocentric arrogance of conscience; a simplistic assumption that as long as one has sufficient information, one can understand the "other" (Spivak 1999, 171). The Eurocentric arrogance also is manifested in the academy in other ways such as rejecting vast intellectual traditions of other parts of the world, reflected in the Eurocentric university curricula.

In Indigenous discourse, a commonly heard argument is also that other peoples cannot be known from a perspective of cultures based on entirely different assumptions and perceptions of the world. Postcolonial theories denounce attempts of knowing the other through a colonial, imperial bias, while feminist critiques also remind us of the implications and legacies of the patriarchal gaze. Many anthropologists and ethnographers continue to struggle with the crisis of cultural representation.

Poststructuralists detest the entire idea—how can one possibly imagine knowing other peoples and cultures when a person can never even fully know herself! In Spivak's view, for instance, "[w]e cannot 'learn about' the subaltern only by reading literary texts, or mutatis mutandis, sociohistorical documents" (1999, 142); moreover the entire project of knowing the other is somewhat suspect (see Spivak 1999, 283). For many others still, claiming to know and understand the other is simply paternalistic and arrogant. This is further complicated by the argument that understanding does not always increase sympathy and mutual respect but rather results in violence. Tzvetan Todorov (1987) suggests that understanding can also lead to destruction and annihilation as appeared to be the case with Hernando Cortés, the Spanish conquistador who seized the kingdom of Montezuma in present-day Mexico.

According to Todorov, Cortés understood the Aztec and their world relatively well. This understanding, however, not only did not prevent the destruction of the Aztec civilization but, in effect, made it possible. This could be easily explained by arguing that in such a context, knowing and understanding is accompanied by the negation of the value of the other people and culture. This is not, however, the case, as demonstrated by conquistadors' writings, in...