The Department of Modern Languages and Literatures of the University of the Witwatersrand announces the publication of the volume Hospitality and Hostility in the Multilingual Global Village (SUN MeDIA, 2014), co-edited by Prof Kathleen Thorpe, Prof Anette Horn, Alida Poeti and Prof Veronique Tadjo.

In his seminal treatise, Towards a Perpetual Peace (1795), Immanuel Kant defined hospitality as a human right because of our common possession of the earth. He saw this as a precondition for world citizenship or cosmopolitanism. Yet Jacques Derrida (1995) problematised this notion of hospitality when he posed the question of whether the host could become the hostage of the foreigner. The conflict already exists in the etymology of the keywords: host or guest ( hospes ) and enemy ( hostis ).
This book is based on a selection of papers presented at the Third International Conference of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, Hospitality and Hostility in the Multilingual Global Village , at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, that was held from 12 14 September 2011.
The authors, who come from a range of disciplines and have written their papers in various languages, namely English, French, Italian and German, approach the question of hospitality and hostility from different perspectives not only in today s globalised world, but also in previous centuries when cosmopolitanism was not only viewed as an ideal, but was already a practice, as the human species has always been a travelling one.

By clicking on the icon below, it will take you straight to our website where the book can be purchased online: