Intellectual Hospitality is Different than Gift Giving
Whereas the gift economy is based on distinction and exchange between known entities, the relationship of hospitality is more firmly predicated on the indistinguishability between guest and hose and the possibility of encountering an unknown entity. (137)
For example:
Not one of the folks involved in the teaching of the classes was ever a known
entity. Even more, we are engaged in this relationship specifically because
we do not know each other. The point is to share our cultures: social, academic,
and institutional. Thus, it follows that while each of us is important and
may have a place in the history of the Sharing Cultures Project as having
accomplished certain tasks, as an individual, no single person is
the Sharing Cultures Project. This project does and can and will exist without
any of us, as long as there is a continuing invitation to the next stranger,
the energy and desire to continue the negotiation. One of the frustrating
things is that this makes it feel as if, to some degree, we start over every
semester. It is difficult and emotional work. I know it is out of synch with
the other elements of the university/academia because of how much time it
takes us all to participate and teach in the Sharing Cultures Project. Intellectual
hospitality requires time and exchange and the freedom to have the interaction
take as long as it needs.
Another example:
The involvement of students – different ones every semester who do not
know each other – maintains for the project a status of constantly requiring
hospitality for success. This is not a student exchange. There is no intellectual
hospitality there. A student exchange is interested in providing "guest"
students an experience that will make them specifically better able to succeed
in the world in a particular and capitalist way. This project is something
else. Whereas there is some evidence of this hospitable exchange, I do not
want to suggest that students are able, upon hitting the door, to engage in
intellectual hospitality in a fully realized way. This class, however, does
prepare them for intellectual exchange that is not about domination, but about
mutual negotiation. We believe that by priming our students to seriously hear,
exchange, and incorporate with their ideas ones that differ from theirs, this
class prepares students to write and to learn in ways that move well beyond
skill-building. Most writing classes do not prepare students to exchange with
the ideas of others; we ask them to persuade. We do not ask students to host
the ideas of another person; we ask them to inform folks of their ideas. Here,
we hope to not only prepare students for the possibility of encountering an
unknown identity, but to have a sense of what can be done, of how they might
effectively and humanistically communicate with that unknown, to integrate
and incorporate their ideas and ways of knowing with their own. In this way,
we can truly work toward an understanding of the power and possibility of
diversity.