Hospitality 6

Intellectual Hospitality follows and then breaks all the rules

Hospitality is an important construct in that it is both a formulation of rules and something that shatters all norms of appropriate behavior. In other words, it incarnates the non-dialectical joining together of opposites. (130)

For example:
Though rooted in the specific examples of the moments of negotiation, the power and potential of intellectual hospitality is the way it makes possible a state of revolutionary change. One may follow, but ultimately break all the rules, largely because in the exchange between following and breaking, it becomes indeterminable either which move came first or who began the negotiations. Returning to the list of shared changes in the Pedagogical Realizations section of this piece, I cannot remember who initiated which shift and to whom we can credit the changes. This, for me, is the evidence of this sort of laudatory negotiation, one that works to recognize the input of all individuals, but ultimately accept them in order to support and protect the betterment of the larger project.

Another example:
Status as non-dialectical has to do with the ways that we respond to and incorporate new information. In dialectical thought, one would consider first the place and reality of matter. Dialectical thought would be invested in tracing the matter – the ideas – to a point of origin or an owner. Dialectical thought worries about the point of origin of ideas, of who said what first and, despite any idealistic drive toward negotiation, ultimately will care about "whose idea it was first." It is true that I can, when pressed and largely because of the ways in which I have been trained, trace some aspects of the of thought in the Sharing Cultures Project. But, as I consider the moments of hospitality that took form as pedagogical realizations, for the most part,I can no longer recall – without specific record – who said what, who brought which ideas to the table, or who is to be credited when it comes to the ideas that we have decided together. There are instances and moments that I recall as being directly attributable to a specific person or team, but even when I recall the origin of the idea, I have a difficult time not seeing the idea as a unique condition of this interaction. This is not to say that there is not place for relativity – this isn't a Papal logic here looking for an absolute. Rather, the entire focus moves from relativity or absolute to something more nebulous, but at the same time, real. This, then, is the non-dialectical joining together, the non-dialectic goal.