Imperfect Hospitality: A Cosmopolitan Encounter

Abstract

As a guest in another country, I witnessed a father discipline his son by striking him across the face at the table where we were seated together. In this article I revisit this scene and the site of my own sense of guilt, asking, “How am I to live ethically in a world of strangers, one in which I am both guest and host to the other?” My paper is a self-reflective scrutiny of my failure to acknowledge my own status as an ethical host, one who need not have insisted on prescriptive action, but one who failed his responsibility to not only acknowledge those who face him but also to raise his head and be faced. Through a confessional narrative I examine interpersonal, intrapersonal, and intercultural conflict as an opportunity for cosmopolitan growth. I conclude by resituating ethical difference as an invitation to a curriculum based on conversation.