Abstract
This article asks two questions. First, where does hospitality begin and end – where are its borders? Second, in what ways do borders facilitate and restrict hospitality? To answer these questions, the article initially centres on two contradictory scenes of hospitality. One, Jacinda Ardern’s appropriation of Māori understandings of hospitality (manaakitanga) to encourage tourists to come to New Zealand in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic. Two, the imprisoning of asylum seekers in New Zealand prisons without charge. By drawing on Jacques Derrida’s late work on hospitality, this article examines the political contradictions at play in the examples above, as well as the philosophical challenges of hospitality as a concept in light of contemporary border regimes. Derrida’s deconstruction of hospitality illustrates how contradictory scenes of hospitality can co-exist precisely because hospitality is only possible on the condition of its impossibility. The article finishes by offering an alternative to a restrictive notion of hospitality by turning to ‘manaakitanga’. While Ardern rips manaakitanga from its context in tikanga Māori (customary practices), by placing it back in this context we come to see the possibility of a hospitality beyond the one invoked by Ardern.