Judith Still – författare

According to Rousseau, the best relationship between unequals is one of 'benificence', giving, receiving and repaying benefits. This 1993 book addresses the problem implicit in his writings of whether it is indeed possible for a just and generous relationship to exist between non-equals. Judith Still draws together issues in Rousseau's work which are often treated in isolation: the state, just relations between individuals, sexual politics and the constructing of a feminine identity. She analyses his works, his classical sources, and the conceptual underpinnings of his ethics, crossing the boundary between study of Rousseau as a complex and sensitive writer of fiction and autobiography and consideration of his political and ethical theory. Using techniques of reading drawn from literary theory, particularly from the work of Derrida, de Man and Starobinski, she argues that for Rousseau it is sexual difference which disturbs the practice of benificence.

According to Rousseau, the best relationship between unequals is one of 'benificence', giving, receiving and repaying benefits. This 1993 book addresses the problem implicit in his writings of whether it is indeed possible for a just and generous relationship to exist between non-equals. Judith Still draws together issues in Rousseau's work which are often treated in isolation: the state, just relations between individuals, sexual politics and the constructing of a feminine identity. She analyses his works, his classical sources, and the conceptual underpinnings of his ethics, crossing the boundary between study of Rousseau as a complex and sensitive writer of fiction and autobiography and consideration of his political and ethical theory. Using techniques of reading drawn from literary theory, particularly from the work of Derrida, de Man and Starobinski, she argues that for Rousseau it is sexual difference which disturbs the practice of benificence.

Hospitality, in particular hospitality to strangers, was promoted in the eighteenth century as a universal human virtue, but writing of the period reveals many telling examples of its abuse. Through analysis of encounters across cultural and sexual divides, Judith Still revisits the current debate about the social, moral and political values of the Enlightenment.Focussing on (in)hospitality in relation to two kinds of exotic Other, Judith Still examines representations of indigenous peoples of the New World, both as hosts and as cannibals, and of the Moslem ‘Oriental’ in Persia and Turkey, associated with both the caravanserai (where travellers rest) and the harem. She also explores very different examples of Europeans as hosts and the practice of ‘adoption’, particularly that of young girls. The position of women in hospitality, hitherto neglected in favour of questions of cultural difference, is central to these analyses, and Still considers the work of women writers alongside more canonical male-authored texts. In this thought-provoking study, Judith Still uncovers how the Enlightenment rhetoric of openness and hospitality is compromised by self-interest; the questions it raises about attitudes to difference and freedom are equally relevant today.

Judith Still sets Derrida's work in a series of contexts in a series of contexts including the socio-political history of France, especially in relation to Algeria, and his relationship to other writers, most importantly Hélène Cixous and Emmanuel Levinas: key thinkers of hospitality. Working across the full breadth of fields that Derrida's work on hospitality influenced, Still thinks through relationships between individuals and the community or state. Judith Still also follows the thread of sexual difference in Derrida's writing to shed light on his exploration of the complex and delicate, strange yet familiar, political and ethical dilemmas of how to be those impossible things: a good host and a good guest.