Inhospitable Modernisms: The Ecological Value of Modernist Alienation
Titled ‘Inhospitable Modernisms: The Ecological Value of Modernist Alienation’, my current research project analyzes the depiction of inhospitable environments in the works of four modernist authors – James Joyce, Jean Rhys, Nella Larsen, and Djuna Barnes. Linking modernist alienation to the concept of inhospitality – considered as both social exclusion and environmental hostility – the project highlights the challenges often entailed in the interaction between subjects and broader environments. At the crossroads between literary studies, philosophical enquiries, and the environmental humanities, my project takes a comparativist and transdisciplinary approach to the conceptualization of (in)hospitality, analyzing its philosophical roots, its representation in selected modernist texts, and its functionality in considering the conditions that allow or prevent interconnection between entities. The works of Joyce, Rhys, Larsen, and Barnes are key touchstones to examine the ambivalent relation between individual subjects and their surroundings. Writing about colonial settings (Joyce), transatlantic experiences of diaspora (Rhys), racial exclusion (Larsen), and queer identities (Barnes), these authors present alienation in globalized, racialized, and gendered terms, exploring the possibilities and impossibilities of dwelling in particular social and natural settings. Framed by Jacques Derrida’s reflections on hospitality in the series of lectures delivered at the Haute École en Sciences Sociales (1996-97), the project consistently touches on issues of identity and subjectivity as it reconsiders the role of the individual subject in the hospitable act. The project questions and undermines the role of the master as subject in possession of a clearly defined ‘chez soi’ – to be intended as both a secure home and determined personal identity. As it approaches subjects who cannot fully integrate within a normative social fabric because of their gender, race, or sexuality, my research attempts to imagine alternative modes of hospitality based on a different vision of subjectivity. Defying the idea of the subject as a self-contained entity, it considers the possibility of imagining types of hospitality that are more attuned to the broader environment, hospitalities that take into account the porosity, precarity, and exposure of the subject rather than developing from the assumption that the self is an autonomous and independent entity.

Keywords: (in)hospitality, alienation, subjectivity, modern literature, Jacques Derrida