Philosopher Gabrielle Halpern has published her new book "Thinking Hospitality - The Hotelier and the Philosopher", co-written with Cyril Aouizerate, co-founder of Mama Shelter hotels, founder and president of MOB Republic: MOB Hotel and MOB House.
"What if a hotel were more than a hotel? What if it were both a mirror and a blind spot of our society, reflecting and hiding its needs, habits, prejudices, anxieties, fantasies and metamorphoses? As part of a long history of hospitality - which was synonymous with security and survival for travellers - the reinvention of the hotel industry can initiate a new relationship with the living and the non-living, provided that it accepts to play a new role within local areas, society and nature. What if the hotel sector were a good excuse to think about the magnificent question of hospitality?
Faced with the major philosophical questions such as Freedom, Justice, Happiness, Nature or Truth, hospitality might seem like a pale-faced intruder... It isn't on the final year philosophy syllabus, and yet it is a major philosophical question, both universal and timeless. Asking questions about hospitality means asking questions about the relationship with the other; and in life, the subject, the issue - or even the problem - is always the relationship with the other! It also raises the question of borders, of thresholds, of inside and outside, of what's foreign and what's familiar, of giving and depending, of control and letting go. What makes me agree to step outside myself to take an interest in the other? What makes me make a little space within myself to make room for the other? What does it take for me to make room for the other? What does it take to be able to welcome the other? What does it take for me to overcome my fear of being overwhelmed by the other? Hospitality is part of hybridisation, because it carries within it an ethic of the relationship to the other...".
"Thinking Hospitality - The Artisan-Hotelier and the Philosopher" is the second book in the "Hybridations" collection that Gabrielle Halpern created and which she directs at Editions de l'Aube. After a philosophical-gastronomic immersion with "Philosopher and Cook: an exquisite mixture - The Chef and the Philosopher", co-written with Guillaume Gomez, come and discover the springs and joys of hospitality!
To find out more and buy the book: https://www.leslibraires.fr/livre/21412173-l-hospitalite-du-monde-lartisan-hotelier-et--gabrielle-halpern-cyril-aouizerate-editions-de-l-aube
Photos at the book launch party, in Saint-Ouen, at the MOB Hotel.
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