110 chapter three pact; whence the rights and the duties, the borders, passports and doors” are controlled (Derrida 2000, 4). From here, Derrida makes the repeated claim that “[w]e do not know what hospitality is,” and goes on to outline the condition of hospitality: [I]n the formalization of a law of hospitality which violently imposes a contradiction on the very concept of hospitality in fixing a limit to it, in determining it: hospitality is certainly, necessarily, a right, a duty, an obligation, the greeting of the foreign Other … as a friend but on the condition that the host … the one who receives, lodges or gives asylum remains the patron, the master of the household, on the condition that he maintains his own authority in his own home, that he looks after himself and sees to and considers all that concerns him … and thereby affirms the law of hospitality as the law of the household, oikonomia, the law of his household, the law of a place (house, hotel, hospital, hospice, family, city, nation, language, etc.), the law of identity which de-limits the very place of proffered hospitality and maintains authority over it, maintains the truth of authority, remains the place of this maintaining, which is to say, of truth, thus limiting the gift proffered and making of this limitation, namely, the being-oneself in one’s own home, the condition of the gift and of hospitality (Derrida 2000, 4). To illustrate this simultaneous constitution and implosion of the concept of hospitality, Derrida invokes the image of the door: To take up the figure of the door, for there to be hospitality, there must be a door. But if there is a door, there is no longer hospitality. There is no hospitable house. There is no house without doors and windows. But as soon as there are a door and windows, it means that someone has the key to them and consequently controls the conditions of hospitality. There must be a threshold. But if there is a threshold, there is no longer hospitality (Derrida 2000, 14). As a result, hospitality becomes … a self-contradictory concept, an experience which can only self-destruct (put otherwise, produce itself as impossible, only be possible on the condition of its impossibility) or protect itself from itself, auto-immunize itself in some way, which is to say, deconstruct itself – precisely in being put into practice (Derrida 2000, 5). To fulfill its promise, hospitality must not be structured according to the economy of duty, debt, order and closure, for the unconditionality of the welcome commits it to being an exchange without urgency, without obligation, and without symmetry; or, “a law without law” (Derrida and Dufourmantelle 2000, 83). However, the power relations embedded in the practice of hospitality all surface in the dynamics of the call, invitation, integration, coming, welcoming and greeting of the Other (Derrida 2000, 11).