Tourism and migration as threat and/or promise: Autoimmunity and hospitality in Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer’s Grand Hotel Europa

Abstract

This article explores Pfeijffer’s novel Grand Hotel Europa using Derrida’s concepts of autoimmunity and hospitality, showing how openness to the Other can be potentially both risky and generative. Pfeijffer depicts a continent trapped in a deadly nostalgia: mass tourism has turned it into a giant theme park in a suicidal autoimmunity which tends to destroy the very authenticity which attracts it in the first place. Pfeijffer also critiques Europe’s fortress-like migration policies as (self)destructive, not only harming would-be migrants but provoking an autoimmune implosion of the very values which supposedly underscore the European integration project. In contrast, he frequently frames immigration as an opportunity for Europe, as a potentially positive autoimmune opening to a renewal of economic and cultural energy.