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It was sheer serendipity that brought us together, but there we were. The original question was innocent enough: “How are we to understand hospitality?” Even when sharpened into “What can phenomenology tell us about welcoming the stranger?” it still seems to intend no harm. But when the “stranger” in question morphs into the “uncanny,” it takes on a weirdness that the uncanny itself suggests. For the layman, the word suggests a feeling of dread or inexplicable strangeness, seeming to have a preternatural cause, as if locked into the present by some ominous and long forgotten past.

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