Rooms of Light

Calvin Tiessen has been awarded PhD for his work on ‘Rooms of Light: Bearing Witness to the Azerbaijani Hospitable Being’. In this thesis he shows that Azerbaijani ways of life are shaped by deep paradigms of hospitable being, an ontological hospitality. Qonaqpәrvәrlik, the Azerbaijani concept of ‘hospitality’, is described as a state of co-existence within which hospitable persons entrust one another with preservation of hospitable conditions. These conditions are experienced by Azerbaijanis as a shared commitment to interpersonal attentiveness and availability with the aim of assuring that hospitality roles are possible. The mobility of the Azerbaijani hospitable being is presented, revealing a formation of self as one continually on the way towards others. The process of seeking respite from challenges faced by the hospitable being due to experiences such as war and rapid social change, is explored. In the face of these challenges, the role of hospitable witness is shown to be vital for maintaining cohesion and coherence within Azerbaijani ways of hospitality. Attentive co-presence, life lived in faithful observance of others as well as pursuit of opportunities to engage them hospitably, is the unifying function played by the hospitable witness. This written presentation of Calvin’s research is an act of existential witness, to the persons Azerbaijanis are and become in their ways of hospitality, by the person into whom the writer himself has been transformed through encounters with these ways.