Recognition and Ethics in World Literature

Download or read book Recognition and Ethics in World Literature written by Vincent van Bever Donker and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2016-07-05 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recognition and Ethics in World Literature is a critical comparative study of contemporary world literature, focusing on the importance of the ethical turn (or return) in literary theory. The book examines the ethical engagement of novels by Amitav Ghosh, Chimamanda Adichie, Caryl Phillips, Kazuo Ishiguro, Zadie Smith, and J. M. Coetzee, exploring the overlap and divergence between Levinasian/Derridean and Aristotelian ethics. Recognitions and emotional responses are integral to the unfolding of ethical concerns, and the ethics they explore are often marked by the complexity and impurity characteristic of the tragic. Recognition is particularly suitable for the concerns of world literature authors in its interconnection of the universal and the particular—a binary that has been crucial in postcolonialism and remains important for the wider field of world literature. This study builds its analysis around three broad themes: religion, the memory of violence, and the human.