Overview

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.

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9783838208671

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Insightful... makes a vital contribution to a theoretical debate that urgently requires to be kept alive in our turbulent times. This is an important book that places the ethical in a critical relation to World Literature. -- Premesh Lalu, professor, director, Centre for Humanities Research, Faculty of Arts, University of the Western Cape

Author Information

Vincent van Bever Donker is a researcher and lecturer in postcolonial theory and writing at Oxford and at the University of Northampton. Born in South Africa, he completed a doctorate in postcolonial literature at the University of Oxford.

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