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    Agape and Emancipation: The Common Good in Recent Postcolonial Fiction

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    Date
    2015-05-26
    Author
    McIndoe, Holly
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    Abstract
    In this dissertation, I argue that there is a tendency in postcolonial studies

    to equate injustice with a lack of knowledge. The political task for postcolonial

    studies is then framed in pedagogical terms: to provide the missing or

    invisible knowledge that is the catalyst for political change, or the critical

    element that makes redress for injustice possible. This tendency is a part of

    a Marxist tradition of social critique that aims to expose and thus undo the

    hidden workings of domination, but it also has something in common with

    liberal thought, which assumes that education will improve those who are

    not already free to participate in market relations. For both these liberal

    and Marxist traditions, ignorance is tantamount to un-freedom, and ignorant

    people, though they may have the capacity for autonomy and critical

    thought, are un-emancipated.

    The literary works that I consider here are Jhumpa Lahiri's \Hema and

    Kaushik" (2009), Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss (2008), Mohsin

    Hamid's How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia (2014), Wayne Macauley's

    The Cook (2012), Indra Sinha's Animal's People (2009), and Richard Flanagan's

    Gould's Book of Fish (2001). Though their authors may be interested

    to some degree in making injustice visible, these texts do not lend themselves

    in a fully satisfying way to the aims of either social critique or liberal political

    reason. They show that education can perpetuate injustice and inequality.

    They suggest that knowledge alone is not su cient to ameliorate injustice,

    and that representing injustice may compound as well as mitigate it. They

    contain characters who knowingly perpetuate injustice. These literary works

    show that knowledge is not the only factor required for political change at a

    societal level or for the development of free, autonomous individuals.

    Through my readings of these works of literature, I develop a multifaceted

    understanding of the problem of the political. I argue that politics is

    an on-going project without end, rather than a decisive moment of transformation.

    Similarly, freedom is not an ontological state, but a process which is

    always possible but never guaranteed, and individuality itself is constitutively

    relational. Beyond knowledge of injustice, individuals need universalisable

    principles and a reason to work with others to secure their rights in common.

    These writers suggest agape as this motivating reason, and foster a sense of

    agape in their readers.
    URI for this record
    http://hdl.handle.net/1974/13087
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