Читать книгу An Ethics Beyond - Kevin Richard Kaiser - Страница 8

Preface

I approach the fiction of the award-winning American author George Saunders from the critical stance of posthumanism. This relatively recent theoretical development has taken many different paths, but the one that I am most interested in following is its deconstruction of anthropocentrism and repositioning of ethics to include “the Other.” Specifically, I am concerned how human and nonhuman animal others relate, especially in terms of ethics, and what this means to determinations of ethicality. The fiction of Saunders, which is often characterized as being both satirical and ethical, provides a place in which to explore notions of posthumanist ethics. His stories, novellas, and his novel all include nonhuman animals, either as characters or as details. Frequently, they are met with violence, abuse, and death. While Saunders does not write about nonhuman animals due to any particular agenda, their appearance in his fiction indicates how interactions with them may become ethical moments in quotidian American life. It is my belief that a study of posthumanist ethics through the acclaimed fiction of Saunders will allow for a greater awareness of just what posthumanist ethics is and what is at stake in conceiving new notions of ethics while also providing a critical examination of what is at play in his fiction and how he achieves what critics hail as his satirical yet ethical style.