Dilemmas Beyond Ethics: A Critique of Eastern Ethical Literary Criticism
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3986/pkn.v47.i3.09Keywords:
literature and ethics, ethical literary criticism, East and West, Nie, Zhenzhao, Derrida, Jacques, Levinas, Emmanuel, Styron, William: Sophie’s ChoiceAbstract
The aim of this article is to compare ethical literary criticism of the East with that of the West and to reveal some potential limitations of the emerging critical tendency of “ethical literary criticism” in China when applied to Western literary production. The first part sets out the conceptual framework by contrasting Nie Zhenzhao’s understanding of literature as an expression of ethics, Jacques Derrida’s conception of the institution of “literature” as having “the right to say anything,” and Levinas’s conception of ethics as “first philosophy” involving responsibility towards the Other, bearing in mind that Levinas’s entire philosophical project was an ethical response to all forms of “absolute evil” that emerged in the twentieth century. Starting from this contextual definition, the article focuses on the opening of history after the Second World War as a “caesura” (Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe) to show that while Nie’s application of ethics to literary analysis can work successfully for a corpus of works from the Middle Ages to nineteenth-century realism, his concept of “ethical choice” as an analytical fulcrum breaks down in the face of literature’s response to twentieth-century atrocities. In the final section, therefore, I challenge Nie’s ethical literary criticism by focusing on works in the tradition of the “Holocaust novel” and presenting a case study that demonstrates the limits of ethical criticism in the analysis of William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice.
References
Attridge, Derek. “Derrida and the Questioning of Literature.” Acts of Literature, by Jacques Derrida, edited by Derek Attridge, Routledge, 1992, pp. 1–29.
Baker, William, and Biwu Shang. “Fruitful Collaborations: Ethical Literary Criticism in Chinese Academe.” Times Literary Supplement, 31 July 2015, pp. 14–15.
Bernstein, Richard J. “Evil and the Temptation of Theodicy.” The Cambridge Companion to Levinas, edited by Simon Critchley and Robert Bernasconi, Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. 252–267.
Booth, Wayne C. “Why Ethical Criticism Can Never Be Simple.” Mapping the Ethical Turn: A Reader in Ethics, Culture, and Literary Theory, edited by Todd F. Davis and Kenneth Womack, University Press of Virginia, 2001, pp. 16–29.
Chang, Iris. The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II. Basic Books, 1997.
Derrida, Jacques. The Gift of Death. Translated by David Wills, University of Chicago Press, 1995.
Derrida, Jacques. “This Strange Institution Called Literature.” Interview by Derek Attridge. Acts of Literature, by Jacques Derrida, edited by Derek Attridge, Routledge, 1992, pp. 33–75.
Eaglestone, Robert. Ethical Criticism: Reading After Levinas. Edinburgh University Press, 1997.
Eber, Irene. Wartime Shanghai and the Jewish Refugees from Central Europe: Survival, Co-Existence, and Identity in a Multi-Ethnic City. De Gruyter, 2012.
Fagenblat, Michael. A Covenant of Creatures: Levinas’s Philosophy of Judaism. Stanford University Press, 2010.
Hägglund, Martin. Radical Atheism: Derrida and the Time of Life. Stanford University Press, 2008.
Herbrechter, Stefan, et al. “Critical Posthumanism: An Overview.” Palgrave Handbook of Critical Posthumanism, edited by Stefan Herbrechter et al., Palgrave Macmillan, 2022, pp. 3–26.
Hu-DeHart, Evelyn, et al., editors. Towards a Third Literature: Chinese Writing in the Americas, special issue of Amerasia Journal, vol. 38, no. 2, 2012.
IAELC (The International Association for Ethical Literary Criticism). “Introduction to the International Association for Ethical Literary Criticism.” Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies of World Literature, Zhejiang University, 6 June 2022, http://journal06.magtech.org.cn/Jweb3_zdsjwxkxk/EN/column/item18.shtml.
Ionescu, Arleen. “The ‘Differend’ of Shoes: Van Gogh, Beckett, Wiesel, Levi, and Holocaust Museums.” Partial Answers, vol. 17, no. 2, 2019, pp. 255–277.
Ionescu, Arleen. “Hospitality in Shanghai: The Russian Jewish Community as Hosts and Polish Jewish Refugees as Guests during WW2.” Slovo, vol. 35, no. 2, 2022, pp. 1–25.
Ionescu, Arleen. The Memorial Ethics of Libeskind’s Berlin Jewish Museum. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
Ionescu, Arleen. “Postclassical Narratology: Twenty Years Later.” Word and Text, vol. 9, 2019, pp. 5–34.
Jagodzka, Magdalena. “Found in Narration: Nonhuman Voices in Jessica Grant’s Come, Thou Tortoise and Colin McAdam’s A Beautiful Truth.” Word and Text, vol. 11, 2021, pp. 159–174.
Korthals Altes, Liesbeth. “Ethical Turn.” Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, edited by David Herman et al., Routledge, 2005, pp. 142–146.
Kranzler, David. Japanese, Nazis and Jews: The Jewish Refugee Community of Shanghai, 1938–1945. Yeshiva University Press, 1976.
Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe. Heidegger, Art and Politics: The Fiction of the Political. Translated by Chris Turner, Blackwell, 1990.
Langer, Lawrence L. Admitting the Holocaust: Collected Essays. Oxford University Press, 1995.
Langer, Lawrence L. “The Dilemma of Choice in the Deathcamps.” Echoes from the Holocaust: Philosophical Reflections on a Dark Time, edited by Alan Rosenberg and Gerald E. Myers, Temple University Press, 1988, pp. 118–127.
Langer, Lawrence L. Versions of Survival: The Holocaust and the Human Spirit. State University of New York Press, 1982.
Lazer, Hank. “Ethical Criticism and the Challenges Posed by Innovative Poetry.” The Free Library, 1 Mar. 2016, https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Ethical+criticism+and+the+challenges+posed+by+innovative+poetry.-a0453915590.
Levinas, Emmanuel. “The Ego and the Totality.” Collected Philosophical Papers, by Emmanuel Levinas, translated by Alphonso Lingis, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1987, pp. 25–45.
Levinas, Emmanuel. “God and Philosophy.” Collected Philosophical Papers, by Emmanuel Levinas, translated by Alphonso Lingis, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1987, pp. 153–173.
Levinas, Emmanuel. Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Translated by Alphonso Lingis, Duquesne University Press, 1969.
Liu, Yingjie. Contrast between Chinese and Western Culture. Shanghai, Fudan University Press, 2020.
Mathé, Sylvie. “The ‘Grey Zone’ in William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice.” Études anglaises, vol. 57, no. 4, 2004, pp. 453–466.
McGinley, Kevin. “The Hermeneutic Tension and the Emergence of Moral Agents.” Literature as Philosophy/Philosophy as Literature, edited by Donald G. Marshall, University of Iowa Press, 1987, pp. 14–23.
Mendelson-Maoz, Adia. “New Vocabulary of Attention: The Aesthetics of Ethics in Styron’s Sophie’s Choice.” On the Turn: The Ethics of Fiction in Contemporary Narrative in English, edited by Bárbara Arizti and Silvia Martínez-Falquina, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007, pp. 366–384.
Milesi, Laurent. “Breaching Ethics: Performing Deconstruction.” International Conference Ethos/Pathos/Logos: The Sense and Place of Persuasiveness in Linguistic, Literary and Philosophical Discourse, 18–20 Oct. 2012, Petroleum- Gas University of Ploiești, Ploiești.
Milesi, Laurent. “Bringing the Ethos (Back) into Ethical Literary Criticism.” The Ethico-Political Turn in Literary Studies: Cross-Cultural and Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives, 9th Convention of the International Association for Ethical Literary Criticism, 8–10 Nov. 2019, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou.
Milesi, Laurent. “Zo(o)graphies: Darwinian ‘Evolutions’ of a Fictional Bestiary.” Word and Text, vol. 11, 2021, pp. 15–41.
Needham, Joseph. “China and the West.” China and the West: Mankind Evolving, edited by Anthony Dyson and Bernard Towers, Garnstone Press, 1970, pp. 19–34.
Nie, Zhenzhao. “Ethical Approach to Literary Studies: A New Perspective” [in Chinese]. Foreign Literature Studies, vol. 26, no. 5, 2004, pp. 16–24.
Nie, Zhenzhao. “Ethical Literary Criticism: Its Fundaments and Terms” [in Chinese]. Foreign Literature Studies, vol. 32, no. 1, 2010, pp. 12–22.
Nie, Zhenzhao. “Ethical Literary Criticism: On Fundamental Function and Core Value of Literature” [in Chinese]. Foreign Literature Studies, vol. 36, no. 4, 2014, pp. 8–13.
Nie, Zhenzhao. Introduction to Ethical Literary Criticism. Translated by Jie Zheng, Routledge, 2024.
Nie, Zhenzhao. “Towards an Ethical Literary Criticism.” Arcadia, vol. 50, no.1, 2015, pp. 83–101.
Nie, Zhenzhao, and Biwu Shang. “Ethical Literary Criticism: East and West.” Arcadia, vol. 50, no. 1, 2015, pp. 4–8.
Nussbaum, Marta. “Flawed Crystals: James’s The Golden Bowl and Literature as Moral Philosophy.” New Literary History, vol. 15, no. 1, 1983, pp. 25–50.
Parker, David. Ethics, Theory and the Novel. Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Penny, Benjamin. Introduction. Daodejing, by Laozi, translated by Edmund Ryden, Oxford University Press, 2008, pp. vii–xxix.
Piskorski, Rodolfo. “Introduction: Animal (As) Writing, Writing (As) Animal.” Word and Text, vol. 11, 2021, pp. 5–12.
Ristaino, Marcia Reynders. Port of Last Resort: The Diaspora Communities of Shanghai. Stanford University Press, 2001.
Rosenfeld, Alvin H. “The Holocaust According to William Styron.” Midstream, vol. 25, no. 10, 1979, pp. 43–49.
Roth, John K. “Lengyel, Olga”. Encyclopedia of Holocaust Literature, edited by David Patterson et al., Oryx Press, 2002, pp. 106–107.
Schwartz, Daniel R. “The Ethics of Reading: The Case for Pluralistic and Transactional Reading.” Why the Novel Matters: A Postmodern Perplex, edited by Mark Spilka and Caroline McCracken-Flesher, Indiana University Press, 1990, pp. 215–236.
Shang, Biwu. “Postclassical Narratology in China: Receptions and Variations.” Word and Text, vol. 9, 2019, pp. 47–64.
Shang, Biwu. “The Rise of a Critical Theory: Reading Introduction to Ethical Literary Criticism” [in Chinese]. Foreign Literature Studies, vol. 36, no. 5, 2014, pp. 26–36.
Sicher, Efraim. The Holocaust Novel. Routledge, 2005.
Siebers, Tobin. Morals and Stories. Columbia University Press, 1992.
Spargo, R. Clifton. “Sophie’s Choice: On the Pedagogical Value of the ‘Problem Text.’” Teaching Holocaust Literature and Film, edited by Robert Eaglestone and Barry Langford, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, pp. 139–155.
Tessman, Lisa. Moral Failure: On the Impossible Demands of Morality. Oxford University Press, 2015.
Tian, Junwu. “Nie Zhenzhao and the Genesis of Chinese Ethical Literary Criticism.” Comparative Literature Studies, vol. 56, no. 2, 2019, pp. 402–420.
Tihanov, Galin. Foreword. Introduction to Ethical Literary Criticism, by Nie Zhenzhao, translated by Jie Zheng, Routledge, 2024, pp. xi–xiii.
Virant, Špela, and Irena Samide. “Literature and Ethics.” Primerjalna književnost, vol. 40, no. 2, 2017, pp. 7–11.
Virk, Tomo. “Etična literarna veda med kakofonijo in pluralnostjo.” Primerjalna književnost, vol. 40, no. 2, 2017, pp. 13–31.
Virk, Tomo. “Kitajska različica etičnega literarnega kritištva.” Review of Introduction to Ethical Literary Criticism, by Nie Zhenzhao. Primerjalna književnost, vol. 47, no. 1, 2024, pp. 215–225.
Wang, Ning, editor. Modern Chinese Fiction in a Global Context, special issue of Neohelicon, vol. 37, no. 2, 2010.
Wang, Ning, editor. Comparative Literature: Toward a (Re)construction of World Literature, special issue of Neohelicon, vol. 38, no. 2, 2011.
Wang, Ning, editor. Modern China and the World: Literary Constructions, special issue of Comparative Literature Studies, vol. 49, no. 4, 2012.
Wang, Ning, and Qinglong Peng, editors. Modern Chinese Literature in the Context of World Literature, special issue of Journal of Modern Literature, vol. 44, no. 2, 2021.
Yang, Liu. “Ethical Literary Criticism: Critical Reception and Theoretical Impact.” Interdisciplinary Studies of Literature, vol. 1, no. 3, 2017, pp. 171–176.
Yao, Xinzhong. An Introduction to Confucianism. Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Zaehner, R. C., editor. The Concise Encyclopedia of Living Faiths. Hutchinson, 1988.
Zhu, Chengshan, editor. Qinhua Rijun Nanjing Datusha Xingcunzhe Zhengyan [A Collection of Survivors’ Testimonies of the Nanjing Massacre]. Beijing, Social Sciences Academic Press, 2005.
