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Reading Literature: An Ethical Gesture in the Postmodern

Context?

Angela Locatelli
Università degli studi di Bergamo

“The essence of great art is tension without bloodshed.” 
(Morrison 2005:717)

“The norm of art is to be found in its utility 
for the treatment of the affections of the soul.”

(Badiou 2005:4)

Abstract

After the so called Ethical Turn in literary theory ethics is still a major issue in liter-
ary studies. European Continental philosophy has traditionally been in close touch with
ethical issues. Not surprisingly then, it was the influence of French philosophy that, from
the Eighties onward, began to put back the ethical in British academic discourse. One of
the interesting paradoxes of post-modernity is the fact that, while it promotes an attitude
of scepticism, oriented towards a strong suspicion of strong ideologies, it is also an
attempt to promote emancipative activities (demonstrated in the Canon Debate, Post-
Colonial Studies, Trauma Studies, and a broad Ethical Turn in different sectors of the
humanities). This contribution wishes to investigate the issue of ethics and literature in
the postmodern context, with reference to contemporary philosophy and literary theory
and aims to propose that Postmodern culture still needs complex literature, and (the pro-
motion of) appropriate hermeneutic skills to deal with it. 

Key words: postmodern culture, ethics and politics, representation, dialogic reading
of literature.

Introduction

Values are not a natural given, but they are created, proposed, negotiated and dissem-
inated in culture, and it is crucially important to understand how this is effected in vari-
ous representational processes. As we address this ancient issue, which runs through the
history of philosophy and literature from Aristotle to Alain Badiou, we recognize that the
realms of ethics, politics and representation have always been, and still are, mutually
implicated and responsive to each other. Representation is never innocent, or objective-
ly neutral, especially when it claims to be so. Specific mechanisms are at work in repre-
sentation, and they are both the expression and vehicle of different values and value judg-
ments. After the so called Ethical Turn in literary theory at the beginning of our millen-
nium (Davis and Womack 2001) ethics is still a major issue in literary studies. This con-
tribution wishes to investigate it with special focus on its relevance to global post-moder-
nity and contemporary culture. 

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The Paradoxical Ethics of the Postmodern

The question of defining the postmodern in cultural, philosophical, and literary terms
is fraught with intricacies and contradictions. When this question is combined with the
problem of ethics and representation such contradictions multiply, because postmodernism
is the expression of a cultural sensibility which involves both the political and the a-polit-
ical, the writer’s ethical commitment and a sceptical attitude in relation to (traditional)
values, a traditional referential view of history and a new narratological, and even fic-
tional, conception of it.

Postmodernism claims a constructivist and an anti-foundational epistemology, it
inaugurates the so-called, and highly controversial, post-human paradigm, and features a
de-centering of the traditional subject of liberal humanism. Because of all this, it is often
deemed  radically un-ethical. And yet, I believe that the question of ethics is not absent
from the cultural stakes of post-modernity. The ethical concerns of postmodern times and
culture are evident in a range of phenomena that can hardly be defined as homogeneous,
but that share an indisputably ethical dimension. Among these phenomena I wish to
recall: the Canon debate in literary studies (cf. Alberti 1995, Lauter 1995, Locatelli
2004), the rise of Feminist, Postcolonial, and Trauma Studies, and the already mentioned
Ethical Turn in literary theory. 

Writers and artists as well as literary and cultural critics have recently contributed to
the development of a specific ethical awareness. Some of their views, for example  Pier
Paolo Pasolini’s prophetic and relentless critique of secular consumerism (cf. Pasolini
1991 and 2008), Fredric Jameson’s critique of  “the cultural logic of late capitalism”
(Jameson 1998),  Zygmund Bauman’s analysis of “liquid modernity” (Bauman 2000, and
2007) and the reflections on otherness spawned by the philosophy of Emmanuel Lévinas
(cf. Lévinas 1961,1974, 1981, and 1991) have all become central in the way ethics is
articulated in our times in literary culture(s). I obviously cannot deal at length with these
debates in just a few pages, but these artists, theorists and philosophers are undoubtedly
to be mentioned because of their ongoing relevance in contemporary questions of ethics
and culture. Postmodern culture is complex, nuanced, and even paradoxical. Its ethics
claims to be non-essentialist, non-foundational, and negotiable, rather than normative.
However, in its flaunted uncertainty it displays attitudes which may seem grounded on a
readiness to embrace and mix elements from diverse and diverging normative and estab-
lished doctrines and protocols. A certain ambivalence towards ethics and a concomitant
distancing from the political can also be perceived in large areas of postmodern global-
ized discourses (cf. Lecercle 2010).

The relationship between ethics and politics has always been, and is still a complex
one, clearly  beyond the scope of this paper, which is primarily concerned with literature
and its academic study as part of culture. Focussing on this circumscribed critical per-
spective, I will first of all come to terms with the recent poststructuralist neglect of ethics,
which is evident in British academic discourses since the Seventies of the 20th Century.
Andrew Gibson has attributed to positivism and to the “politics of English” (Gibson
1999) in the early 1970s this general academic disregard and/or suspicion of ethics. In
Postmodernity, ethics and the novel. From Leavis to Levinas Gibson shows that speak-

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ing of value has recently been, and for quite a long time, a taboo in literary studies in
Britain. In the aftermath of F.R. Leavis’ pronouncements on The Great Tradition, the
very term value has become suspect. A general ostracism of discourses about value has
produced a cultural void on questions of ethics in the past three or four decades, for
which literary theory has sometimes been blamed, undeservedly, in my opinion. In fact,
from a continental (as opposed to British) perspective it seems indeed strange  that radi-
cal politics in British academy would construe an opposition between the ethical and the
political, but this becomes perhaps more understandable (albeit still philosophically
questionable and politically problematic), if one considers that the Leavisian brand of
self-proclaimed ethical criticism was ideologically conservative and lacked self-reflexive
questioning. Distance from questions of ethics in Britain may also have come from the
traditional Anglo-Saxon protocols of philosophy, which favors an analytical and logical
approach to the discipline, rather than a generalist and literary approach, explicitly har-
boring ethical questions. As Jean-Jacques Lecercle has suggested in his recent book
Badiou and Deleuze Read Literature: “continental philosophy likes to address the con-
cerns of the general public: where the analytic philosopher is a shy and retiring creature,
the continental philosopher is a man, or woman, of the world – his or her voice is heard
on the agora, in the media, thus gaining a form of recognition” (Lecercle 2010:13).
Continental philosophers such as Habermas, Foucault, Cacciari, Vattimo, Badiou,
Derrida and Deleuze have often voiced ethical and political issues, and have reached
wide and widely different audiences in terms of taste, education, and profession. European
Continental philosophy has been a formative matrix for sociologist, anthropologists and
psychoanalysts, and has thus been in close touch with ethical issues, both inside and out-
side the academy. Not surprisingly then, it was the influence of French philosophy that,
from the Eighties onward, began put back the ethical in British academic discourse. This
happened in a second phase of poststructuralism, after the anesthetized earlier phase of a
radical linguistic turn (heavily condemned by philosophers like Deleuze and Badiou).
Among the literary theorists who have forcefully contributed to a return to the ethical in
academic debate in Britain I wish to recall: Andrew Gibson (Gibson 1996), Robert
Eaglestone (Eaglestone 1997 and 2003), Derek Attridge (Attridge 1999 and 2004). The
developments in feminist, queer, postcolonial studies can also be seen as important forms
of ethical criticism, with an obvious and relevant ideological difference from the previ-
ous Leavisian conservative approach, while at the same time clearly distant from Marxist
political critique.

One of the interesting paradoxes of postmodernity is therefore the fact that, while  it
promotes a general attitude of scepticism and relativism, oriented towards a strong sus-
picion of  traditional strong ideologies, it is also an attempt to promote an Ethical Turn
in the humanities. In the U.S. many representatives of both New Historicism and
Deconstruction have been engaged in the Canon debate (itself a relevant ethical issue),
and, following the affaire deMan they have engaged in the promotion of Trauma studies
(cf. Caruth 1995, Whitehead 2004 and Onega and Ganteau 2011), variously responding
to the ethical urge of attempting to represent the “irrepresentable” (Harman 1996).
Moreover, social and literary theorists in Britain and North America have turned to

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Emmanuel Lévinas (cf. Lévinas 1981 and 1991) in order to defend a view of ethics in
terms of an encounter with the Other. On the other hand, the Other has also come to be
interpreted (in Anthropology and Cultural Studies), as the oppressed subject of social
minorities: i.e. the alien, the woman, the queer, the (post?)-colonial1 subject, the migrant.
This is a relevant articulation of the concept of otherness at a moment in which, with the
advent of mass migrations, the question of natural rights and civil rights is under close
scrutiny and re-articulation. The meanings of human rights, or natural rights have to be
re-defined, within a rethinking of political subjectivity in inclusive, rather than excluding
terms. Etienne Balibar and Alain Badiou have fruitfully combined the ethical and the
political while investigating this particular issue in Politics and the Other Scene (2011)
and in L’éthique. Essai sur la conscience du mal (2011). An increasing number of social
theorists, and several writers and poets with them, have also been voicing the idea that
political rights have necessarily to be expanded beyond the narrow confines of nation,
and even of ethnic identity, in order to do justice to a universal concept of the human.
This is part of Alain Badiou’s polemical argument in his seminal study of St Paul (Badiou
2003).

In the tradition of French Marxist critique (Alain Badiou and Jean-Jacques Lecercle)
the resurgence of interest in ethics in literary studies has also been depicted as ambigu-
ously deflecting attention from a political focus, and immediate political action. Which
does not in the least deny the political significance of literature, which is, on the contrary,
upheld in the works of the same Badiou (cf. Badiou 2006) and Lecercle (cf. Lecercle
2006), and of other philosophers, for example Jacques Rancière (cf. Rancière 2004 and
2007) and Guilliaume Le Blanc (cf. Le Blanc 2007). After these philosophers, and
against the scepticism of some towards literary theory (accused of being a predicament
that remains distant from daily concerns), I believe that the literary experience and liter-
ary studies can valuably contribute to the ethical and political debate in postmodern cul-
ture, and I will devote to this argument the pages that follow.

The Literary Ethical Dimension: Reading (with) the Other 

In the complex context of post-modernity outlined this far, the debate on the social
impact and role of literature has been lively, swinging from elation  to despair, and pre-
senting all sorts of in-between positions in the past thirty years. In 1987 Gerald Graff
lamented the fact that: “high literary culture” is “increasingly marginal to the commer-
cial and corporate interests dominating modern life” (Graff 1987:12), a complaint that is
still repeatedly voiced in academia. Almost ten years later Martha Nussbaum strongly
endorsed the vital social role of literature, by suggesting that it can move us beyond the
abstractions of both ethics and the social sciences, because it  makes us “capable of enter-
ing imaginatively into the lives of distant others” (Nussbaum 1995:xvi).

The Italian writer Italo Calvino has explored the issue of literature and politics and has
suggested that literature is at risk when it finds itself in two apparently opposite situations:
either an excess of attention or a lack of attention on the part of politics and the public:
“When politicians and politically minded people pay too much attention to literature, it is
a bad sign – a bad sign mostly for literature, because it is then that literature is in most

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danger. But it is also a bad sign when they don’t want to hear the word mentioned, and
this happens as much to the most traditionally obtuse bourgeois politicians as to the most
ideological revolutionaries. This is a bad sign mostly for them2, because they are showing
themselves afraid of any use of language that calls the certitude of their own language into
question” (Calvino 1986: 93). This last sentence seems extremely relevant to our concerns
because I believe that it implies, among other aspects, that the language of literature does
not, and should not coincide with the language of politics tout court, while at the same
time being acutely mindful of politics. If a work is written in the language of politics, it
ceases to be literature3, but becomes sociology and/or social psychology, or a text of polit-
ical argumentation, or even indoctrination and propaganda. We have unfortunately wit-
nessed reductive forms of such literary discourse in some romans à these, and more
recently in politically correct novels, which mostly persuade the already persuaded, but
fail to engage the reader at the complex level of controversy and judgment to which litera-
ture is intrinsically conducive. But it is precisely at the level of questioning and judgment
that literature becomes most ethical. It is at this level that it can provoke debate, expose
bias and provide the ground for its rejection. In fact, only literature among the human sci-
ences can reach a specific epistemic complexity and ethical significance, precisely thanks
to its figurality and special narrativity (i.e. the thanks to its linguistic sophistication, and
to its various modes of narration which greatly differ from other ways of telling in ordi-
nary discourse or in other disciplines). The ethical dimension of literature depends on its
unique style (provided we reject a view of style as embellishment and ornament and see
it as the language proper to an epistemic and aesthetic position). Thanks to its intrinsic plu-
rality of voices (Bahktin docet)4, its ambiguity (Empson docet)5, and its linguistic richness
literature transcend the plain statement, which is the main feature of discourses of power,
and indeed of most of the contemporary human sciences (with the exception of philoso-
phy, especially after Derrida and Deleuze). When it is faithful to its own immanence, and
its criticality, literature literally “speaks a different language” (cf. Calvino 1986). In this
sense I completely agree with Calvino when he writes that: “Literature is like an ear that
can hear things beyond the understanding of the language of politics, it is like an eye that
can see beyond the color spectrum perceived by politics” (Calvino 1986:98). 

The ear and eye provided by literature are not innate faculties. They are abilities to be
acquired with the critical practice of dialogic reading (cf. Locatelli 2003), which
amounts to the activity of an attentive reader, of an open minded and a careful listener,
of someone who is patiently seeking information on historical contexts and cultures relat-
ed to the text, and who is sensitive to the nuances of language and who is also ready to
be surprised and even destabilised in his/her commonsensical attitudes by the text. The
dialogic reader is not eager to jump to conclusions in order to confirm his/her received
doxa on human relations, and thus to make of texts the pretext for his/her own motives,
and a confirmation of what he/she already holds as valuable. Readers must learn
hermeneutical strategies that do not reject the careful minutiae of traditional close read-
ing, and the concomitant implications of respecting the text, but they should not stop
there. Going beyond means that interpretation needs to be shared, so that it may teach
readers to step outside their own positions, and look at themselves from another one, in

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order to perceive their own location as it is perceived by (distant) others. This change of
perspective involves un-hinging the reader’s expectations, exposing his/her assumptions,
and expressing his/her distances from other assumptions, while promoting the interaction
of different points of view. This means that  the reader (whose role is as crucial as that of
the text in the construction of meaning) should come to terms with the presence of more
than one’s own interpretive community, and thus more than just one form of  hermeneu-
tic validation. Ignorance can thrive in a society where a rule-based and univocal view of
the world holds the stage. Not knowing other possibilities, scenarios, world pictures,
undoubtedly leads to the arrogance of self-righteousness, and to the absolutism of self-
interested norms. Pushed to its limit, this attitude obviously makes the encounter with
otherness, utterly impossible. But the experience of literature is a genuine encounter the
other, which starts, as I have suggested, with the opening of one’s ears and eyes, and
includes the experience of wonder and discovery, the re-appraisal of norms and the shap-
ing of novel attitudes. Literature is able to promote complex identifications and dis-iden-
tifications with different subjects and it thus promotes judgement, through both the intel-
lect and the emotions. But when literature is taken to be a mere ornament, a means of
evasion or of  political indoctrination, rather than a means of deepening human under-
standing, literature betrays its own epistemic reality and primary social function, as well. 

Derek Attridge’s seminal notions of readerly hospitality defines the attitude of respect
that is implicit in any dialogic reading: “The always dominant mode of mechanical read-
ing can be modified or interrupted by a somewhat different relation to the work. Not all
works will have something to offer to a reader’s openness to alterity, of course, but when
one does, mechanical and instrumental interpretation is complicated by what we may
term readerly hospitality, a readiness to have one’s purposes reshaped by the work to
which one is responding” (Attridge 2004:80). Respect allows readers to move beyond
mechanical reading, it starts from an unbiased and keen attention to the particular, an atti-
tude that has recently been defended as ethical by Herbert Grabes in his examination of
the centrality of aesthesis in Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics (Grabes 2009). Last but not
least, a dialogic reading of literature is respectful of the Other’s response(s) and cease-
lessly moves towards the construction of shared meanings. Sharing the construction of
meanings is a difficult task, but one to be pursued since it puts a limit to unbridled rela-
tivism and uncritical dogmatism, as well as rejecting the idea that anything will do in
interpretation, including the whims of a capricious or tendentious reader.

Adding to this perspective on the position of the reader in ethical terms, I will pro-
pose that the ethical dimension of literature is closely related to the following interpreta-
tive and critical gestures, which can all be implemented in the postmodern pluralistic cul-
tural context:

1. Reading texts to grasp their structures, features and functions.
This is an exercise in patience, rigour, and even self-denial (resisting
the temptation of construing the text in one’s own image).

2. Finding and explaining the reasons for one’s interpretative conclusions. 
It is a Socratic exercise in self-awareness.

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3. Reading texts to understand the workings of language. 
This is also an exercise in self-knowledge, since language is at the core
of human relations, of subjectivities and interlocution (Lecercle 2006).

4. Reading texts to discover their relationship to forms of power.
It is a premise to any acceptable critique of ideology. It is also a meta-
ethical exercise evaluating “values”. 
This is a relevant task of literary studies, and promotes ethically valu-
able strategies of emancipation from error and oppression.

5. Reading to manage trauma. 
It is both a therapeutic and ethical gesture, because ultimately a strate-
gy of containment of violence and of human flourishing (eudaimonia).

All of these ways of reading literature are forms of dialogue and practices of pluralism, and
from them emerges the ethically transformative power of the reading itself, which post-moder-
nity urgently needs to remain human. Rather than settling with the mainstream reductive mar-
ket view of literature as escapism and entertainment, or as a straightforward politically correct
message, we should, as academics, promote the enjoyment of complex literature, to voice alter-
natives to the predictable and mechanical relationships and subjectivities that are promoted by
techno-corporate interests (cf. Pasolini 1991 and 2008 and Bauman 2007). In fact, the reading
of literature is a therapeutic strategy against blind compliance to both fundamentalisms and the
imperatives of financial and techno-bureaucratic protocols. In the postmodern context, the dia-
logic reading of literature is of primary social relevance: what is at stake is the survival of the
imagination (and sanity). The imaginative, emotional and empathetic dimensions of literature
make it still epistemologically unique, ethical and socially valuable. Literature goes hand in
hand with our readiness to be surprised and to be challenged, to be emotionally and cognitive-
ly stimulated and enriched. This is why postmodern culture needs complex literature, and (the
promotion of) appropriate hermeneutic skills to deal with it. This is an empowering and repar-
ative gesture, once literature is seen as the “the Ecology of Wonderland” (Locatelli 2007).

Notes:

1. The question mark after the “post” preceding “colonial” is a legitimate expression of
doubt on the politics of global Neoliberalism and its forms of new financial and com-
mercial colonialisms, as well as,  to some extent, on the very discipline of “post-colo-
nial studies” in the context of a weakening  Anglo-American supremacy.

2. Emphasis in the original
3. I am using the term “literature” in the restricted sense of the literary classics or canon-

ical works, not in the broad sense of any written text.
4. Cf. Bakhtin 1981 and 1984. The Italian philosopher Augusto Ponzio has brilliantly

argued in favour of “a surprising analogy between Lévinas notion of “exteriority” and
Bakhtin’s “extra-locality” (“vnenachodimost”). Cf. Ponzio 1997.

5. Cf. Empson 1966.

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×òåíèå ëèòåðàòóðû: ýòè÷åñêèèé æåñò â
ïîñòìîäåðíèñòñêîì êîíòåêñòå?

Öåëüþ äàí íî ãî èññ ëå äî âà íèÿ ÿâ ëÿåò ñÿ èçó ÷å íèå âîï ðî ñà ýòè êè è ëè òå ðà òó ðû â ïîñò -
ìî äåð íèñòñ êîì êîí òåêñòå, ñî ññûë êîé íà ôè ëî ñî ôèþ è òåî ðèþ ëè òå ðà òó ðû. Àâ òîð
âûä âè ãàåò èäåþ î òîì, ÷òî äëÿ èçó÷íèÿ ïîñò ìî äåð íèñòñ êîé êóëü òó ðû íåîáõîäèìà â
êîìï ëåêñ íàÿ ëè òå ðà òó ðà, à òàê æå â ñîîòâåòñòâóþùèå ãåðìåíåâòè÷åñêèå íàâûêè.

Armenian Folia Anglistika Literature

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