Issue Details: First known date: 2009... 2009 Never Give up Hope : A Levinasian Reading of Janette Turner Hospital's 'Dear Amnesty'
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

A double click on the 'Take Action' button opens up several ways of collaborating with Amnesty International that include the classic letter writing to authorities, joining a local group, leaving a gift in your will and throwing a fundraising party, amongst others. The degree of commitment shown by Sarah, a member of the Urgent Action Network in Janette Turner Hospital's short story 'Dear Amnesty', acquire hyperbolic tinges when whe manages to save Rosita - arrested and tortured for requesting better work conditions - by draining off her pain into her own body. This article engages with Turner Hospital's short story as an extreme example of the main tenet of Levinas's ethics of alterity: our infinite responsibility for our neighbours. Like Amnesty International, Levinas's ethical philosophy envisages a messianic time free from political violence. Sarah's radical openness to the other can also be analysed in the light of Gibson's ethics of affect. Inspired by Levinas and his other-centred philosophy, Gibson elaborates an ethics that priviledges sensibility, vulnerability, generosity and self-expenditure over and above self-interest and restraint. [Author's abstract]

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Kunapipi Focus on Science vol. 31 no. 2 2009 Z1910690 2009 periodical issue 2009 pg. 147-160
Last amended 22 Jan 2013 11:12:47
147-160 Never Give up Hope : A Levinasian Reading of Janette Turner Hospital's 'Dear Amnesty'small AustLit logo Kunapipi
Subjects:
  • Dear Amnesty Janette Turner Hospital , 1988 single work short story
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