Cirrus@Austlit

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]