Articulable Humanity
: Narrative Ethics in Nuruddin Farah's Trilogies
Hilda Härgestam Strandberg
Umeå Studies in Language and Literature, no. 29
How can we preserve human dignity in the face of war, conflict and suffering? How far does responsibility to the Other reach? What are the ethical implications of writing and reading stories that explore these questions?
Employing a narrative-ethical approach, Articulable Humanity explores these issues in Nuruddin Farah's (1945-) three trilogies: Variations on the Theme of an African Dictatorship, Blood in the Sun, and Past lmperfect. In a literary field where ethical themes have been conceived as essentially political, Articulable Humanity contributes an original in-depth study of the ethical underpinnings of Farah's postcolonial enquiries, with bearings also on the larger fields of post-colonial studies, narrative theory, and moral philosophy.