Imagining care : responsibility, dependency, and Canadian literature / Amelia DeFalco.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

DeFalco, Amelia, 1978- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Canadian literature--21st century--History and criticism.

Canadian literature.

Dependency (Psychology) in literature.

Responsibility in literature.

Physical Description:

x, 217 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Toronto : University of Toronto Press, [2016]

Summary:

"Imagining Care brings literature and philosophy into dialogue by examining caregiving in literature by contemporary Canadian writers alongside ethics of care philosophy. Through close readings of fiction and memoirs by Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, Michael Ignatieff, Ian Brown, and David Chariandy, Amelia DeFalco argues that these narratives expose the tangled particularities of relations of care, dependency, and responsibility, as well as issues of marginalisation on the basis of gender, race, and class. DeFalco complicates the myth of Canada as an unwaveringly caring nation that is characterized by equality and compassion. Caregiving is unpredictable: one person's altruism can be another's narcissism; one's compassion, another's condescension or even cruelty. In a country that conceives of itself as a caring society, these texts depict in stark terms the ethical dilemmas that arise from our attempts to respond to the needs of others."-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

1 Embedded and Embodied: Caregiving, Life Writing, and the Myth of the Autonomous Individual 27

2 Moral Obligation, Disordered Care: The Ethics of Caregiving in Margaret Atwood's Moral Disorder 55

3 Caring for Relative Others: Alterity and Narrative in Michael Ignatieff's Scar Tissue 75

4 "Parodies of Love": Demands of Care in Alice Munro 93

5 Caregiving and Caretaking: Affective Economies in Alice Munro 109

6 Forgetting and the Forgotten: Care at the Margins in David Chariandy's Soucouyant 138.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 169-210) and index.

ISBN:

9781442637030

144263703X

OCLC:

907661788