Cosmopolitanism, religion and ethics

Rereading Monica Ali'sBrick Lane

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2179037
AutoresLydia Efthymia Roupakia
Año2016
Volumen52
Número6
Páginas645-658
Fecha de publicación2016-11-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of Postcolonial Writing (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1744-9855 • E-ISSN: 1744-9863
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/17449855.2016.1165278
OpenAlexW2336976504
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas1
Referencias citadas21

Western liberal ideals, with their emphasis on autonomy and instrumental reason, are usually treated as incompatible with the more communitarian values of non-western forms of society. Rather than reading Brick Lane as an enactment of the conflict between autonomy and religious faith – and the moral superiority of the former over the latter – this article discusses the novel in the context of renewed debates about the place of religion in the public sphere, seeing Brick Lane as offering a nuanced contemplation of the distinction between faith as a politics and faith as an ethics, and the challenges of living across that distinction. Stuart Hall's concept of "vernacular cosmopolitanism" is used as a way of entry into Brick Lane, and Selma Sevenhuijsen's work on the ethics of care is also brought to bear on the text. It is argued that the novel invites a nuanced appreciation of the duality of "care" as a value, namely its significance as connotative of attentive engagement, and its importance as a synonym for self-reflexive caution that should attend moral deliberation and judgment in multicultural contexts

Aesthetics · Autonomy · Context (archaeology · Cosmopolitanism · Deliberation · Epistemology · Faith · Multiculturalism · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Value (mathematics · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · Religion and Society Interactions · Religion, Society, and Development · Gender Studies · History · Law · Philosophy