Giving a Global Account of Oneself
Narratives of the Humanitarian Atlantic
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3893424 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Megan Cole Paustian (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 35 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 178-201 |
| Publication date | 2024-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | differences (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1040-7391 • E-ISSN: 1527-1986 |
| Publisher | Duke University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1215/10407391-11525361 |
| OpenAlex | W4405284554 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 22 |
In Giving an Account of Oneself, Judith Butler asks how we justify our lives through narrative and what this means for ethical relations with others. This essay repositions Butler's work in a humanitarian frame, foregrounding how moral commitments play out on a transatlantic scale. The humanitarian impulse is rooted, partly, in the desire to narrate oneself onto the globe, linking a savior to a suffering other, with Africa problematically positioned as the ultimate target of Western benevolence. Through analysis of NoViolet Bulawayo's We Need New Names, this essay mobilizes Butler's theory of the unstable, unknowable self as a resource for humanitarian ethics
Aesthetics · Art · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Foregrounding · Globe · Literature · Narrative · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · Philosophy · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · Psychology
Human Rights, Inc.
The White Man's Burden
Famine crimes
Cosmopolitanism
Ways of Reading Blackness
Giving an Account of Oneself
Reconsidering Reparations
Saviors and Survivors
A Bed for the Night
How Did They Come to This
Language, Race, and Identity in Adichie's Americanah and Bulowayo's We Need New Names
The Paddle That Speaks English
Ambivalence of representation
A Critique of Postcolonial Reason
Global Shadows
Writing and reading Zimbabwe in the global literary market
Precarity, poverty porn and vernacular cosmopolitanism in NoViolet Bulawayo's We Need New Names and Meg Vandermerwe's Zebra Crossing
New names, translational subjectivities
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |