This thesis undertakes a critical study of ethics in the postcolonial novel. Focusing on four authors, namely Amitav Ghosh, Chimamanda Adichie, Caryl Phillips, and Kazuo Ishiguro, I conduct a comparative analysis of the ethical engagement offered in a selection of their novels. I argue that the recognitions and related emotional responses of characters are integral to the unfolding of these novels’ ethical concerns. The ethics thus explored are often marked by the complexity and impurity characteristic of the tragic – an impurity which is productively thought together with Jacques Derrida’s understanding of “radical evil”. I arrive at this through deploying an approach to ethics in the postcolonial novel that is largely drawn from the work of Martha Nussbaum, David Scott, and Terence Cave. This approach is attentive to both the particular contexts in which the novels’ ethical concerns unfold, as well as the general ethical questions in relation to which these can be understood. Crucial to this is the concept of anagnorisis, that is, the recognition scene. Functioning as both a structural and a thematic element, it serves as a hinge between the general and the specific ethical considerations in a novel. There are three ethical themes that I consider across the thesis: the ethics of remembrance, the human, and religion. The works of these four authors cluster around these concerns to differing degrees and with differing perspectives. What emerges is that while each engagement is focused on the particular details that the novel represents, the range of perspectives can nevertheless be productively read alongside one another as interventions into these general concerns. Following from this I also conclude that as a suitable, if not privileged, form in which to engage questions of the ethical, the postcolonial novel hosts the ethical difficulty that I name as the tragic, and which is characterised by the term radical evil.

A partir de um estudo do discurso presente nos livros de orientação de pais mais vendidos, editados no Brasil no período de 2001-2006, a autora da presente dissertação faz uma reflexão crítica relacionando as concepções de educação e babárie, considerando a perspectiva da Teoria Crítica da Escola de Frankfurt. Contextualiza-se este trabalho através de um mapeamento das práticas tradicionais de educação no âmbito da família e o levantamento de sinais, que possam servir de índices para se conceber uma possível educação hipermoderna. O caráter paradoxal de muitas das orientações feitas por estes livros é coerente com as noções da Teoria Crítica relativas à indústria cultural e aos paradoxos da cultura hipermoderna. A reflexão feita aponta para a necessidade de um posicionamento ético de pais e educadores no que diz respeito às sugestões feitas pelos livros de orientação estudados / Start from a study of the discourse observed in books dedicated to parents supervision, best-sellers, published in Brazil between 2001-2006, the author of this paper produced a critique reflection about the both relationed conceptions of education and barbarism, into the perspective of the Critic Theory (of the Frankfurt School) . The context of this paper it is based on the map out of the traditional educational practices of education into the families scope and the survey of the signals, wich may be indicates one possible conception of a hypermodern educational . The paradoxal character of the most of the educational orientation writed by these books authors, it is coherent by the conceptions of the Critic Theory, regarding to cultural industry and the paradoxes of the hypermodern culture. The reflection produced in this paper indicates the necessity of an ethic point of view of the parents and educators, in face of the suggestions done by the parents supervision books studied

A partir de um estudo do discurso presente nos livros de orientação de pais mais vendidos, editados no Brasil no período de 2001-2006, a autora da presente dissertação faz uma reflexão crítica relacionando as concepções de educação e babárie, considerando a perspectiva da Teoria Crítica da Escola de Frankfurt. Contextualiza-se este trabalho através de um mapeamento das práticas tradicionais de educação no âmbito da família e o levantamento de sinais, que possam servir de índices para se conceber uma possível educação hipermoderna. O caráter paradoxal de muitas das orientações feitas por estes livros é coerente com as noções da Teoria Crítica relativas à indústria cultural e aos paradoxos da cultura hipermoderna. A reflexão feita aponta para a necessidade de um posicionamento ético de pais e educadores no que diz respeito às sugestões feitas pelos livros de orientação estudados / Start from a study of the discourse observed in books dedicated to parents supervision, best-sellers, published in Brazil between 2001-2006, the author of this paper produced a critique reflection about the both relationed conceptions of education and barbarism, into the perspective of the Critic Theory (of the Frankfurt School) . The context of this paper it is based on the map out of the traditional educational practices of education into the families scope and the survey of the signals, wich may be indicates one possible conception of a hypermodern educational . The paradoxal character of the most of the educational orientation writed by these books authors, it is coherent by the conceptions of the Critic Theory, regarding to cultural industry and the paradoxes of the hypermodern culture. The reflection produced in this paper indicates the necessity of an ethic point of view of the parents and educators, in face of the suggestions done by the parents supervision books studied