Dilemmas: when Fiction Asks You to Take Sides
3.0
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In Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall (2023), a woman is tried for murdering her husband. In the myth of Antigone, a young woman is torn between the obligation to obey the law and the necessity to resist. Which way will she embrace? In Yorgos Lanthimos' The Killing of a Sacred Deer, a heart surgeon must sacrifice a member of his family to compensate for mishandling an operation as he was drunk. Is it just to demand a life for a life? Fiction constitutes an inexhaustible source of alternative worlds and experiences that theoretical reasoning fails to address. That is, fictions often present us with dilemmas for which there are no clear answers. And yet, we are asked to choose. In this class, we will explore and analyze a variety of extreme situations. What is so tantalizing about fictional dilemmas? Do they teach us something that can last? Together, we will experiment with a variety of critical reading practices that bring us to grapple with our own position as readers, judges, interpreters, and ethical agents who are forced to make impossible choices for which we are nevertheless accountable.
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