The problems of knowing and representing the other are acute every time we encounter a text as writers or readers. Ethical Encounters engages with the representation of encounters with alterity in the writings of the Canadian author Rudy Wiebe. Drawing on Emmanuel Levinas's philosophy on the ethics of encountering the other, the book argues that Wiebe's writings show that the self's knowledge offers an inadequate basis for ethically valid representations of those encounters. In the search for ethical ways of engaging with alterity, Wiebe's writings offer new ways of employing silence and the p
Cover; Title Page; Copyright Page; Table of Contents; Acknowledgements; 1 Introduction:The Ethics of Knowing; 2 Encountering Mennonite Alterity in Wiebe's Writing; 3 Representing the First Nations:Encounters with Totality of Knowledge; 4 People and Prairie Space:Knowledge of the Self and Knowledge of Space; 5 Alterity of Space:Where is the North?; 6 The Dissolution of the Self's Knowledge: 'Being in the North'; 7 Conclusion:Space and the Limits of the Self's Knowledge; Works Cited; Index
