Abstract
Heinrich von Kleist's short story, ‘The Earthquake in Chile’, of 1806, one of the foundational texts of modern disaster fiction that emerged from the rubble of the Lisbon earthquake, in 1755, is not a story about the application of legal norms but, rather, a story about the constitution of a political community. This chapter contends that this shift of focus--from a 'what' question to a 'who' question of justice (Nancy Fraser)--is a recurrent feature in modern disaster fiction, not just in Kleist's short story but also, for instance, in zombie movies. First, the chapter explores the act of judgement that distinguishes between the inside and outside of a political community, between citizens and zombies. Second, the chapter focuses on the rhetorics applied to draw the line between rights-bearers and the rightless. ‘Prophetic’ speech, echoing the language of the Old Testament prophets, is vital to understanding the question of justice in much disaster fiction. Third and last, the chapter discusses the relationship between the reader's aesthetic experience of Kleist's story, and the political act of judgement represented in the story: in other words, the relationship between the ‘how’ question of literary form, and the ‘who’ question of justice.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Discursive Framings of Human Rights : Negotiating Agency and Victimhood |
| Editors | Karen-Margrethe Simonsen, Jonas Ross Kjærgaard |
| Number of pages | 12 |
| Publisher | Routledge |
| Publication date | 30 Aug 2016 |
| Pages | 169-181 |
| Article number | 10 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9781138944503 |
| Publication status | Published - 30 Aug 2016 |