Ethics and imagination: The possibility of an immanent materialist ethics in Phillip Pullman's 'His Dark Materials'.

摘要

Throughout the history of adolescent literature the questions of ethical decision-making and ethical framings, particularly relationships between good and evil, have been framed in harshly metaphysical binaries. Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy attempts to undo this historical precedent. By reading the trilogy through the lens of post-structuralist thinkers including Gilles Deleuze and Giorgio Agamben, this thesis attempts to read the narrative and its materialist foundations of newly imagined worlds as a counter-narrative to the canon of adolescent fantasy literature. Rather than unproblematically accept Pullman's narrative, this thesis questions the inclusion of prophecy as a narrative trope consistent with the adolescent fantasy genre. By including questions of political formations of community and the role of collective imagination, the prophecy of His Dark Material's is understood as consistent with and critical to the undoing of the metaphysical tradition.