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“Thousands of Little Stitches”

Literature, Democracy, Non-Humans

Summary/Abstract: The article begins from Richard Rorty’s idea that literature is a way of expanding thesensitivity and sense of loyalty to other people. These are the competencies that areto help build a democratic community. Can this idea be extended to non-humans as well?The article argues that literature has narrative tools to build a sense of loyalty not onlyto animals but also – an even more complicated case – to plants. The text discusses thesetools by using the example of Richard Powers’s novel The Overstory. The article considersthat the basis for understanding how these tools work lies in the concept of the actor –understood according to the assumptions of the actor-network theory – namely as thatwhich makes a difference in the world by changing other actors.

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