After Structural Evil: Post-Apartheid Literature and the Problem of Moral Normativity
After Structural Evil: Post-Apartheid Literature and the Problem of Moral Normativity

Summary/Abstract: The argument of this paper is that the recovery of moral normativity after structural evil cannot be taken for granted; not only do normativity and the circumstances for the recovery of normativity fail to promptly return but when they do return, they do not return in confidence. Using a reading of post-apartheid texts, this paper intends to locate and describe the process through which structural injustice damages not only the structures within which it operates but the very circumstances required for moral assessment. A closer examination of Damon Galgut's novel The Good Doctor and Antjie Krog's Country of My Skull will aim to reveal literary symptoms of administrative breakdown, testimonial collapse, and atomised moral communities where it will become evident that structural injustice does not equal restored moral consensus or a restored sense of certainty regarding moral assessment. Based on an interpretation of resources from such philosophers as Hannah Arendt, Paul Ricoeur, Alasdair MacIntyre, Karl Jaspers, and Claudia Card, this paper will build a philosophical basis for an inherently contingent and historically weak normativity by providing literature as a kind of testing site to reveal and diagnose the corruption of and partial repair to human moral agency by questioning the assumption of the inevitability of normativity's return.

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