Mapping a Theory of Dialogic Ethical Criticism
Authors: Nah Dominic 
Published: September 2024

In this article, I outline the need to theorise a Dialogic Ethical Criticism that maps the spectrum of real student readers’ interpretive responses to what Suzanne Choo calls the »referent other« (2021, 88). I start with a brief historical overview of the ethical praxis of literature instruction, from didactic to dialogic practices, and three key complementary (and sometimes overlapping) movements of ethically-oriented literature pedagogies, which I define as lessons or teaching units of literary texts where the text selection, instructional strategies, and interpretive focus – verbal and/or written – centres around the literary representation of the »referent other«, i. e. the »fictional other in the text who, as an imagined construct, makes reference and points to real others in the world undergoing similar forms of injustice« (ibid.). Based on these considerations, I highlight two practical challenges of enacting ethically-oriented literature pedagogies: The first relates to managing student resistance, as well as divergent and limiting responses. The second concerns balancing the tension of enacting a pedagogy of discomfort and the promise of a safe classroom space, and the risk of committing ethical violence on students. I then explain the lack of colligation between the field of ethical criticism in literary studies and empirical studies of ethically-oriented literature pedagogies concerning the ethical meaning-making of real readers.

Next, I offer an overview of the field of ethical criticism, drawing upon Suzanne Choo’s (2023) survey of the three key strands of ethical criticism: relational, analytical, and historical, showing how they are informed by an underlying cosmopolitan other-centric ethics. How can literature educators attend closely to the turn-by-turn realities of intersubjective interpretation of the referent other in the ethically-oriented literature classroom? Within the field of ethical criticism, I consider three existing dialogic practices that offer possible solutions: namely Wayne Booth’s ›coduction‹, Peter Rabinowitz’s ›lateral ethics‹ and Suzanne Choo’s ›dispositional routines‹. Although these three disparate and complementary practical concepts of ethical criticism do address the above limitations of ethically-oriented literature pedagogies, I argue that a clear gap remains, which shows that educators still need a practical theory of ethical criticism that can help them anticipate, strategise, and address the simultaneous and complex nuances of student responses when dialogically conversing about the referent other.

Following these overviews, I theorise what I have called a ›Dialogic Ethical Criticism‹ to look at how real interlocutors come together in interpretive communities of the classroom. I establish its fundamental tenets of Emmanuel Levinas’ ethical responsibility to the other, its awareness of the constant tension of representational violence in language, and its commitment to support ethical interruptions of one’s prejudices. To account for the ways real readers respond to the referent other and discursive conditions within a classroom’s lateral ethics, I combine Hans-Georg Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics and empirical studies of student responses to the referent other in classroom discourse to formulate the framework for a Dialogic Ethical Criticism. I show how despite Levinas and Gadamer’s fundamental differences in the ontology and epistemology of alterity, Gadamer’s concepts of prejudice, hermeneutic conversation, and the fusion of horizons reflect the ethical interruptions of one’s prejudices that students experience in classrooms. Here, I introduce a diagrammatic framework of Dialogic Ethical Criticism that helps explain the dialogic process of ethical utterances and episodes about the referent other in classroom interactions.

Using Gadamer’s dialectic of the I-Thou, I discern three orientations of student responses to the referent other: resistant and self-centred stances; receptive yet self-centred stances; and receptive and other-centred stances. I also present a preliminary taxonomy of how these stances can be expressed by drawing upon twelve empirical studies of secondary-level student responses to the referent other. I illustrate this taxonomy by applying it to a reading of a translated poem on migrant worker conditions during COVID-19 lockdowns in Singapore called »First Draft« by Bangladeshi poet Zakir Hossain Khokan. I then briefly explain my existing theorisation of Dialogic Ethical Criticism that adopts Gadamer’s concept of hermeneutic conversation to chart a preliminary taxonomy of discursive acts that either facilitate or inhibit the fusion of horizons between reader, text, and the referent other.

Finally, I contend that Dialogic Ethical Criticism can serve as a practical theory for literature educators to better discern the ethical stances of interpretive claims and to prepare for the practical challenges of navigating conflicting, controversial, and confounding interpretive claims by students. I comment on its implications for the moral development of adolescent students. I further propose that in the context of teacher education and professional development, educators can examine these ethical utterances and episodes about the referent other to sensitise themselves to the nuanced tensions of classroom discourse. While the generative framework of Dialogic Ethical Criticism may elide paralinguistic resources of meaning-making, or not fully accommodate classroom particularities across different contexts, ultimately it aims to serve the cause of what Choo (2024a) calls »hermeneutical justice«, one where applications of critical interpretive approaches are grounded in an ethics of truth-seeking, wisdom, and justice for the other (cf. 3 sq.).