ABSTRACT

Though the title of Nuruddin Farah’s Links suggests the language of network often invoked in theories of globalization, the 2003 novel instead questions this discourse through its focus on the affective responses of characters to a series of dead bodies. The links Farah explores in the novel are the affiliations and lived experiences, often unacknowledged, that stress the limits of an individual, revealing what binds them to groups and shapes how they imagine others. Set in Mogadiscio in the years after the United Nation’s failed intervention, Links reflects on the gap between the ideals of a post-Cold War humanitarianism that could transcend differences of race and religion and the reality of the prolonged state of emergency in Somalia. While moral philosophers have stressed the novel’s ability to generate humanitarian sentiment, this article argues that Links presents a generative limit to humanitarian reading models. Building on recent theorizations of the global novel’s relation to otherness, the article proposes that Links is deeply invested in not only locating the limits of the novel form to convey knowledge and build understanding, but also in presenting the powerful recognition of partial and contingent knowledge, what a character in Links calls “human truths.”

摘要

尽管 Nuruddin Farah 的Links的标题暗示了全球化理论中经常引用的网络语言，但这部 2003 年的小说却通过关注人物对一系列尸体的情感反应来质疑这种话语。法拉在小说中探索的联系是通常未被承认的从属关系和生活经历，它们强调个人的局限性，揭示是什么将他们与群体联系在一起并塑造了他们对他人的想象。在联合国干预失败后的几年里，以摩加迪西奥为背景，林克斯反思冷战后人道主义理想之间的差距，这种理想可以超越种族和宗教差异，与索马里长期处于紧急状态的现实之间存在差距。虽然道德哲学家强调小说产生人道主义情感的能力，但本文认为林克斯对人道主义阅读模型提出了生成限制。基于全球小说与他者关系的最新理论，文章提出，林克斯不仅致力于定位小说形式的局限性以传达知识和建立理解，而且还表现出对部分和偶然知识的强大认可，Links 中的一个角色称之为“人类真理”。