Imagining Care

"Imagining Care makes a powerful case for the uses of literature to illuminate the complexities of caregiving." -- Susan M. Squier, Julia Brill Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and English, Pennsylvania State University "Delving deeply into what Canadian literature teaches us about obligation and love, Amelia DeFalco illuminates the ethical dimensions of care among family and friends. Canadians like to think that how we care distinguishes us from those who live in the U.S. But DeFalco, pointing to the devastating effects of neoliberalism, suggests that the distinction lies more in how our literature interrogates care than in our actions and policies." -- Sally Chivers, Department of English, Trent University "Imagining Care sits at the nexus of moral philosophy, literary narrative, and pragmatic care manuals in a way that will be helpful not only to literary scholars, but also to readers interested in care as an ethical issue. DeFalco reads carefully and writes beautifully." -- Margery Fee, Department of English, University of British Columbia

In a country that conceives of itself as a caring society, Imagined Care discusses texts which depict the ethical dilemmas that arise from our attempts to respond to the needs of others. 

Imagining Care brings literature and philosophy into dialogue by examining caregiving in literature by contemporary Canadian writers alongside ethics of care philosophy. Through close readings of fiction and memoirs by Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, Michael Ignatieff, Ian Brown, and David Chariandy, Amelia DeFalco argues that these narratives expose the tangled particularities of relations of care, dependency, and responsibility, as well as issues of marginalisation on the basis of gender, race, and class.

DeFalco complicates the myth of Canada as an unwaveringly caring nation that is characterized by equality and compassion. Caregiving is unpredictable: one person’s altruism can be another’s narcissism; one’s compassion, another’s condescension or even cruelty. In a country that conceives of itself as a caring society, these texts depict in stark terms the ethical dilemmas that arise from our attempts to respond to the needs of others.