To be good (again): The Kite Runner as allegory of global ethics

Abstract

In this article I critically examine Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner, and specifically the novel's ethical demand, “there is a way to be good again”, in relation to contemporary conceptions of humanitarianism. Using Mamdani's analysis of the distinction between the “good Muslim” and the “bad Muslim”, and reading the novel in dialogue with Appiah's notion of cosmopolitanism and Butler's theory of human interdependence, I argue that The Kite Runner reflects a shift from the supremacy of race and nation as primary markers of political community and identity to the idea of the “modern” as the framework for determining the “human”. As such, I read the novel as an allegory of global ethics.

Keywords:

• Afghanistan
• cosmopolitanism
• humanitarianism
• political allegory
• ethics

Notes

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual conference of the Canadian Association for Commonwealth Languages and Literature Studies (CACLALS). The author would like to thank the anonymous referees of the Journal of Postcolonial Writing for important insights that helped to shape the argument of this article.