POSTMODERN PERCEPTION OF VALUES, MORALS AND ETHICS IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN SCIENCE-FICTION NOVEL
Project no. 932 · Status: Kapanmış · 2015
Summary
ABSTRACT Values, morals and ethics grasp attention as the concepts that influence life and behaviours of an individual in the society. The innovations that have arisen with the development of technology have resulted in the occurrence of a new worldview and new concerns. The result of all these, with the beginning of the postmodern period, has been the emergence of a new values, morals and ethics understanding. Postmodern thought, in essence, denies authority. We can state that the most prominent features of postmodern understanding are the instability of reality and questioning of absolute truth. Why do we, then, still carry ethical concerns in a world, where there are no notions of true or false and absolute truth is questioned? In this context, we witness that postmodernism suggests an ethically relativistic perception of ethics. However, the loss of reality and truth, stressed by postmodernism and ethical relativism, have been criticized by some philosophers and researchers and they state that such an understanding results in the search of yet again an absolute codes of ethics. These philosophers and researchers have developed an argument about the occurrence of a hybrid sense of ethics that is a combination of deontological and consequentialist ethical theories. It is possible to see the examples of such a hybrid sense of ethics in literature, particularly in the contemporary science fiction literature. In this regard, the reason why science fiction genre is chosen for analysis is the fact that science fiction does not hold a limit to its themes, which is the most distinctive feature of this genre, compared to other genres. The genre of science fiction may include the all known or possibly known universe and subjects, but the most important themes of science fiction are the situations in which some values are considered superior to the others so that humanity can exist and continue this existence in this world. As a result, in the light of all these discussions, firstly the historical development of the science fiction novel in general and then the American science fiction novel are examined. In the second part, the fundamental and contemporary ethical theories are discussed, and at the end of this part, the postmodernism movement and the ethical understanding it reveals are explained. In the third chapter, firstly the relationships between postmodernism and science fiction novel, and then between science fiction and ethics are examined. At the end of this section, the definition and general characteristics of literary ethical analysis used in the analysis of novels are stated. In the last part of our study, moral and ethical concepts observed within contemporary American science fiction novels and, as a result, what kind of postmodern ethical understanding these works adopt are discussed. In this context, in the light of these discussions, our thesis presents an interdisciplinary study of how the postmodern perception of morality and ethics are reflected in contemporary American science fiction novels.