Cides and De-cidal Characters in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake : An Interdisciplinary Approach

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ABSTRACT As a novel interdisciplinary study between literature and philosophy of ethics and aesthetics, the doctrine of cides revolves around the tendency of creating an ethical binary opposition out of the cidal and de-cidal practices. The cidal practices illuminate the decision-postponing ones within the early modern philosophy and the de-cidal practices elaborate on the decision-executing ones to overcome that dichotomous propensity aesthetically. The cides doctrine delays hewing the cognitive faculties into categories of superiority and inferiority. The present study hinges on the cides doctrine and the faculties of sensibility and imagination. It deals with the textual analysis of The Namesake (2003) in the context of the cides doctrine and literature as perfect sensate discourse. Accordingly, its fictional characters make sensate and somatic attempts to surmount the cidal reactions de-cidally. These de-cidal characters are termed as cultured characters of sensibility or felix aestheticus who make their most fatal decisions in confusing situations.