Abstract
Tom Wolf once more in his last novel Back to Blood (2012) has taken the issue of race and ethnic tensions as one of its primary themes and this time he has chosen the city of Miami, home to the highest proportion of foreign-born residents of any US major metropolitan area. This novel looks into the interethnic relationships among the Cuban immigrants, Haitians, and American whites and blacks. Applying Emmanuel Levinas’s theory of alterity and ethics of sensibility to Back to Blood could be rewarding since it sheds light on the interethnic tensions present among different groups of people whose only concern is their own ‘blood’ and their own race. We argue that Wolfe’s novel, read in terms of ethics of sensibility, with its emphasis on the responsibility of one for the naked, universal Other, reveals how altericide and indifference towards the plight of the Other lie at the heart of most interethnic tensions and conflicts. Key words: Emanuel Levinas; ethics of sensibility; alterity; fiction absolute; interethnic tensions
Highlights
The population of Miami in South Florida has dramatically increased since 1960s as a result of the massive immigration of Cubans to the region after the Cuban revolution
Back to Blood (BB) as a social novel tries, with some success, to analyze and elaborate on the main problems of interethnic relationships in Miami by fictionalizing some of the most controversial issues of this city such as the problems of Cuban and Haitian refugees and immigrants or the hostility between American blacks and Cuban cops said to have its root in police brutality and misuse
Nestor Camacho, a Cuban cop in the Marin Patrol, is ordered by his Americano superior, Sergeant McCorkle, to bring a Cuban refugee down the ship mast so the coast guards can take care of this illegal alien and the police be able to ease the flow of traffic caused by Cubans gathered on the bridge ―demanding that he be given asylum‖ (BB, p. 42)
Summary
The population of Miami in South Florida has dramatically increased since 1960s as a result of the massive immigration of Cubans to the region after the Cuban revolution. Nestor confronting this task is caught in a moral dilemma; he has to choose between his duty to obey his superior‘s order and his moral responsibility to the refugee and the Cuban community who will hate him for arresting a Cuban refugee just some meters away from freedom For him this is not a serious dilemma since he is so concerned with his job in the elite unit, the Marin Patrol, that he will not do anything close to outright. The self in its encounter with the Other does not question, classify or name it; on the contrary, the self is called into question by the presence of the Other and has to justify its freedom In this relationship the Other calls the self‘s dogmatism, egoism and arbitrary freedom into question and by commanding Thou shalt not Kill puts the responsibility for the Other on the self‘s shoulders. The face of the Other which expresses weakness, absolute exposure and isolation, in other words, death, gives rise to a kind of paradoxical feeling in the self which tempts the self to commit murder and at the same time commands Thou shalt not Kill (Levinas 1998)
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