Narrative bioethics in the search of “other” world (on example of the J. Steinbeck’s novel “the grapes of wrath”)

Abstract

The perspective foreshortening of bioethical discourse known as narrative bioethics is analysed in article. This analysis is realized on example of the novel “The Grapes of wrath” of the outstanding American author John Steinbeck. Deconstruction in its ethical aspect of the discourse of justice is used as method of bioethical reflection. The text of the novel is interpreted as pharmacon, medical remedy, medicine for the human individual soul and for all social organism. The result of the analysis is the principle that “other” world is not at all real socially-cultural place existing somewhere on the Earth. People themselves (Joads’family in the novel) are bringing in themselves this “other” world: world of humanity, good, justice which excludes individualism and aggression. Thus “other” world is the discourse of bioethics as the “science of survival” in the face of inhuman capitalistic system. Given discourse can serve for the basis of the creation of global bioethos as real space of justice and new, bioethical metanarrative which is able to be real alternative to economical discourse of total capital.