the levinasian responsible subject’s breaching the face’s command: an inversion of the master-slave relationship in margaret atwood’s maddaddam trilogy

In accordance with emmanuel levinas’s ethics, the interconnection between the subject and its other is equated with the master-slave relationship, which is not by any means absolute. this article aims at illustrating an oscillating state of master-and-slave relation with regard to levinas’s ethics in margaret atwood’s maddaddam trilogy. the face of the other becomes a ‘poor master’ who needs help and yet gives a serious order to the subject, one that he should obey. subsequently, the other deprives the subject of his/her wealth, thus overcoming its own poverty; therefore, the other as a ‘poor master’ and the subject as a ‘wealthy subject’ constitute an ethical relationship. founding the argument on the above-mentioned levinasian principles, this paper approaches the altruistic intentions of atwood’s post-apocalyptic characters, and inspects how the post-apocalyptic world of her maddaddam trilogy is ultimately orientated towards, if not also predicting, a return to now bygone humanistic, ethical and communal society.