Empathy and the Ethics of Care in Teju Cole’s Open City

Abstract Through a reading of Teju Cole’s Open City , this paper questions world literature’s ability to promote empathetic understandings of others in moments of crisis, presenting an alternative through the theorization of an ethics of care. Published in 2011, Cole’s novel contemplates how art and literature mediate our imagination of others. While critics have often approached the novel’s concern with our obligations to others through the theories of empathy and cosmopolitanism referenced in the novel, this essay suggests that the novel answers questions about how to move from empathetic imagining to ethical action through the care that shapes its characters professional and personal relationships. Building on works from feminist theory and the medical humanities, the essay argues that Open City offers a renewed reading method of world literature that is grounded in an ethics of care.