Rethinking Ethics During Pandemic - An Analysis of Sequoia Nagamatsu’s How High We Go in the Dark

Globalisation, rapid technological progress, climate change, and pandemics all contribute to situations where certain groups of lives are seen as less valuable, less useful, and therefore disposable.In today's world, waste doesn't refer only to discarded objects but also to human and non-human lives.The problem arises when human beings categorise lives in terms of productivity or utility, and those who do not fit into these categories are pushed aside as 'waste.'Jean-François Lyotard's 'performative principle' is significant, where "the criterion of performativity is efficiency: a statement is accepted if it performs better than another" [1].Zygmunt Bauman, in his work Wasted Lives: Modernity and Its Outcasts (2004), explains how societies produce 'human waste'.He shows that as society develops, it also pushes certain groups, such as migrants, the poor, and the sick, by treating them as unwanted or useless.Extending Bauman's idea, not only humans but also animals and nature are treated as waste when they are no longer considered useful.Sequoia Nagamatsu's How High We Go in the Dark (2022) is a novel set in a future shaped by climate change and altered due to deadly viruses, depicting realistically how people struggle with loss, survival, and ethics.This paper argues that Nagamatsu's novel treats both non-human entities and certain human lives as waste during the times of crises by applying Bauman's theory and Lyotard's performativity principle.