Ethics and Identity in David Albahari's Bait: A Ricœurian Reading
Algarín Villalba, Raul (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)

Date:	2026
Description:	15 p.
Abstract:	Serbian author David Albahari's novel Bait (Mamac, 1996) has been examined thematically in relation to history and masculinities, history, war, trauma, memory, and ethics. Frequently classified as postmodernist, Bait's style has been analyzed through the lens of this literary movement, with particular attention to its structural fracture and contradiction. This article provides a Ricoeurian and rhetorical analysis, contending that the novel enacts the ethics of narrating another's life from a belated postmemorial perspective. Drawing primarily on Paul Ricoeur's theories of memory, testimony, translation, and narrative identity, as well as Jeffrey Blustein's moral philosophy of memory and Marianne Hirsch's concept of postmemory, the study first reconstructs the "ethical locations" of the three principal characters: Mother as moral witness, the narrator as proxy witness, and Donald as ethical mentor. Subsequently, a rhetorical analysis is employed to examine how the novel allocates reliability and authority among the characters, the audience, and the implied author, thereby illuminating the novel's ethical implications on multiple levels.
Grants:	Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades PID2023-152619NB-I00
Note:	Published online: 17 Feb 2026
Rights:	Aquest material està protegit per drets d'autor i/o drets afins. Podeu utilitzar aquest material en funció del que permet la legislació de drets d'autor i drets afins d'aplicació al vostre cas. Per a d'altres usos heu d'obtenir permís del(s) titular(s) de drets.
Language:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió acceptada per publicar
Subject:	Bait ; David Albahari ; Paul Ricoeur ; Ethics of memory ; Postmemory ; Rhetorical narrative ; Metanarrative ; Unreliability
Published in:	Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 2026 , ISSN 1939-9138

DOI: 10.1080/00111619.2026.2630973

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