Ethics and Aesthetics: Democracy and Difference in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God

This thesis examines the relationship between democracy and egalitarianism, as well as ethics and aesthetics in Zora Neale Hurston s Their Eyes Were Watching God. It focuses on the ethics of postcolonial politics, and with the role aesthetics plays in the conveying of African American culture and tradition, and democracy, in Their Eyes Were Watching God. The novel was criticized for its aestheticism when first published, but has since been read predominantly with attention to the feminist and postcolonial political potential within the novel. Modern democratic politics, understood as the distribution of power and goods between majority and minority, can however become a problem when dealing with postcolonial aesthetics and politics, because of the close historical and philosophical ties between equality and sameness. This thesis suggests an alternative ethical method of approach to Their Eyes Were Watching God in the context of postcolonial aesthetics and politics, centered on reading as an experience of difference and democracy through aesthetics, rather than on the political utility of the postcolonial novel, which the thesis, based on Aristotle s ethics and especially his friendship model, argues is an unethical approach