In search of moral imagination that tells us “who the Kurds are”: Toward a new theoretical approach to modern Kurdish literature

Abstract

The main objective of this article is to propose a new theoretical perspective on modern Kurdish literature in order to enrich the existing field, which has mainly focused on identity and social issues. This article refers to Kwame Appiah’s reflections on the ethics of identity and the concept of moral imagination by Martha Nussbaum, Patricia Werhane and Lawrence M. Hinman, and argues that the proposed moral imagination can have an important contribution to analysing Kurdish literature, deepening existing approaches and better evaluating Kurdish prose. It can also provide a greater insight into the difficult colonial and postcolonial interrelations.