DECONSTRUCTING THE PLAGUE: AMBIVALENCE OF MARY SHELLEY’S THE LAST MAN

This article will examine Mary Shelley’s The Last Man as an end-of-the-world narrative and explore the ambivalence of the global progression of the deadly plague that brings the end of the world. I would like to examine the plague’s ambivalence not only as a deconstructive strategy that resists traditional orientalist readings and promotes a counter-politics of nationalism and orientalism, but also an effective self-effacing principle that persistently eliminates any possibility of a meta-narrative in the novel, even when that same meta-narrative could involve a critique of western hegemony. With the purpose of examining the text’s self-deconstructive foundation, I will do a double reading of the novel that on the one hand illustrates its critique of orientalism and nationalism while on the other hand focuses on the ambivalence as a central disorienting force in the narrative, which is perhaps a gesture that stands for the text’s refusal to colonize itself