The Derridean Gaze of the “Wholly Other” in Stephen King’s “Rat”
ORCID
Moser: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3824-1021
MSU Affiliation
College of Arts and Sciences; Department of Classical and Modern Languages and Literatures
Creation Date
2026-06-01
Abstract
Building upon the theoretical framework that Derrida conceives in his posthumous environmental reflections and the interdiscipline of biosemiotics, this essay delves into the ethical questions posed by Stephen King related to other-than-human sentience, suffering, and subjecthood in “Rat.” Derrida and King generate thought-provoking portrayals of what happens when we are confronted with the gaze of the “wholly other.” When the other-than-human gaze falls upon us, Derrida and King insist that we cannot disregard the ethical summons that accompanies it. This transformative gaze compels us to think and live otherwise. The limitrophic reflection actuated by the other-than-human gaze eliminates the sharp ontological gap between humans and other animals. Owing to the strength of these encounters with other-than-human alterity, species boundaries erected on the shaky foundation of binary logic become unclear and unstable.
Publication Date
8-7-2025
Publication Title
Enthymema
Publisher
Milano University Press
First Page
35
Last Page
50
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Moser, K. (2025). The Derridean Gaze of the “Wholly Other” in Stephen King’s “Rat”. ENTHYMEMA, (37), 35–50. https://doi.org/10.54103/2037-2426/27054
