Steven 1 Laurence Steven, Ph.D. English and Humanities Laurentian University Sudbury, Ontario, Canada P3E 2C6 lsteven@nickel.laurentian.ca 705-675-1151 ex 4353 Narrative Ethics as Relational Experience: Why Nussbaum Needs Lawrence [published in Journal of Contemporary Thought 14 (Winter 2001): 13-39] Preamble On December 13 th 2001 at 10:30 a.m. my plane took off from the domestic airport in Delhi, India, on its way to Bhubaneswar, state of Orissa. I was on my way from Sudbury, Ontario, Canada to Konark, Orissa to a conference on the “Ethical Turns in Literary and Cultural Studies” to give an earlier version of this essay on the work of Martha Nussbaum. Within an hour of my plane departing Delhi, a terrorist attack took place on the steps of the Indian parliament, resulting in numerous dead, and as I write (January 3, 2002) India and Pakistan are standing toe to toe along their borders while the world holds its breath. Orissa is one of India’s poorest states, the scene of a cyclone in 1999 which killed 10,000 people. Along the highway from Bhubaneswar to Konark — lined by lush fields, thatched roofed villages, questionable irrigation or drainage ditches, obviously stagnant ponds, rickety shacks selling Coke or vegetables or pan, cows, and dogs, and people — the trunks of flattened palm trees all lay in file, as if waiting for orders to move into action of unknown motive. The events and scenes of this trip settled uncomfortably into my western mind, which was still in vertigo after the September 11 th attacks on New York and Washington. That event had been galvanizing for the western countries, with repercussions we are still in the midst of.