“THIS IS ONLY A LOVE STORY:” DEFINING LOVE AND ITS POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS IN MICHAEL ONDAATJE’S IN THE SKIN OF A LION

Abstract

This thesis will examine how Michael Ondaatje’s In the Skin of a Lion formulates an ethic of love for social connection. Using Sara Ahmed’s theories on “encounters” and “touch,” as well as Alain Badiou’s ideas on the event of love, this thesis will examine intimacy through the body as a means of defining love and community connection. Intimacy, as a gesture of love, also has political implications in Ondaatje’s novel that work toward changing hierarchies of difference and establishing loving or intimate connections between strangers, or even enemies. Such change, as this thesis will demonstrate, is important to shifting fixed notions of economic and political structures.