Postscript: The Shape of the Counter-Ethic

Abstract

This final chapter explores the implications of the concept of counter-ethics as it arises in Mrs. A.’s case, using the artwork of Shahzia Sikander to imagine ethics from a perspective of movement and shifting form. Beginning with Sikander’s large-scale installations and the motif of “singing spheres,” it follows a recurring shape, what Sikadner refers to as “gopi hair,” from abstract video installations to small, figurative paintings in the style of Rajput miniatures. From this, a sense of the potential of counter-ethics can be attached to shape, and to the diverse possibilities of derivative meanings and loose choreographies. Counter-ethics ask us to consider ethics as a gloss for repertoires of focused ways of being in and imagining the world, and to especially consider those that emerge from or bud off of the places at which ethical goals, ideals, or concepts find their limits. An invitation to expand our sense of those repertoires beyond certain familiar, though useful, ways we attach ethics to everydayness, critique, resistance, and power, this chapter ends by following Satya Nand toward an appreciation of imagination as both method and outcome of reflection.