Is the writer Ethical?: The early novels of J.M. Coetzee up to age of iron

Abstract

Summary The article claims that the investigation of the ethical dimension of literary writing has thus far wrongfully omitted to ask questions about the ethical intentions of the literary agent. It argues that this question can be put by asking, “Is this, i.e. the specific act of writing, an ethical act?” Drawing on some analytical philosophy of action and on Bakhtin, the article maintains that this question can be asked without reviving the intentional fallacy and without reverting to foundationalist ethics. These arguments are demonstrated by investigating the possible ethicality of acts of writing in the first six novels of J.M. Coetzee. Agential self‐awareness is interpreted as the agent's awareness of his writing being an action, and various examples are quoted to show that the agent of these acts of writing takes responsibility for the fact of his action. Writing seems to respond to ethically compromising aspects of the act of literary production. The refusal to write about death as if it can be an object of literary construction in novels written during the apartheid era and States of Emergency in South Africa serves as example.