J. M. Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello: From Anthropocentrism towards Biocentrism?

Abstract

In this article, I argue that J. M. Coetzee’s multigeneric text, Elizabeth Costello (2003. London: Vintage Books), may be read as developing a voice for the new millennium. Coetzee can be seen to be approaching, through the figure of Elizabeth Costello, a new dimension in human/animal relations. This is one that refuses to subordinate animals to the power of human speech and writing. Moving equally away from anthropocentrism, and from notions of the ‘anthropological machine’, the dimension could be described as biocentrism, or as an approach to ecological ethics. Central to my argument is Jacques Derrida’s seminal essay ‘The Animal that Therefore I Am’ ([1997] 2002. Critical Inquiry 28 (2): 369–418) which I suggest is an intertext for Elizabeth Costello because its thinking is so congruent with Coetzee’s. I place my analysis of the Derrida text between my first and final sections on Elizabeth Costello, as the Derrida text throws light both on Costello’s initial anthropocentrism and, through Derrida’s concept of the animot, on the biocentrism towards which I argue Costello is moving.