Slow Man Research Articles

Prosthesis Refusal and the Ethics of Care in J. M. Coetzee's Slow Man.

In The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political, and Global, Virginia Held asserts that those in the position to care should exercise power in ways that avoid violence and damage, and that trust and mutuality should be fostered in place of benevolent domination. With reference to Held's idea of relational care, this essay close reads J. M. Coetzee's depiction of prosthesis refusal in Slow Man as a nuanced critique of caring actions that are devoid of relationality. At the center of the novel is the character Paul Rayment's refusal to get fitted with a prosthetic leg after a cycling accident. He reasons that it is dishonest to give others the false impression that he is not without a leg, even if the price he must pay for "honesty" includes giving up the chance to cycle again and the quality of life he had before the accident. But Coetzee is at pains to highlight that Rayment is a confused character, and behind the confused narrative of "honesty" lies a subtext of rebellion. Specifically, this is a rebellion against care without relationality. It provokes the question, in the absence of ill intention toward the care recipient could caring actions be perfectly benign? In this article, I read the refused prosthetic leg as more than a phantasmagorical symbol of the depicted healthcare professionals' seemingly empty appearance of care; it foregrounds relationality as the critically missing substance that could render caring actions unethical in the novel.

The ethics of alterity and the ethics of care in literary studies

The ethics of care has regularly been described via contrast with deontological, consequentialist, and virtue theories of ethics. Often, such descriptions play care and justice against one another as potentially congruent but frequently competing social goods. This articulation of the field, which moves across major perspectives within moral and political philosophy, does not fully describe how ethics appears in some areas of humanities, particularly literary studies, where an ‘ethics of alterity’ has predominated for several decades. This ethics emphasizes a scene of encounter across difference, and an ethical responsibility to the other which has been narrativized via the scene of hospitality. This essay proposes that the ethics of care and the ethics of alterity share much—more than care ethics shares with other kinds of moral philosophy. But it also identifies differences which have made it easier to position alterity, rather than care, as a guiding ethos for literature, literary criticism, and literature education. Why is this so, and what would it mean for the ethics of care to be more central in literary study and literature education? Taking as an occasion a novel explicitly concerned with care-taking and care-giving, J.M. Coetzee’s Slow Man (2005), the essay explores the prospects for a care-focused practice of literary studies.

“Nothing about us, without us”: A dis/abled depiction of psyche

Background This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the themes of lack, desire, and denial in the realm of disability culture as conceptualized by Dan Goodley. In Disability Studies: An Interdisciplinary Introduction (2011), Goodley re-examines the psychoanalysis of disabled characters, Emphasizing the necessity of a critical approach to psychoanalysis rather than a blind alignment with it. Despite this caution, he investigates potential connections between Lacanian theory and disability studies, acknowledging the current literature on this topic is limited and lacks further development. Nevertheless, the author argues that psychoanalysis is most effective when used to understand the biases and prejudices faced by handicapped individuals in a culture, as well as the unrealistic expectations of extreme rationality and independence in modern society. Method The research juxtaposes the disability portrayals in J.M. Coetzee’s Slow Man, written from an abled author’s perspective, and John Green’s Turtles All the Way Down, written from a disabled author’s perspective. Through meticulous evaluation of these works, the article uncovers how the writers’ individual encounters and viewpoints influence their depiction of disability. Result The analysis uncovers notable disparities in the portrayal of disability in the two works. These disparities are influenced by the authors’ personal experiences and perspectives, highlighting the significant differences in how abled and disabled authors depict disability. Conclusion This approach reveals the significance of having a variety of perspectives in literature, specifically focusing on the influential role of authors with disabilities in establishing disability culture and promoting a nuanced comprehension of disability within society. It promotes a nuanced comprehension of disability within society, underlining the critical role of varied authorial viewpoints in enriching the understanding of disability.

“Do You Love Him yet?”: The Aesthetics of Post-Traumatic Recuperation and the Fiction of J. M. Coetzee

ABSTRACT This article uses a reading of three works by J. M. Coetzee to argue for a literature of recuperation. Much of trauma theory has debated the “unspeakableness” of trauma, and the near impossibility of a therapeutic literature. Coetzee’s Disgrace, Elizabeth Costello and Slow Man present a literature which can have a therapeutic function. The article uses Aristotle’s rhetoric, Hegel’s dialectic, and psychoanalysis as the basis for a therapeutic literature. Hegelian dialectic and his notion of aufhebung (sublation) can be a bridge between idealist and materialist conceptions of art and its efficacy as an instrument of healing. The protagonists in both Disgrace and Slow Man must undergo the equivalent of a spiritual/psychological journey which includes this sublation, a step toward Hegel’s “Nothing,” in order to reach a state of “Becoming.” More importantly, the texts themselves enact the same kind of journey, in which the reader, like Aristotle’s audience at a tragedy, must necessarily share.

‘left right left’: Plasticity, Affect, and Self-shaping Orientations in J M Coetzee’s Slow Man

This article examines Coetzee’s (2005) novel Slow Man through the neuro-philosophical lenses of plasticity and affect theory. The aim is to arrive at an understanding of the role reflexivity and emotions play in decision-making and how such decisions emerge through affective orientations to shape the self. Coetzee’s novel, accordingly, eschews the metaphysical understanding of the self as totalising or transcendental, and instead focuses on how our selves are episodically shaped by our (re)orientations in the world.

Corporeal Suffering: Performing Resistance and Resilience in Slow Man

Abstract: Slow Man (2005), a novel about migration, dislocation, and belonging, marks Coetzee's withdrawal from the socio-political landscapes of South Africa coinciding with his move to Australia, and his preoccupation in writing fiction with the conflicting demands of representation, auto/biography, and realism. The leg amputation and home nursing of the protagonist, Paul Rayment, following an accident, introduce a discourse on the various meanings of care and the ethics of caring that also acknowledges Rayment's corporeal enfeeblement, aging, and mortality. An intersecting meta-commentary generated by Rayment's dialogue with the metafictional character Elizabeth Costello complicates Coetzee's "compromised resilient narrative" of Rayment's hesitant trajectory of resistance, adaptation, and renewal. The focus on the migrant's place in the life of the nation, represented by Rayment's French origins and his recently arrived Slovakian carer, Marijanna Jokić and her family, represents a new departure for Coetzee.

Writing Photographs Ethically: Strategies of Ekphrasis in J.M. Coetzee's Prose

Abstract: In the novels Elizabeth Costello, Slow Man , and Life & Times of Michael K , J.M. Coetzee fashions an ethical mode of "writing photographs" rather than "writing about photographs" via the technique of ekphrasis to recreate in prose several vivid and often unsettling images. Through ekphrasis, the reader becomes what Liliane Louvel terms a "reader/viewer" and is drawn into a palimpsestic encounter in which the image activates collective knowledge and experiences of visual media. The use of ekphrasis comes with unique ethical imperatives. Close analysis enables an exploration into the strategies of writing, such as foregrounding what is unseen, that Coetzee employs to respond to such concerns.

The Precarious Author, Diary of a Bad Year, Slow Man

Abstract: The idea of the author and the "authority" on which works of fiction might be based has long been precarious, as evinced by the first modern novel, Don Quixote , when it challenged such authority. This precarity in turn is transferred to the very idea of meaning itself, and the possibility of somehow approaching the "truth." Two of Coetzee's later novels, Diary of a Bad Year and Slow Man shed light on the complex nature of authorial intention. Coetzee's doctoral dissertation and his engagement with New Critical, structuralist, and post-structuralist theory serve to frame the question. Like much of Coetzee's fiction, these works directly engage with the figure of the writer and provoke us to think about the ethical and epistemological implications of literary authority.

Metaphoric ramifications of the protagonists’ character, language and actions in J.M. Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello and Slow Man

This article examines the implications of the J.M. Coetzee’s employment of metaphor and metaphoric behaviour and actions of the protagonists vis-à-vis the major thematic concerns in his two novels Elizabeth Costello and Slow Man. Guided by Stylistics, the study reveals that the protagonists in the two novels, Elizabeth Costello and Paul Rayment, respectively, exhibit character, language and actions that are metaphorically allegorical to the South African apartheid and post-apartheid experiences and history. Significantly, the author’s employment of animal imagery to characterize the underprivileged position of the oppressed blacks in the South African society through the metaphorical parallels between the mass slaughtering of animals for human consumption with the extermination of the Jews by the German Nazis in Elizabeth Costello stands out clearly. The extended metaphor of the dog in the two novels to characterize the humiliating position of the oppressed brings out clearly the sense of hopelessness and destitution that the non-Whites face within the context of apartheid. The study concludes that, though the novels are set in distant places from South Africa, through the employment of animal imagery and metaphorical portrayal his protagonists in the texts, Coetzee successfully links the events in the novels to South Africa’s historical pain that is occasioned by the excruciating legacy of apartheid in the country.

Reason and Its Others in Coetzee's Jesus Novels

Reason and Its Others in Coetzee's Jesus Novels

The Author is Dead, Long Live the Author! Postmodern Metanarrative and the Performance of the Author Function

This research paper critically examines the meta-narrative text The Master of Petersburg, a novel by Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee, which has the figure of the author at the centre of its narrative structure. In his fictions, Coetzee is not shy of dislodging what Roland Barthes calls ‘reality effect’ in order to critically assert the role of the authorial figure; this is also to be seen in the novel Slow Man where Coetzee ruptures the realist texture of the narrative by introducing the figure of Elizabeth Costello who enters the text, as well as the life of Paul Rayment an amputee, as the author figure who is responsible for her creation i.e. Paul Rayment himself. At the same time Coetzee in order to explore the issues of writing at its ethical dimension, transforms some realist tropes at his disposal. For instance, in Elizabeth Costello, Coetzee with a brilliant manoeuvre plays on the trope of epistolary novels and presents the novel in a form of a series of lectures delivered by Elizabeth Costello, an Australian author of international fame. But in a brilliant ironical move, Coetzee through the performance of the authorial voice breaks the realist structure of the Novel. The paper will, however, primarily focus on the novel The Master of Petersburg (1994), which is a meta-narrative in which Coetzee actively interrogates the ethics of writing as in this novel he places the fictively re-imagined figure of Dostoevsky in Petersburg in late 1868, after the murder of his step-son Pavel. In this novel like his earlier novel Foe(1986), Coetzee examines the process of artistic creation and ethics involved in the event of writing, as Coetzee in his novel evokes a mix of historical factors and fictive characteristics which inspired and featured in Dostoevsky’s novel The Devils. Through a close examination of the interstitial spaces between the two novels, this paper explores the figure of the author and its performance in postmodern fiction. The author as the figure has caused much debate in the postmodern fiction and narrative theory. Post Roland Barthes’s declaration ‘author is dead’ many deconstructionist and narrative theories have debated the relevance of author figure in fiction, and the meta-narrative and self-referential nature of postmodern literature make these debates even more potent. This paper seeks to explore the debate concerning the author figure from Bakhtin, Barthes, Bennet and Foucault and try to understand the implications which the author figure has in a postmodern text through a close examination of Coetzee’s The Master of Petersburg.

The Camera Lens: Representation, Authenticity, and Manipulation in Penelope Lively's The Photograph and J. M. Coetzee's Slow Man

The Camera Lens: Representation, Authenticity, and Manipulation in Penelope Lively's The Photograph and J. M. Coetzee's Slow Man

Precarious Life and Labor in J. M. Coetzee’s Age of Iron, Slow Man, and Diary of a Bad Year

Precarious Life and Labor in J. M. Coetzee’s Age of Iron, Slow Man, and Diary of a Bad Year

Non-human primates in J. M. Coetzee’s works featuring Elizabeth Costello

John Maxwell Coetzee, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003, is well-known for his references to animals in his fiction, and for his active engagement against cruelty enacted on animals. This inclination is particularly visible in those works featuring the character, Elizabeth Costello, the fictional Australian writer who is also a strong and well-known advocate against cruelties on animals. Many studies have been conducted on Coetzee’s animals, from different perspectives from anthropological, philosophical and ecological, but less attention has been placed on focusing on the roles of particular species, or groups of species, described in his works (with few exceptions mostly on dogs). Hence, this paper aims at furthering the understanding of the role of non-human primates referenced in Coetzee’s fiction, from bio-anthropological and ecological perspectives. In particular, it addresses Coetzee’s fiction featuring Elizabeth Costello, namely, The Lives of Animals (1999), Elizabeth Costello: Eight Lessons (2003), Slow Man (2005), and Moral Tales (2017). By accounting and analyzing non-human primates (mostly great apes) and their settings (mostly anthropized), the research concludes that Coetzee exhibits a scientific knowledge of non-human primates and related ethical and conservation issues which allows him to contribute to the scientific debate on the place of human beings in nature.

Fiction Cares: J. M. Coetzee's Slow Man

Abstract J. M. Coetzee's Slow Man considers “care” in contemporary liberal-capitalist societies, including the ostensibly frivolous care of and care for literature. In contrast to grander affects and occupations, care often seems to be “just care,” as if it fails to live up to certain criteria of reality in much the same way that one says something is “just fiction.” If in its literary investigation of such serious issues as disability, aging, and immigration, Slow Man turns into a reflection on the ontology of fiction, this is not mere metafictional frivolity—for care shares the disparaged form of fiction. Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello writings, of which Slow Man appears to be the last, advocate in fiction an “ethics of care.” They are concerned with modes of attention that lack the categorical determinacy of the discourse of rights and of justice and are instead characterized by what I propose to call “justness.” In this light, the novel can be read as examining the skepticism and disappointment with which, on account of this justness, earnest pleas for an ethics of care, or apologies for fiction, are met. The advocacy of care, as of fiction, requires not only good will but also good humor, even if this comes at the cost of being taken seriously. Accordingly, Slow Man proves to be one of the most heavy-going but also lighthearted of Coetzee's novels. It is, after all, “just a joke.”

J.M. Coetzee and Elizabeth Costello: Landscapes and Animals

The South African writer John Maxwell Coetzee is well-known for references to animals in his fiction, also given the fact that he and one of his well-known characters, Elizabeth Costello, raise awareness of the cruelty enacted on animals. Many studies have been conducted on Coetzee’s animals, but less attention has been placed on the settings and landscapes in which the animals are situated. Hence, this study aims at understanding the role of the landscapes surrounding the animals via an ecocritical approach. The paper focuses on Coetzee’s fiction featuring Elizabeth Costello, namely, The Lives of Animals (1999), Elizabeth Costello: Eight Lessons (2003), Slow Man (2005), and Moral Tales (2017) by identifying the animals and by discussing the related settings and landscapes. The research concludes that, despite the presence of several animals, there are almost no references to animals in pristine habitats, that most of the animals are in anthropized settings, and that animals’ and humans’ suffering are hidden in a shared landscape. This understanding is discussed as an ecological message about the interlinkages between the human and nonhuman worlds and between animals’ and humans’ wellbeing, also referring to the animal/human interconnectedness within the COVID-19 pandemic.

VẤN ĐỀ TÁC GIẢ VÀ NHÂN VẬT VĂN HỌC TRONG TIỂU THUYẾT NGƯỜI CHẬM CỦA J.M.COETZEE

VẤN ĐỀ TÁC GIẢ VÀ NHÂN VẬT VĂN HỌC TRONG TIỂU THUYẾT NGƯỜI CHẬM CỦA J.M.COETZEE

Değişen Coğrafyalar, Değişen Zihniyetler: J.M. Coetzee’nin Güney Afrika ve Avustralya Yılları

J.M. Coetzee, quite a senior but still a prolific author of our time, relentlessly pursues solutions to the present problems of multinational, multicultural settings using his texts as means, and this feature of him makes Coetzee a living sage, a dependable source for the readers to see and discuss the so-called problems through his lenses. Considering his four novels as the starting point of this article we aim to compare the problems displayed in his South African years (between 1990-1999) in Age of Iron and Disgrace to his novels produced in his Australian years (between 2005-2007) in the Slow Man and the Diary of a Bad Year. The position of the white- elite Westerner will be the main focus in the discussion in changing geographies and decades in the article, however, it will be clarified as well that it is Coetzee’s unchanging motto to provide his reader with different points of views through the challenging characters he places next to his chosen protagonist.

Metaphor Analysis in the Novel Slow Man by John Maxwell Coetzee

This research explores metaphor as a trope of narrative in the Slow Man novel by J. M. Coetzee, 2005. The aims of this study are to identify the types and functions of metaphors in this novel. Data of the study are two speech events from the novel. The two speech events are selected on purpose as they are full of metaphors. The researcher utilises Leech’s and Short’s model of analysis. Tropes in general and metaphor in particular add an aesthetic and ornamented flavour to the narrative. There are other functions of metaphors, which are to stress key ideas and clarify certain concepts. The researcher has found that Coetzee in his novel Slow Man uses three types of metaphors: concretising, personifying, and synaesthetic. We read fiction not only to get new ideas, but also to enjoy ourselves by reading fiction. This is applicable in Coetzee’s fiction. He plays with linguistic and literary skills available to him.

The Phototextual Emergence of Hysteria: From the Iconographie Photographique de la Salpêtrière to J. M. Coetzee's Slow Man

This article seeks to examine the emergence of the image of hysteria that originated at the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris in the late nineteenth century and has since been transferred across new generations of phototexts through ekphrasis. It is first shown how this stereotypically feminine and sexualised image was initiated by the medical tome Iconographie Photographique de la Salpêtrière - an effect that belies the physicians' original intentions - and is then taken up in the public imagination by the surrealists André Breton and Louis Aragon before emerging in Georges Didi-Huberman's 1982 critical text Invention of Hysteria. Didi-Huberman's monograph offers insight into how persistent this image becomes, even taking shape in discourses that attempt to undermine it. Didi-Huberman furthermore highlights how developments in photographic technology have contributed to the shaping of hysteria. Finally, this article considers how the figure of the hysteric appears in J. M. Coetzee's 2005 novel Slow Man in the character of Marianna. The manner in which she is depicted presents an ekphrasis that can be matched to the vision of hysteria that began with the Iconographie Photographique de la Salpêtrière, thereby showing how this histrionic and gender-stereotyped iteration of hysteria from the nineteenth century remains a readily accessible mode of expression.