[PDF] Jm Coetzee And The Ethics Of Power eBook

Author : Emanuela Tegla
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 291 pages
File Size : 50,15 MB
Release : 2016-01-12
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 900430844X

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“For I was not, as I liked to believe, the indulgent pleasure-loving opposite of the cold rigid Colonel. I was the lie that Empire tells itself when times are easy, he the truth that Empire tells when harsh winds blow.” Thus the Magistrate confesses in Coetzee’s 1980 novel Waiting for the Barbarians. The present study looks closely into the unsettling effects Coetzee’s novels have on the reader and explores the interconnectedness between stylistic choices and moral insights. Its overall aim is to disclose the effectiveness of Coetzee’s narrative strategies to prompt the reader to engage in self-questioning and radical revisions of personal and social moral assumptions. “This is an original and ground-breaking study of Coetzee’s work. Dr Tegla’s insightful close-readings highlight the ways in which Coetzee fictionalizes a variety of moral dilemmas. In particular, she shows how he turns narrative into an instrument for moral discernment. Her narratological approach advances our understanding of his achievements, and I can state without reservation that this book will be referred to as a landmark in Coetzee criticism.” — Richard Bradford, Research Professor and Senior Distinguished Research Fellow, University of Ulster

Author : Derek Attridge
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 243 pages
File Size : 40,99 MB
Release : 2021-04-10
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0226818772

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Nobel Prize-winning novelist J. M. Coetzee is one of the most widely taught contemporary writers, but also one of the most elusive. Many critics who have addressed his work have devoted themselves to rendering it more accessible and acceptable, often playing down the features that discomfort and perplex his readers. Yet it is just these features, Derek Attridge argues, that give Coetzee's work its haunting power and offer its greatest rewards. Attridge does justice to this power and these rewards in a study that serves as an introduction for readers new to Coetzee and a stimulus for thought for those who know his work well. Without overlooking the South African dimension of his fiction, Attridge treats Coetzee as a writer who raises questions of central importance to current debates both within literary studies and more widely in the ethical arena. Implicit throughout the book is Attridge's view that literature, more than philosophy, politics, or even religion, does singular justice to our ethical impulses and acts. Attridge follows Coetzee's lead in exploring a number of issues such as interpretation and literary judgment, responsibility to the other, trust and betrayal, artistic commitment, confession, and the problematic idea of truth to the self.

Author : Chris Danta
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 32,55 MB
Release : 2011-07-14
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 1441137149

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This new collection of essays on Coetzee examines how his novels create and unsettle literary authority. Its unique contribution is to show how Coetzee provokes us into reconsidering certain basic formal and existential questions such as the nature of literary realism, the authority of the author and the constitution of the human self in a posthumanist setting by consciously revealing the literary-theoretical seams of his work. Strong Opinions makes the innovative claim that Coetzee's work is driven not by a sense of scepticism or nihilism but rather by a form of controlled exposure that defines the literary. The essays in the volume variously draw attention to three of Coetzee's most recent and significant experiments in controlled exposure. The first is the exposure of place-Coetzee's decision to set his novels in his newly adopted country of Australia. The second is the exposure of form-Coetzee's direct, almost essayistic address of literary-philosophical topics within his novels. And the third is the exposure of limits-Coetzee's explicit deconstruction of the traditional limits of human life.

Author : Claudia Jahn
Publisher : GRIN Verlag
Page : 97 pages
File Size : 22,25 MB
Release : 2010-01-16
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : 3640513797

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Thesis (M.A.) from the year 2007 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,0, University of Leipzig (Institut für Anglistik), language: English, abstract: Can literature burst the bonds of reality which congeal the self and the other in a fixed constellation? How can one write against the imposition of power without enforcing one’s own opinion? And how can the other be represented justly without obliterating its outline with the mere notion of a just picture? Taking off his glasses, Coetzee can provide an answer to these questions which is as vague as an unbespectacled look into the mirror must be.

Author : Elleke Boehmer
Publisher : Continuum
Page : 232 pages
File Size : 47,26 MB
Release : 2009-05-19
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN :

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This work draws on a wide range of theoretical ideas and approaches to illuminate Coetzee's texts including: deconstruction and the 'school of singularity', ethics and power, gender studies, queer theory, issues surrounding the body and animal rights.

Author : Anton Leist
Publisher :
Page : 400 pages
File Size : 10,29 MB
Release : 2010
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780231148412

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In 2003, the South African writer J.M. Coetzee was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his riveting portrayals of racial repression, sexual politics, the guises of reason, and the hypocrisy of human beings toward animals and nature, Coetzee was credited with being "a scrupulous doubter, ruthless in his criticism of the cruel rationalism and cosmetic morality of western civilization." The film of his novel Disgrace, starring John Malkovich, brought his challenging ideas to a new audience. Anton Leist and Peter Singer have assembled an outstanding group of contributors who probe deeply into Coetzee's extensive and extra ordinary corpus. They explore his approach to ethical theory and philosophy and Pay Particular attention to his representation of the human-animal relationship. They also confront Coetzee's depiction of the elementary conditions of life, the origins of morality, the recognition of value in others, the sexual dynamics between men and women, the normality of suppression, and possibility of equality in postcolonial society, With its wide-ranging consideration of philosphical issues, especially in relation to fiction, this volume stands alone in its extraordinary exchange of ethical and literary inquiry. This collection takes stock of J.M. Coetzee's impact from a number of interesting angles, Including animals, sexuality, race, and reason. The time is truly ripe for such a volume. Philosophers Who are interested Coetzee's work will find these essays useful for their own research, and readers of Coetzee who share an interest in philosophy will be able to further explore those interests."-Matthew Calarco, California State University at Fullerton, and author of Zoographies: The Question of the Animal from Heidegger to Derrida

Author : Tala Hussein Suleiman-Haidar
Publisher :
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 15,51 MB
Release : 1997
Category :
ISBN :

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This thesis focuses on the valuable thematic intensity of J.M. Coetzee's fiction and its fulfillment of a moral obligation more than on its stylistic aspects. The analysis shows how Coetzee weaves the following interrelated themes into the fabric of his novels: the defiance of the patriarchal values and gender differences, the interdependability of history and storytelling, the racial tension and devious ways of interrogation, the oppressive-oppressed language, and the power struggle of authorship. All these tensions are predicated on the I /You or Us /Other binary opposition Unlike some other anti-apartheid writers, Coetzee refuses political prescriptiveness in his fiction and employs a gracefully elusive and indirect approach in depicting the atrocities of out times and in delivering his ethical messages. This thesis tackles three of Coetzee's novels, In the Heart of the Country, Waiting for the Barbarians, and Foe, in their original chronological order that emphasizes the gradual evolution of my thesis reaching a crescendo with Foe. Coetzee weaves the different tensions in these novels to show that the chasm between the Us and the Other cannot be completely bridged yet can be made much narrower through clear-sighted awareness of the indisputable reality of pain for all human beings, and the honest devotion to the land whose healing power is underscored by the author. The universality of the body in pain necessitates a measure of charity, or pity, to enable grace to allegorize itself in the world. Without doubt, Coetzee is calling for this salutary grace to inscribe itself in people's hearts.