In this dissertation, I argue that accounts of cosmopolitan literature tend to equate cosmopolitanism with sympathetic feeling. I further contend that sympathy is in fact implicitly central to a wider body of contemporary cosmopolitan theory. I distinguish between two strains of cosmopolitan thought that depend upon two distinct models of feeling: “critical cosmopolitanism,” which depends upon a cognitive-evaluative model of sympathy, and “affective cosmopolitanism,” which depends upon a relational model. Both branches of cosmopolitanism envision sympathy as perfectly human or humane; they gloss over the potential for feeling shame in cosmopolitan encounters. The minority of scholarship that does consider shame in relation to cosmopolitan practice also reifies shame as ideally human or humane. Whether through sympathy or shame, cosmopolitan subjects become cosmopolitan through feeling. I offer readings of J.M. Coetzee’s later fiction in order to critique the idealization of feeling as distinctly cosmopolitan. Coetzee’s work, I conclude, suggests another model for cosmopolitanism, one which foregrounds the limits of feeling for realizing mutuality and equality. / Thesis (Ph.D, English) -- Queen's University, 2012-06-26 10:17:59.252

In the aftermath of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa J.M.Coetzee writes of the "system" of guilt and shame, debt and retribution which operates throughout society. He and writers like Doris Lessing and Barbara Kingsolver tell stories which traverse and explore the paths tracked by society's quest for healing and restitution. (White) women too, Coetzee's protagonist (in Disgrace) muses, must have a place, a "niche" in this system. What is this "niche" and what role do the women in these texts play in the reparation of colonial wrong? How is their position dictated by discourses which acknowledge the agency of the (female) body in epistemologies of guilt and power? This mini-dissertation attempts to trace the figure of the white woman in three late 201h-/early 21 51-century postcolonial literary texts, in order to read the phrases of meaning that have been inscribed on her body. The novels read are J.M.Coetzee's Disgrace, Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible and Doris Lessing's The Grass is Singing. / English Studies / M. Eng. (Gender, Identity and Embodiment)

This thesis examines the links between and intersections of violence and subjectivity in a comparative, transatlantic and transnational study of the fiction of four recognized international authors, namely, Toni Morrison, Cormac McCarthy, J. M. Coetzee, and Yvonne Vera. Despite their differing geographical, temporal, cultural and socio-political situations and situatedness, these writers’ common, thematic concerns with taboo topics of violence such as rape, incest, infanticide and necrophilia, situate violence as a constitutive, intimate and intricate part of subjectivity. In providing varied, and not unproblematic, renderings of the mutuality of violence and subjectivity, their novels do not just reveal the ambiguous and ambivalent character and the fragile and tenuous processes of (exercising and asserting) subjectivity; their fiction enacts and engenders its own kind of textual violence that reflects and refracts the (metaphysical and epistemological) violence of the subjective process. Raising crucial questions about the place, role and efficacy of literature in articulating violence and subjectivity, this thesis argues that violence is meaningful to and constitutive of the subjective process in these authors’ works that offer an experiential, lived appreciation of subjectivity. Providing an historical and socio-political contextualization of the novels, the thesis maintains that these authors’ specific interpretations of violence in their fiction necessarily interrogates and reconfigures questions of race and culture, gender and sexuality, as well as morality; that is, it reexamines and repositions conventional interpretations of being and belonging, of subjectivity in general. In this way, their fiction reveals literature’s ability not merely to disprove theory but, through its very textuality, extend and enhance it to reflect the materiality of being.

In the aftermath of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa J.M.Coetzee writes of the "system" of guilt and shame, debt and retribution which operates throughout society. He and writers like Doris Lessing and Barbara Kingsolver tell stories which traverse and explore the paths tracked by society's quest for healing and restitution. (White) women too, Coetzee's protagonist (in Disgrace) muses, must have a place, a "niche" in this system. What is this "niche" and what role do the women in these texts play in the reparation of colonial wrong? How is their position dictated by discourses which acknowledge the agency of the (female) body in epistemologies of guilt and power? This mini-dissertation attempts to trace the figure of the white woman in three late 201h-/early 21 51-century postcolonial literary texts, in order to read the phrases of meaning that have been inscribed on her body. The novels read are J.M.Coetzee's Disgrace, Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible and Doris Lessing's The Grass is Singing. / English Studies / M. Eng. (Gender, Identity and Embodiment)

D.Litt. et Phil. / This study explores the tension between politics and ethics in selected novels by J.M Coetzee. It contends that, in this writer's fiction, ethics is conceived of in Levinasian terms as a relation of responsibility for the other which is grounded in an acknowledgement of the other's radical difference to the same. The thesis examines Coetzee's self-reflexive investigation of the problem for novelistic representation posed by this conception of ethics. In order to contextualise this examination, the first chapter of the study establishes that the form and medium of the novel install a relation of correlation between same and other, and that the novel-as-genre therefore routinely forecloses on, rather than maintains a relation of difference to, alterity. Chapter One also traces the various strategies through which Coetzee's novels attempt not only to prevent the medium and form of the novel-as-genre from reducing the other to an object and thereby violating it, but also to impart a sense of that which inevitably exceeds, and so transcends, this genre's representational protocols. By means of such strategies of excession, the study contends, Coetzee's texts endeavour to inscribe a responsible relation to the other. The four remaining chapters of the thesis trace Coetzee's installation of strategies of excession, and therefore of an ethical aesthetic, in Dusklands, Life and Times of Michael K, Foe, Age of Iron and The Master of Petersburg. They also consider these novels' self-conscious articulation of the ethical implications of such strategies. Chapter Four and Chapter Five pay special attention to the inscription in Coetzee's later fiction of a debate on the possible effect on the reader of the individual text's ethical relation to the other. In this regard, the thesis argues that the ultimate purpose of Coetzee's attempt to respond responsibly to alterity in his writing is to enable the other to approach the reader in the course of the literary encounter. It thereby demonstrates that Coetzee's concern with ethics is deeply political: in attempting to contrive an ethical relation between the reader and the other, the individual text seeks to secure a mediation of the political by the ethical.

Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2012. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: J. M. Coetzee se werke ondersoek dikwels op intense en ongewone wyse wat kreatiwiteit is en hoe dit werk, wat die bronne en oorspronge daarvan is, en verwonder sig aan die onvoorspelbaarheid van die voorwaardes en katalisators vir, en die aard en uitkomste van, die kreatiewe proses. Hierdie essay ondersoek eerstens die teoretisering van literêre kreatiwiteit deur veral Derek Attridge, wat hy hoofsaaklik baseer op Coetzee se werk. Tweedens word die komplekse uitbeeldings – of performance – van kreatiwiteit en die kreatiewe proses in Coetzee se oeuvre, spesifiek aan die hand van The Master of Petersburg en die post-Disgrace werke, ontleed. Daar word gefokus op skeppende karakters en alter ego’s, veral skrywers, wat toenemend hul verskyning in Coetzee se prosa maak. Kwessies van skrywerlike mag, die etiek van skryf, die konflik tussen werklikheidsvlakke binne fiksie asook tussen werklikheid en fiksie, soos dit uitspeel in die hibriede en eksperimentele laat werke, kom aan bod. Die essay maak dikwels van stipleestegnieke gebruik in die lees van die betrokke werke. Ander strategieë word egter ook ingespan, veral by die lees van die laat werke. Die siening van kreatiewe impuls wat aldus blyk, is ‘n radikale een. Kreatiwiteit is blind vir moraliteit en dalk selfs etiek. Dit word onder andere gelykgestel aan die epileptiese val. Dit gaan oor die oopstelling vir – en die eksklusiewe verantwoordelikheid teenoor – die onverwagse, die Beckettiaanse/Derridiaanse proses van ‘n produktiewe/onproduktiewe gewag. Dit word vergestalt deur ‘n gebeurtenis wat beslag vind in die onverminderbare eiesoortigheid van die literêre werk. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: J. M. Coetzee’s work often investigates in an intense and unusual manner the nature of creativity and how it works, what the sources and origins of creativity are, and marvels at the unpredictability of the preconditions and catalysts for, and the nature and outcomes of, the creative process. This essay investigates, in the first place, the theorisation of literary creativity by especially Derek Attridge, which he mainly bases on Coetzee’s work. In the second instance, the complex portrayals – or performances – of creativity and the creative process in Coetzee’s oeuvre are analysed, particularly with reference to The Master of Petersburg and the post-Disgrace works. The focus is on creative characters, particularly authors, who are increasingly making an appearance in Coetzee’s prose. Questions of authorial power, the ethics of writing, the conflict of reality levels within fiction as well as between reality and fiction, as it plays out in the hybird and experimental late works, are presented. The essay often uses close reading in the reading of the mentioned works. Other strategies are also used, particularly in the reading of the late works. The view of the creative impulse thus crystallising, is a radical one. Creativity is blind to morality, and perhaps also ethics. It is equated, inter alia, to the epileptic fit. It is about the opening up – and the exclusive responsibility – to the unexpected, to the Beckettian/Derridian process of a productive/unproductive waiting. It is represented by a happening which precipitates in the irreducible singularity of the literary work.

No description available.

Magister Artium - MA / Through a literary analysis of two contemporary novels, J.M. Coetzee's Life & Times of Michael K (1983) and Cormac McCarthy's The Road (2006), in which a common concern seems to be an exploration of what it means to be human, the thesis seeks to explore the relationship between human consciousness and language. This dissertation considers the development of a conception of the human based on rationality, and which begins in the Italian Renaissance and gains momentum in the Enlightenment. This conception models the human as a stable knowable self. This is drawn in contrast to the novels, which figure the absence of a stable knowable self in the representation of their protagonists. The thesis thus interrogates language's capacity to provide definitional meanings of the ''human.'' On the other hand, although language's capacity to provide essential meanings is questioned, its abundant expressive forms give voice to the experience of human being. Drawing on a range of fields of enquiry, both philosophical, linguistic, and bio-ethical, this thesis seeks to explore the connection between human consciousness and the medium of language. It considers how the two novels in question play with the concept of language to produce or imagine other ways of thinking about human existence, and other ways of creating meaning to human existence through the representation of their novels.

The farm in South Africa is an ideologically laden but also ambivalent concept, associated with pastoral ideals and the hierarchy of the colonial past; but also with fear and insecurity. The representation of the farm in the South African farm novel has been subjected to larger processes of development, dissolution and replacement in accordance with changing socio-historical contexts. Accordingly, the farm novel's contribution to the conceptualization of space, place and identity within the South African and postcolonial literary context, needs to be traced and related to the pastoral tradition as well as its mutations and deviations. This dissertation investigates how Olive Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm (1883) and J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace (1999) as anti-pastoral farm novels, in different ways and degrees, rewrite and transcend the pastoral farm novel tradition by rejecting and subverting the inherent ideological assumptions and pastoral values exemplified by this genre. Specific focus is given to the role of space and place in the identity formation of the female protagonists and the conceptualization thereof in a postcolonial society. / Thesis (M.A. (English))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2005

The farm in South Africa is an ideologically laden but also ambivalent concept, associated with pastoral ideals and the hierarchy of the colonial past; but also with fear and insecurity. The representation of the farm in the South African farm novel has been subjected to larger processes of development, dissolution and replacement in accordance with changing socio-historical contexts. Accordingly, the farm novel's contribution to the conceptualization of space, place and identity within the South African and postcolonial literary context, needs to be traced and related to the pastoral tradition as well as its mutations and deviations. This dissertation investigates how Olive Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm (1883) and J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace (1999) as anti-pastoral farm novels, in different ways and degrees, rewrite and transcend the pastoral farm novel tradition by rejecting and subverting the inherent ideological assumptions and pastoral values exemplified by this genre. Specific focus is given to the role of space and place in the identity formation of the female protagonists and the conceptualization thereof in a postcolonial society. / Thesis (M.A. (English))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2005