A multidisciplinary approach is needed to critique the frequently invoked but seldom questioned notion of "human dignity," a discursive tool that is subtly serving abusive power structures while seemingly promoting human rights. The discourse of human dignity misrepresents the meaning of empowerment for modern citizens, making them interested more in political gestures and less in profit, comfort and protection from abuse. Dignity‘s epistemes—self-assertion, recognition, political action, public-spiritedness, responsibility, resistance, the denial of animal instinct, sacrifice—should not be human ideals, for they are exactly the opposite of the sovereign‘s characteristics and because they are responsible for recursive violence that preserves the status quo. They should be replaced with ethics based on sensuous interest, instinct, and natural-spiritedness (a sense of mystical oneness with other living beings). This dissertation answers Foucault‘s question about how the modern state endows citizens with a political subjectivity while simultaneously subjecting them to a totalized system, exposing human dignity as just the link between individuation and totalization. It questions Agamben‘s notion of the indistinction between political life and natural life, arguing that sovereign power, using the discourse of human dignity, creates a clear distinction. The human dignity discourse keeps the human within political life, representing such life as the middle point between the instinctive life of the animal and the mechanical life of the laborer. In reality, the dissertation shows, these two demonized modes of life are the same mode, which should be championed as a valuable and empowered state of being. In the literary field, a close examination reveals that J. M. Coetzee‘s fiction subverts the human dignity discourse while Kazuo Ishiguro‘s work is enmeshed in it. Coetzee generates sympathy for humans who lack the sense of human dignity and act on mere instinct. He offers ―disgrace‖ as a spiritual-ethical state of sensuality, acceptance and humility and promotes an agenda of desire-based rights in lieu of dignity-based ones. His writings also eschew authorial dignity as they discount the values of newness and originality in favor of expression attuned to desire, even when such moves appear selfish and politically irresponsible.

Diss.--Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität zu Münster, 2001. / Bibliogr. p. 379-397.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 33-35).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2003. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 299-309). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

In this thesis, I argue that identity construction is a postal effect: it results from a transmission of some sort, received or sent. I examine three instances of postal effect. In a chapter on Jacques Derrida's "Envois," a collection of fragments presented as if transcribed from a one-way love letter correspondence, I explore the performative force of relayed address. Working from Derrida's account of the literary performative, I point out that the "Envois" letters are addressed to "you" in the singular, which implies an address reserved for a particular subject, but that the postal relay of the collection enacts a repetition of their address. For the reader of the book, this repetition has evocative force which I compare with the force of transference in the context of the psychoanalytic situation. In a second chapter on the "Envois" letters, I examine their haunting effect. The "Envois" letters have an I/we signature that intimates pluralities in the writing subject. I argue that this signature is the effect of a postal relay of another order: a phantom, which Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok define as a gap in the psychic topography of the subject caused by a secret unwittingly received along with a legacy. To a certain extent, the "Envois" letters are written by Plato's "in-voices." In a chapter on J. M. Coetzee's epistolary novel Age of Iron, I explore the gift effects of a posthumous letter. Age of Iron is an epistolary novel consisting exclusively of a single letter written by a dying South African woman, Mrs. Curren, to her daughter, a political objector who has emigrated to the United States. Writing her letter in the knowledge that her death is imminent, Mrs. Curren anticipates her daughter's mourning. Working with J. L. Austin's doctrine of illocutionary forces and Derrida's analysis of the gift event, I postulate two effects of Mrs. Curren's letter, one that annuls the gift in a circular return and another that surpasses this circuit with textual diss

The dissertation focuses on 1. M. Coetzee's novels The Life and Times of Michael K., Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life and Disgrace, analysing the central protagonists' engagement with the landscape in general and specifically focussing on the farm as a site on which identities are interrogated. By way of introduction the two central themes, landscape and identity are highlighted with respect to Coetzee's theoretical work, specifically White Writing and Doubling the Point. Introductory discussion on the 'farm novel' and 'autobiography' is also given in the first chapter. In the second chapter, Boyhood is examined as an influential text in the rereading of Coetzee's allegorical work Michael K. The intention is to elucidate the power relations which underlie the earlier novel by means of a comparative analysis of the mother-child, father-child culture-child and author-text relationships found in Boyhood. Consideration of Coetzee's critical analysis of Olive Schreiner's Story of an African Farm is given towards establishing links between Coetzee's fiction and the farm novel genre. The third chapter focuses on Disgrace as 'another take' on the farm novel. The position of the white male 'self' in post-apartheid South Africa is interrogated through an analysis of the protagonist David Lurie's fictional' return to the farm.' 'Subject'/ 'other' relations are also discussed with a view to understanding identity formation. In the final chapter, conclusions are drawn regarding the relationship between Coetzee's fiction and the farm novel genre. Finally, the failure of lineal consciousness and the' self becoming redundant are considered. / Thesis (M.A.) - University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg , 2002.

The objective of this dissertation is to demonstrate the existence of a prophetic discourse in the work of the French writer J. M. G. (Jean-Marie-Gustave) Le Clezio. Within the period of his first books (1963--1973), from Le proces-verbal (The interrogation) to Les Geants (The Giants), Le Clezio systematically adopts a prophetic discourse conveying his personal view of the world. / We intend to show that these works form a complete cycle within the broader scope of Le Clezio's writings. At the forefront of these earlier works we find a questioning on the nature of language and the process of writing, the latter being at times disputed and scorned, at others celebrated and inflated. We shall see the profound ambivalence that Le Clezio has towards language, the language being perceived both as a degradation of man's being as well as the sole mean to express the "adventure of being alive". / The first chapter recaps succinctly the evolution of the prophetic terminology up to the modern times, in which it is no longer the pure domain of godly matters. In the following chapters, each of which pertains to a specific work according to their sequence, we aim to show that (1) the prophetic discourse in Le Clezio's earlier works operate as a set of literary devices---narrative strategies, addresses, invocations, sacred themes---and that (2) this discourse takes the shape of a trajectory. As for content, we win demonstrate that (3) Le Clezio's prophetic discourse is the expression of a phenomenological approach positing the individual's consciousness in face of the absolute. / It is this threefold dynamic that we will analyze in the first works of Le Clezio and that we have gathered under the notion of prophetic discourse.

Bibliography: leaves 452-495. / 495 leaves ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / This thesis examines the representation of utopia in the works of Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio. Through the reference to the utopian tradition, it provides a global reading of a diverse range of writings, both fictional and non-fictional, which have hitherto proved difficult to classify as a coherent corpus. While drawing upon the imagery of the quest that has been highlighted by mythocritical, psychocritical and sociopoetical approaches, this study extends their conclusions by linking the diverse images of the quest in Le Clezio's writings to this personal quest for utopia. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Centre for European Studies, 1999

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leave 98-103). Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Rutgers University, 2009. / "Graduate Program in Literatures in English." Includes bibliographical references (p. 169-181).