J.M. Coetzee's poetics of the child : Arendt, Agamben, and the (ir)responsibilities of literary creation
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
J.M. Coetzee's poetics of the child : Arendt, Agamben, and the (ir)responsibilities of literary creation
Bloomsbury Academic, 2021
- : HB
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Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. [171]-182) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Tracing how central tensions in J.M. Coetzee's fiction converge in and are made visible by the child figure, this book establishes the centrality of the child to Coetzee's poetics. Through readings of novels from Dusklands to The Schooldays of Jesus, Charlotta Elmgren shows how Coetzee's writing stages the constant interplay between irresponsibility and responsibility-to the self, the other, and the world.
In articulating this poetics of (ir)responsibility, Elmgren offers the first sustained engagement with the intersections between Coetzee's work and the philosophical thought of Giorgio Agamben. With reference also to Hannah Arendt's thinking on natality, education, and amor mundi, Elmgren demonstrates the inextricable links in Coetzee's writing between freedom, play, and serious attention to the world.
The book identifies five central dynamics of Coetzee's poetics: the child as a figure of truth-telling and authenticity; the ethics of the not-so-other child; the child, new beginnings and care for the world; childish behaviour as perpetual study; and the redemptive potential of infancy. Offering a fresh contribution to the field of literary childhood studies, Elmgren shows the critical possibilities in thinking about-and with-childlike openness and childish experimentation when approaching the writing and reading of the work of J.M. Coetzee and beyond.
Table of Contents
Introduction
The child in Coetzee: A story waiting to be told
Towards a poetics of the child
From Levinas and Derrida to Agamben and Arendt
Writing and the child
The child as the object of writerly desire
The writer as child
Conceptions of the child
"The child" - a fluid concept
The child and the fully human
A figure of openness and possibility
Outline
Chapter One. The Story of the (Un)Romantic Child: Innocence, Truth, and First Fictions of the Self
Fragments of childhoods
(Un)Romantic children
Navigating fictions
Moments of openness
Authentic encounters: from self to other
Chapter Two. Ethics of the Not-so-Other Child
The savage-as-child-as-self
Children of iron
Ethics of indeterminacy
Chapter Three. The Child Between Past and Future
Natality and the event
Worrying about the child
Getting beyond death
Amor mundi and transmissibility
The interregnum, freedom, and writing
Pedagogy and play
From natality to infancy
Chapter Four. Childish Behaviour: The Poetics of Study
From waiting to "pressing on"
The incessant shuttling of study
Grasping the potentialities of the present
Impotentiality and the curious state of infancy
Embracing uncertainty
From childish to childlike
Chapter Five. The Redemptive Nonposition of Infancy
The burdensome search for truth
Infancy and language as such
Being like a child: "the revocation of every vocation"
Infancy and ethics
Writing and redemption
Coda
References
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