Re-Imagining the Animal in J.M. Coetzee's the Lives of Animals

Re-imagining the Animal in J.M. Coetzee’s The Lives of Animals A.M. Wattam 2019 Re-imagining the Animal in J.M. Coetzee’s The Lives of Animals By Amy McLeod Wattam Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Magister Artium (English) in the Faculty of Arts at Nelson Mandela University Supervisor: Prof Marius Crous Co-Supervisor: Dr Jakub Siwak April 2019 Declaration by candidate Name: Amy Wattam Student number: 211257346 Qualification: Master of Arts (English) Title of project: Re-imagining the Animal in J.M. Coetzee’s The Lives of Animals Declaration: In accordance with Rule G5.6.3, I, Amy Wattam (211257346), hereby declare that the abovementioned dissertation is my own work and that it has not previously been submitted for assessment to another University or for another qualification. Signature: Amy McLeod Wattam Date: 15 April 2019 Contents i. Acknowledgements ii. Abstract Introduction 1 Chapter One: Studying The Lives of Animals – Situation, Reception and Theory 7 1.1. Introduction 7 1.2. Situating The Lives of Animals 8 1.3. Critical Reception 16 1.4. A Posthumanist Reading 18 1.5. Conclusion 28 Chapter Two: Coetzee and Unsettling Boundaries of (Re)presentation 30 2.1. Introduction 30 2.2. Coetzee’s Multimodal Metafiction 31 2.3. Coetzee’s Relation to The Lives of Animals 40 2.4. Coetzee’s Multi-layered Responses 51 2.5. Conclusion 62 Chapter Three: Disconnections in The Lives of Animals 64 3.1. Introduction 64 3.2. Human versus Animal 65 3.3. Reason versus Feeling 75 3.4. Rationality versus Imagination 85 3.5. Conclusion 94 Chapter Four: Establishing Connections in The Lives of Animals 96 4.1. Introduction 96 4.2. Elizabeth and the Animal 97 4.3. Rational Feelings and Human-Animal Interconnection 105 4.4. Imaginative Realities and Human-Animal Relations 114 4.5. Conclusion 122 Conclusion 124 Bibliography 130 i. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my supervisors, Prof Marius Crous and Dr Jakub Siwak, for guiding me through my labyrinthine imaginings. Thank you to the RCD at Nelson Mandela University for providing me with a Post Graduate Research Scholarship, which funded this study. Thank you to Prof Mary West for introducing me to a book that has challenged, taught and inspired me in more ways than I could have imagined. Thanks also to Wesley Halgreen for reading and commenting. Thanks to my family and loved ones who have supported and loved me through my studies, I appreciate you all very much. Though they will be indifferent to their acknowledgement here, I would still like to thank Molly and Tego, who have taught me much about the joy of life and have kept me sane with our daily walks in our beloved Sardinia Bay. ii. ABSTRACT J.M. Coetzee’s The Lives of Animals (1999) is a literary representation of, and intervention into, human-animal relations. It is an experimental literary destabilisation of the generic boundaries that underlie the systematic (mis)representation and (mis)treatment of nonhuman animals, specifically their mass commodification in contemporary societies. The text provides a critique and negotiation of anthropocentric reason and its ramifications for nonhuman animals. This study focuses on how Coetzee’s narrative problematises dominant discourses through questioning their authority and offering alternatives to anthropocentric conceptions of the animal that are based upon reason-centred and dualistic thought. The duality of human versus animal is explored alongside other dualities deconstructed in the text, such as fiction versus nonfiction, and philosophy versus literature. Coetzee’s representation of these constructs and their interconnectedness is investigated, specifically with regards to positively developing human-animal relations. Through exploring what Coetzee calls the ‘sympathetic imagination’, his alternative contribution to the field of human-animal relations will be considered. This study focuses on the space for re-imagination that Coetzee has provided with The Lives of Animals. It highlights the role literature can and ought to play in this re- imagination, and why this re-imagination is necessary for the development of human-animal relations. Posthumanism will be used as a theoretical lens throughout, as it appears to resonate closely with Coetzee’s project. Both the form and the content of the text will be analysed, highlighting their interconnected significance in Coetzee’s project and the continued relevance of interventions such as this. Introduction ‘Animal’ is a term with broad and complex underpinnings and connotations, some of which are brought to light in J.M. Coetzee’s The Lives of Animals (1999). Through analysing Coetzee’s representation of ‘the lives of animals’ in the text, this study explores the complexity of human-animal relations. This complexity is mirrored in the text’s multifaceted form and content, and the intricate interaction between them. The Lives of Animals unsettles many conventional boundaries of representation in its multi-layered re-imagination of the animal, which is what forms the core of this study. The Lives of Animals crosses different boundaries of genre and mode. It was originally presented by Coetzee as an academic lecture and published two years later as a literary text. In 1997, Coetzee delivered a lecture at the Tanner Lectures on Human Values at Princeton University1 under the title ‘The Lives of Animals’. It consisted of two short stories titled ‘The Philosophers and the Animals’ and ‘The Poets and the Animals’. Significantly, these are also the titles of the two lectures delivered within these stories by the protagonist, Elizabeth Costello, who is considered by many critics to be Coetzee’s fictional alter ego. Boundaries between literature and philosophy, fiction and non-fiction, as well as vocal presentation and written representation are unsettled in this work. The University Center for Human Values Series’ version of The Lives of Animals (Coetzee, 1999) is used in this study, as it adds significant value in its reflection of the original form and context of Coetzee’s work. This version of the text includes an introduction by Amy Gutmann2 and a section at the end titled Reflections (1999: 71), which consists of four scholarly essays written by academics3 in response to Coetzee’s multi-faceted and controversial work. The Lives of Animals is not only controversial due to its multi-layered, unconventional form(s), but also its content, which unsettles boundaries in its equally unconventional arguments about animals. Coetzee brings dominant Western discourses surrounding animals and human-animal relations under scrutiny and encourages a rethinking of normative and rigid constructs which he reveals as radically problematic. In relation to the title, The Lives of Animals, ‘animals’ is a term that, in common usage, reduces all creatures that are not human into one category. It also insinuates that humans are not animals.4 This conception thereby 1 The Tanner Lectures on Human Values is a multiversity lecture series in the humanities. 2 A professor at Princeton University, and founding director of the University Center for Human Values. 3 These academics and their responses are discussed in chapter two of this study. 4 As Derrida affirms, the hierarchical human-animal dichotomy has acted to uphold essentialist accounts of species difference, while homogenizing a multitude of species heterogeneity under the word ‘animal’ (2008: 31-32). 1 ‘others’ the animal. Since the emergence of modern Western philosophy, and specifically that of Descartes, “individual consciousness has been taken as the privileged centre of identity while ‘the other’ is seen as an epistemological problem, or as an inferior, reduced, or negated form of the ‘same’” (Castle, 2011: 1). In this study, the term ‘other’ is used according to this characterisation, which involves the marginalisation of all beings excluded from, and subordinated by, a central construct and standard of ‘human’.5 In light of this, the term ‘the animal’ used throughout this study refers to both human and other animals, resisting a rigid human-animal ideological divide and the denial that humans are, in fact, animals. Thus, my reading of The Lives of Animals includes the inter-related lives of all animals, human and nonhuman.6 Such a reading of the text encompasses the life of the human protagonist, Elizabeth Costello.7 The two linked stories that make up the text are about the visit of Elizabeth, a well- known Australian novelist, to the prestigious Appleton College to deliver “the annual Gates Lecture” and a seminar in the literature department (1999: 16). Her topic in these lectures is the animal, specifically the (mis)representation and (mis)treatment of nonhuman animals by humans. She criticises the way nonhuman animals have been and are systematically mistreated by humans not only literally, but particularly by the philosophers and the poets who misrepresent them. In other words, she focuses on ideology and representation, which she sees as lying at the root of what she calls a “crime of stupefying proportions” (1999: 69) against nonhuman animals in contemporary societies. This ‘crime’ is in the form of the mass and systematic cruelty involved in nonhuman animal commodification, which has reached an all- time high in contemporary societies. Though Elizabeth is wary of all human representation of the nonhuman animal, she particularly and controversially rejects philosophy as a way of studying and relating to the nonhuman animal. She specifically denounces dualistic conceptions of human-animal relations, revealing the ideological disconnections inherent in such philosophy. Rather, she proposes literature as a means of developing what she calls the “sympathetic imagination” (1999: 35), which she says is what is lacking in the attitudes towards nonhuman animals and their mass suffering in contemporary societies. The sympathetic imagination is a kind of 5 It is explained in my theoretical framework that this conception does not disregard the significant role the theory of othering has on race-relations, but rather seeks to avoid re-instating exclusionary, hierarchal conceptions in terms of human-animal relations.

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