Post-Cartesian Ontological Possibilities in the Fiction of J.M

View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by South East Academic Libraries System (SEALS) My Other-My Self: Post-Cartesian Ontological Possibilities in the Fiction of J.M. Coetzee A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English at Rhodes University Damazio Mfune December 2011 i ABSTRACT The central argument of my study is that, among other matters, in his works, J.M. Coetzee could be said to demonstrate that the known Self is an embodied being and is not autonomous. With regard to the latter contention, Coetzee intimates that any two Subjects are implicated in each other’s subjectivities in a reciprocal process that involves what Derek Attridge has called “irruptions of otherness” (2005: xii) into the Subject’s subjectivity. These irruptions, which happen during the encounter, lead to a double loss of autonomy for each Subject and this phenomenon renders the relationship between Subjects non-dichotomus or non-binaric. In other words, the Subject does not produce the contents of his or her consciousness in a sui generis and ex nihilo fashion, and his or her ontological indebtedness to the Other constitutes his or her first loss of autonomy. As for those Others that do possess consciousness, the Subject is implicated in their consciousness and this constitutes the Subject’s second loss of autonomy. These losses counter the near solipsistic Nagelian neo-Cartesianism and paves the way for imagining both intra- and inter-species “intersubjectivity”. It is my view that this double loss of autonomy accounts for the sympathetic and empathetic imagination that we encounter in Coetzee’s fiction. Following Coetzee’s intimations of intersubjectivity through irruptions of otherness, what I see as my contribution to studies on this author’s work through this study is the link I have established between the physicalist strain within the philosophy of mind (whose central thesis is that consciousness is an embodied phenomenon) and a modified Kantian “metaphysics”, especially Immanuel Kant’s conception of concepts as comprising form and content. I have deployed this conception in demonstrating the Subject’s ontological indebtedness to external sources of the content part of consciousness. And, through the Husserlian concept of intentionality, and Kant’s (1929: 27) observation that we cannot have appearances without something that appears, I have linked the Subject to the sources of his or her content and thereby also demonstrated that the Subject is not eternally separated or alienated from those sources. Instead, the Subject is not simply contiguous but coterminous and co-extensive, albeit in a mediated way, with the external sources of the content part of his or her consciousness. Thus, while accepting the thesis of the Other’s radical otherness, I modify the thesis of the Other’s radical exteriority. Ultimately, then, ontologically speaking, the Coetzeean project could be described as one of embodying and grounding the supposedly autonomous, solipsistic and free- floating/disembodied Cartesian Subject. This he does by alerting this Subject, first and foremost, to its embodiedness and, further to that, pointing out its ontological indebtedness to its Others and its implication in the Others’s consciousnesses and so prevent it from continuing with its imperialistic and ecological barbarities. However, ethically speaking, beyond the reciprocal ethics that arises from mutual ontological indebtedness and implication, it is the selflessness that characterises a cruciform logic that comes across as the epitome of Coetzeean ethics. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I acknowledge all those who stood by me in all sorts of ways (including those who were cheering me on) during the past four years when this study was being undertaken. A special thank you to my supervisor, Professor Mike Marais, and his family; my advisor, Prof. Dan Wylie, and members of staff of the English Department of Rhodes University such as Prof. Gareth Cornwell, Margot Beard and Carol Booth, for the exchange of ideas and providing me with a conducive environment in which I could do my work. I also acknowledge staff of NELM for their invaluable assistance. The NRF bursary also went a long way towards making this project possible. Dr. Ron Simango and family, Dr. Booker Magure and Dr. Syned Mthatiwa, whatever good times there were, they rolled! To all, I cannot thank you enough. iii DEDICATION In memory of Prof. Paul Mwaipaya. And for: Gladys Yose and Priscila Bambiso who welcomed me to the English Department at Rhodes with ceremony. iv DECLARATION I hereby certify that this thesis is my own work and that it has not been submitted for examination at any other university before. Signed: Damazio Mfune Date: 9th December, 2011 v TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract: ii Acknowledgements: iii Dedication: iv Declaration: v Introduction: Coetzee, Consciousness, Identity and Domination: A Critical Overview. 1 Chapter One: Theoretical Framework: Post-Cartesian Embodied Subjectivity and Ethics in J.M. Coetzee’s Fiction 28 Chapter Two: Dusklands: J.M. Coetzee’s Diagnosis of the “Metaphysics” of Domination and an authorial “Manifesto” 73 Chapter Three: Waiting for the Barbarians: A Nascent Embodied Intersubjectivity. 125 Chapter Four: Age of Iron: Embodied Intersubjectivity and a Post-Binary Logic of “Both-And” 154 Chapter Five: Disgrace: The Sympathetic Imagination and Acknowledge- ment of the Animal Other 188 Chapter Six: Elizabeth Costello: Embodied Intersubjectivity and the Empathetic Imagination 229 Conclusion 254 Bibliography: 272 vi Introduction Coetzee, Consciousness, Identity and Domination: A Critical Overview. Without consciousness the mind-body problem would be much less interesting. With consciousness it seems hopeless. And careful examination will show that no currently available concept of reduction is applicable to it. Perhaps a new theoretical form can be devised for the purpose, but such a solution if it exists, lies in the distant intellectual future. (Nagel, 1979: 166) What is it like to be a bat? Asks Thomas Nagel . “Cogito, ergo sum” . It is a formula I have always been uncomfortable with. It implies that a being that does not do what we call thinking is somehow second class. To thinking, cogitation, I oppose fullness, embodiedness, the sensation of being ─ not consciousness of yourself as a kind of ghostly reasoning machine thinking thoughts, but on the contrary the sensation ─ a heavily affective sensation ─ of being a body with limbs that have extension in space, of being alive to the world. This fullness contrasts starkly with Descartes’ key state, which has an empty feel to it: the feel of a pea rattling around in a shell. (Coetzee, 1999a: 33) Friday is mute, but Friday does not disappear, because Friday is body. If I look back over my own fiction, I see a simple . standard erected. That standard is the body. Whatever else, the body is not ‘that which is not’, and the proof that it is is the pain it feels. The body with its pain becomes a counter to the endless trials of doubt. (Coetzee, 1992: 248) We speak of the dog with the sore foot or the bird with the broken wing. But the dog does not think of itself in those terms, or the bird. To the dog, when it tries to walk, there is simply I am pain, to the bird, when it launches itself into flight, simply I cannot. With us it seems different. The fact that such common locutions as “my leg,” “my eye,” “my brain,” and even “my body,” exist suggests that we believe there is some non-material, perhaps fictive, entity that stands in the relation of possessor to possessed to the body’s “parts” and even to the whole body. Or else the existence of such locutions shows that language cannot get purchase, cannot get going, until it has split up the unity of experience. (Coetzee, 2007: 59, emphasis original) ‘Never before have I had the feeling of not living my own life on my own terms,’ I tell the girl, struggling to explain what happened. (Coetzee, 1980: 42-43) The study that follows is about the ontology of consciousness and subjectivity, or, more specifically, it is about embodied consciousness and “intersubjectivity”, as posited by J.M. Coetzee in his writings as I have come to understand them. Furthermore, my exploration of this kind of subjectivity is situated within the fields of post-colonial, post-gender and eco/zoological criticism, three fields that, to varying degrees, Coetzee has engaged with persistently since the 1970s. One could argue that J.M. Coetzee set it as his goal to challenge a Cartesian dichotomous or binaric ontology which, since the 16th century, has given licence to and accompanied various kinds of oppressive, discriminatory and exploitative mindsets such as colonialism, patriarchy and anthropocentrism. 1 The central argument of the study, or its thesis, is that, among other matters, in his works J.M. Coetzee could be said to suggest that, through the phenomenon of an “embodied consciousness” and “intentionality”, the Self is not autonomous in that aspects of the Other are actually, to an extent, integral parts of its subjectivity just as much as aspects of the Self are also, to an extent, an integral part of the Other’s subjectivity. In short, any two Subjects are implicated in each other’s subjectivities. As I will explain further in the course of the study, this lack of autonomy expresses itself in at least two forms: firstly, the embodied Subject constitutes his or her consciousness with content from his or her Others who are external to him or her, and thereby exists in a state of ontological indebtedness to those Others, and, secondly, since the Subject also becomes a part of the Others (by being implicated in their consciousness), he or she has no control over how those Others are going to configure him or her in their consciousnesses, and yet these are the configurations on which they will base their relationship with him or her.

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