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Chapter One: Introduction This thesis aims to demonstrate how the representation of the body in the fiction of JM Coetzee1 has an incisive effect on atmosphere, characterisation, plot and themes. The incisive effect the treatment of the body has on the writing manifests itself in a number of devices that are both original and powerful. What it is that characterises the body through all of these devices of representation is its strangeness. Harold Bloom uses the term “strangeness” as an important literary device in his search for “The Western Canon”: I have tried to confront greatness directly: to ask what makes the author and the works canonical. The answer, more often than not, has turned out to be strangeness, a mode of originality that either cannot be assimilated, or that so assimilates us that we cease to see it as strange. (Bloom 2-3) The idea of an originality that cannot be assimilated is an interesting one in the context of a writer like Coetzee since one of the recurrent themes that this study of the body will investigate is the sense of enmity, conflict and otherness that it creates in the fiction. The strangeness of Coetzee’s bodies resides in their power to stand out, and from one perspective, refuse assimilation with the text. 1 Please note that by fiction I include the semi-autobiographical texts Boyhood (1997) and Youth (2002)). 2 However, not to fall back on Bloom’s definition of the word too comfortably, this thesis is not arguing that Coetzee’s innovative treatment of the body is recognised as “canonical” in any way (and the term “canonical” is a problematic one) or that this theme has been assimilated as a sign of greatness. It is precisely the “mode of originality” of the representation of the body that makes it worthy of thorough investigation. Furthermore, “strangeness” itself as a term is too nebulous to describe the specific treatment of the body in JM Coetzee’s novels. Whichever single term I use for the sake of cogency, clarity and taxonomy, the full gamut of effects created by devices such as endoscope, zero degree physiognomy, bodily plot structure and inverted fable could never be encapsulated in one term without that term being either too restrictive or too broad. I nonetheless use “strangeness” frequently in my discussion of the body for at its primary level the word conveys much of the atmosphere and effect created in the fiction. Another term can be used, coined by the Russian Formalist Victor Shklovsky, associated with strangeness and yet more precise, one that is closer to the manner in which Coetzee subtly distorts the perception of the body: “defamiliarisation”. Shklovsky’s term “defamiliarisation” needs to be understood in the context of early twentieth century Russian Formalism. Roman Jakobson and Jurii Tynianov, along with Shklovsky, were seeking to examine literature by “laying bare the device” (obnazhenie priema). This means approaching the text in terms of its structures by exposing the devices that are used. In the specific case of defamiliarisation, the devices that create a 2 3 dissonant, strange and fresh effect in the reader are what I will be “laying bare” when looking to the body. “Defamiliarisation” is not a term I choose lightly to describe the effect of JM Coetzee’s treatment of the body. Shklovsky, in his essay, “Art as Technique” (1917) states that “the purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived, and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects “unfamiliar”, to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception” (12). The term comes from the Russian ostranenie which means “making strange”. Shklovsky’s work may be dated, but I will argue that the term – relating to this artistic “strangeness” - encapsulates JM Coetzee’s endeavour when it comes to the body very accurately. It also points towards a poetic reading since the strictly knowledge-based approach to art criticism does not do enough justice to the peculiar (if I could coin a word, it would be “unanalyseable”) factor to be found in JM Coetzee’s writings, the passages that speak to parts of the mind that “prefer sensations to ideas” (Elizabeth Costello 24)). My argument, therefore, is that the body is used as a defamiliarising agent in the prose. Through this defamiliarisation, the body becomes a crucial source of agency and meaning. 2 2 I am not suggesting that the term defamiliarisation should be understood in its largest formalist definition (as a laying bare of the device, but often in a technical, narratological way), but more at the simplest level of artistic strangeness. My use of the word is closer to Shklovsky’s reading of the battle scenes in War and 3 4 The thesis will show in each chapter how different themes are approached through the author’s treatment of the body and how this heightened perception uses the body to make innovative statements about the human condition. The thesis will follow a thematic structure and not a chronological one. JM Coetzee is, of course, a contemporary author, still living and writing as these words are written. Conducting research on a living, writing figure is a particular situation, as it brings into question the effectiveness of synthetic hindsight, given the time between the production and the study of the literature. If I may offer a metaphor: it is a little like prospecting or exploring a living body: the organs cannot be excised and decorticated as they could be in a post mortem (for in that case, like the end of an author’s production, the body has stopped evolving and the pressures of context can be discussed with hindsight). In our case these organs can only be viewed as they interact with each other and with the living public that reads and responds. It is, in part, because of the unusual character of this living tissue of literature that I offer, as well as analysis, a poetics as critical response. If poetics involves the poetic, being derived from the Greek poetes: the maker or creator; then this study’s primary objective is in itself an innovative and creative response to the literature. Coetzee’s work, from the publication of his first novel, Dusklands (1974) to Slow Man (2005), has evolved in an extraordinarily eclectic manner that challenges the reader in his Peace (these described in his article “Art as Device”), where he argues that Tolstoy uses defamiliarisation through the strange and heightened perception he creates. 4 5 or her response.3 The range of themes covered in the corpus of the thirteen novels and semi-autobiographical works is considerable: indeed this exceptional versatility is one of the distinctions recognised in his writing by the Nobel Committee upon his winning of the Nobel Prize for Literature.4 This diversity in itself invites investigation, as does the comparative paucity of critical works which deal with the body, the central focus of this thesis. This study looks to the body for meaning quite simply because its presence in the writings is continuous and heavily significant; in the cases of Waiting for the Barbarians (1980), Life & Times of Michael K (1983) and Slow Man, it is overwhelmingly so, but in all of the novels it plays a determining role. In his poetics, Coetzee declares in Doubling the Point (1992): “the body with its pain becomes a counter to the endless trials of doubt” (248) and goes on to say that the “standard” of his work is “the body” and that this body is more than a gap in meaning, but indeed a unifying essence. The idea of a “unifying essence” is an important one, for it suggests that rather than being at the periphery of some extrapolated portrayal, the organism is the central focus through which experience is concentrated. 3 My reading of JM Coetzeee concurs with Derek Attridge’s observations from pages 4 -10, and in the whole of chapter 1 of J.M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Reading (2005) in so far as J.M. Coetzee’s writings necessitate “an engagement with the text, that recognizes, and capitalizes on, its potential for reinterpretation” (10) rather than looking at the opus as “the product of historical processes”. 4 “There is a great wealth of variety in Coetzee’s works. No two books ever follow the same recipe” (Swedish Academy 2003). 5 6 This study aims to chart the Coetzeean body through a poetical analysis that will be used to support the argument that the body in Coetzee’s work establishes its own laws (it is “defamiliarised”), elucidating the human condition in a powerful, original manner.5 Which Body? Over the span of the last thirty three years, critical response has been as varied as the writings themselves. To synthesise these different approaches now and give a detailed overview of the way Coetzee’s bodies have been dealt with by means of an introduction would require an incommensurately large digression from my own argument. Because of this, pertinent links with critics will be established piecemeal in the various chapters as we voyage through the body, to advance my own reading. Nonetheless, not to start in the dark completely, a few basic points will be made as concerns the reading of the body by Coetzee’s critics, with some emphasis on the very few papers that concentrate solely on the body. The reader needs to wait until chapter 2 to commence with my own response to the subject. The fact that Coetzee has been received so thoroughly is in itself an important argument for the power and validity of his prose as a subject of study.

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