Cynical Cosmopolitans? Borges, Beckett, Coetzee Arthur James Rose Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds School of English July, 2014 - ii - The candidate confirms that the work submitted is his/her own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. The right of Arthur James Rose to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. © 2014 The University of Leeds and Arthur James Rose - iii - Acknowledgements This work would not have been possible without the careful, intelligent and, above all, patient work of my supervisors, Dr Sam Durrant and Dr Brendon Nicholls. If I remain prone to free association, they have taught me to temper my meanderings with academic rigour. For this, and friendship, I thank them. My parents, Peter and Celia, who, with a strategically placed copy of Edith Hamilton’s Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes, engendered in me a love of books, have borne financial and emotional burdens in helping me see this project to its close. My sister, brother-in-law and nephew, Sarah, Sean and Sebastian, provided solace, a bed and privacy when I needed it (and barrages of guffaws when I didn’t). Chris and Denise Mathew provided a home away from home, and Jill and Imogen Ashfield didn’t give up on me. For this, and love, I thank them. A whole contingent of friends and intellectual comrades helped me to keep calm and carry on. In Leeds, Ashraf Riadh Abdullah taught me his own form of ironic cosmopolitanism, Gustavo Carvajal and Alejandra Ortiz provided shoulders to cry on and Ed Powell made sure that home was always in equal measure a place of laughter and serious conversation. I also thank friends and colleagues in the School of English at the University of Leeds: Adrian Knapp, Henghameh Saroukhani, Katie Elphick, Chris Stone, Ragini Mohite, Emma Trott and Hannah Copley. Fellow thinkers in reading groups helped me to refine my thoughts: Paul Taylor, David Thom, Stefan Skrimshire, Elizabeth Pender, and others too numerous to name. Kasia Mika made sure I ate and had hugs. Michael J. Kelly shouldered my share of Badiou Studies when I could not go on, and remains a great friend and comrade-in-thought. Claire Lozier proved that great friendships may start with Beckett but certainly don’t end with him. John Moles taught me more about ancient cynicism in a half hour than I learnt in five months of reading. Joe Palmer gave intellectual nourishment, care against the odds and a comfy couch. David Sugden put me up for a summer, and put up with me for longer than that. Ruth Swanwick and Jane Taylor got me to laugh at myself. Jane Plastow brought theatre into focus. Mark Taylor-Batty provided support. Friends from a number of other countries helped me when I needed it most. In South Africa, Paul McNally, Ross Esson, Tim and Jeanne Matthis. In South Korea, Chull Wang. In Argentina, Fabian, Sarah, Fiona and Lucas Martinez. To those not enumerated, my apologies: such lists necessarily remain incomplete. Special thanks must be made to Ben Bollig, Adam Winstanley, Maebh Long, Ryan Topper, Peter Rose and Michael Springer who gave of their time and energy so generously to help me tackle issues ranging from the place of Peronism in Argentina to the place of commas in referencing material. Love set my thoughts a-dancing, and loss regulated their steps. To R W-H, for travelling with the kernel of this project, as it tripped along from South Korea, through South Africa and Argentina, to Leeds. To Ruth Kitchen, for supporting me with care, kindness and a great deal of forebearance as the dance swelled beyond my reckoning, and for being there, at the end, when it mattered. This project would not have been possible without the generous financial support of the Ernest Oppenheimer Memorial Trust. I thank Clare Digby and everyone at the Trust for their faith in this project. - iv - Abstract The thesis argues for a form of kynical cosmopolitanism in the late work of Jorge Luis Borges, Samuel Beckett and J.M. Coetzee. Broadly sympathetic responses to these three writers conflate their writing style and their personal habits, and identify them as stoics. Broadly unsympathetic responses conflate their choice of theme and their apparent political quietude, and identify them as cynics. Instead of finding them aligned with stoicism or contemporary cynicism, the thesis draws on work by Peter Sloterdijk and Michel Foucault to recuperate kynicism (ancient cynicism) as a heuristic to explain how the writers consciously exploit a combination of style, theme, habit and political perspective in their late works. The late works of all three writers turn on a performance of the self that takes autobiographical enactment as the starting point for exploring political subjectivity. Following Diogenes of Sinope, who labelled this performative political subjectivity ‘cosmopolitanism’, this thesis argues that the late works of Borges, Beckett and Coetzee must be understood as creating a self-reflexive kynical cosmopolitanism, in which the role of the writer in the world becomes an aesthetic device for engaging with cosmopolitan political subjectivity. - v - List of Abbreviations Diogenes of Sinope DL Lives of Eminent Philosophers, ed. R.D Hicks [1925] (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1972) Jorge Luis Borges Dr Dreamtigers, trans. Mildred Boyer and Harold Morland (Austin, TX: UP Texas, 1964) L Labyrinths, trans. Donald A. Yates and James E. Irby (London: Penguin, 1970) OC1 Obras Completas Tomo I: 1923-1949 (Barcelona: Emecé, 1996) OC2 Obras Completas Tomo II: 1952-1972 (Barcelona: Emecé, 1996) OC3 Obras Completas Tomo III: 1975-1985 (Barcelona: Emecé, 1996) OC4 Obras Completas Tomo IV: 1975-1988 (Barcelona: Emecé, 1996) TL The Total Library: Non-Fiction 1922-1986, ed. Eliot Weinberger, trans. Esther Allen, Suzanne Jill Levine and Eliot Weinberger (London: Penguin, 2001) TR1 Textos Recobrados: 1919-1929 (Buenos Aires: Emecé Editores S.A., 1997) TR2 Textos Recobrados: 1931-1955 (Buenos Aires: Emecé Editores S.A., 1997) TR3 Textos Recobrados: 1956-1986 (Buenos Aires: Emecé Editores S.A., 1997) Samuel Beckett Disj Disjecta: Miscellaneous Writings and a Dramatic Fragment, ed. Ruby Cohn (New York: Grove Press, 1984) SB1 Samuel Beckett: The Grove Centenary Edition. Volume I: Novels, ed. Paul Auster, intro. Colm Toibin (New York: Grove Press, 2006) SB2 Samuel Beckett: The Grove Centenary Edition. Volume II: Novels, ed. Paul Auster, intro. Salman Rushdie (New York: Grove Press, 2006) - vi - SB3 Samuel Beckett: The Grove Centenary Edition. Volume III: Dramatic Works, ed. Paul Auster, intro. Edward Albee (New York: Grove Press, 2006) SB4 Samuel Beckett: The Grove Centenary Edition. Volume IV: Poems, Short Fiction, Criticism, ed. Paul Auster, intro. J.M. Coetzee (New York: Grove Press, 2006) SBL1 The Letters of Samuel Beckett Volume 1: 1929-1940. ed. Martha Dow Fehsenfeld and Lois More Overbeck (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009) SBL2 The Letters of Samuel Beckett Volume 2: 1941-1956. ed. George Craig, Martha Dow Fehsenfeld, Dan Gunn and Lois More Overbeck (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2011) J.M. Coetzee AI Age of Iron (London: Penguin, 1998) D Disgrace (London: Vintage, 2000) DBY Diary of a Bad Year (London: Harville Secker, 2007) DP Doubling the Point: Essays and Interviews, ed. David Attwell (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1992) Du Dusklands (London: Vintage, 1998) EC Elizabeth Costello (London: Secker & Warburg, 2003) EWSB ‘Eight Ways of Looking at Samuel Beckett’ Samuel Beckett Today/Aujour’dhui, Vol. 19 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2008): 19-31. F Foe (London: Penguin, 1987) GO Giving Offense (Chicago: Chicago UP, 1996) IHC In the Heart of the Country (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982) LTMK Life & Times of Michael K (London: Secker & Warburg, 1983) MP Master of Petersburg (London: Secker & Warburg, 1994) SS Stranger Shores (London: Vintage, 2002) WB Waiting for the Barbarians (London: Minerva, 1997) Y Youth (London: Secker & Warburg, 2002) - vii - Table of Contents Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................................. iii Abstract ............................................................................................................................................... iv List of Abbreviations ........................................................................................................................... v Table of Contents .............................................................................................................................. vii Introduction Towards the Cynical Cosmopolitan ............................................................................ 2 Chapter 1 Kynical Precursorship in Borges, Beckett and Coetzee ............................................... 29 A Stoic Cosmopolitanism? .................................................................................. 30 Between Kynicism and Cynicism ....................................................................... 42 From Tradition to Precursorship ......................................................................... 58 Borges on Waiting for Godot .............................................................................. 65 Beckett in Patagonia...........................................................................................