Cosmopolitanism and Material Ethics 115character’s mordant humor and ironic outlook—qualities that, as I
explicate above, express themselves at the most seemingly unlikely
and inappropriate moments, and which remain largely intact by the
end of the narrative.
However, in Costello’s case, this singularity is established through
the application of a variety of different stylistic and formal tech-
niques. Costello is, of course, a highly intelligent, well-read and
independent-minded character, who is not afraid of expressing her
thoughts , even (or perhaps especially) her more controversial ones.
A staunch proponent of animal rights, she uses the platforms she
receives as a successful novelist to denounce what she sees as human-
ity’s industrial abuse of animals, which she describes as “an enter-
prise of degradation, cruelty and killing” (p. 65). However, in spite
of being expressed with consistent conviction, Costello’s arguments
occasionally falter in their clarity and cohesiveness. We could look,
for example, at the long, roving talk she delivers at Altona College
in 1995. Titled “What is Realism?,” the speech not only raises some
interesting questions about the arbitrary nature and inherent limita-
tions associated with the term, but also touches upon the issue of
the human mistreatment of animals. A large portion of her address
involves a retelling of Franz Kafka’s story, “A Report to an Academy,”
the substance of which connects with the novel’s themes of animal
rights and what Costello sees as the ethical limitations of rational
thought. However, the speech itself does not make such connections
overtly clear. Indeed, her meandering, circumlocutory style makes
it a challenge for the reader (or auditor) to appreciate how the story
connects with the topic of realism at all:
I am not, I hope, abusing the privilege of this platform to make idle,
nihilistic jokes about what I am, ape or woman, and what you are, my
auditors. That is not the point of the story, say I, who am, however, in
no position to dictate what the point of the story is. There used to be a
time, we believe, when we could say who we were. (p. 19)This excerpt perhaps best reveals Costello’s lapses in coherent expres-
sion. Although she is often all too direct in conveying her opinions
on other occasions, in the speech quoted above, there are a large
number of periphrastic insertions that both disrupt the flow of her