Cosmopolitanism and Material Ethics 79‘man’.”^3 Such a deconstructive rejection of the dichotomy has found
expression in other fields of inquiry, such as the natural sciences.
The neuroscientist Stephen Rose, for example, argues against cre-
ating a “false dichotomy” between the physical procedures that
occur within the human body and the environmental context that
influences them.^4 Rose contends that “the nature/nurture dichot-
omy is a fallacious one” because “the environment, the context in
which genes are expressed, is no mechanical cook simply following
instructions, but an active partner in development.”^5 T h e f a c t t h a t
both Williams and Rose consider themselves to practise “material-
ist” approaches in their (very different) fields of academic inquiry
offers an instructive illustration of the broad scope of the term and
its possible applications. However, having great breadth does not
dilute the general idea that anchors both, which is essentially one
that insists upon the physical rootedness of all phenomena, be they
cultural or anatomical.
As is argued below, the manner in which Coetzee frames certain
ethical questions attests to a similar, materially grounded approach.
Indeed, in this chapter I maintain that there is a range or “contin-
uum” of material considerations in which one can locate Coetzee’s
orientation to ethical questions. In particular, these material con-
siderations vary from an attentiveness to what Foucault considered
the physical (particularly violent) basis of social power, as exercised
within the human realm, to a stress on the physicality of animal
suffering, which upsets the ethical distinction between human and
nonhuman.^6
There have been, of course, a number of critics who have
employed Foucauldian frameworks in their readings of Coetzee.
According to David Attwell, Life & Times of Michael K ([1983]
1998) resonates with Foucauldian themes by presenting “the notion
of power as a force dispersed through every level of social relations.”^7
Furthermore, Attwell recognizes the degree to which this “force”
is ultimately grounded in physical violence.^8 This framework is
particularly effective in his reading of Waiting for the Barbarians ,
in which Attwell applies Foucault’s theories to illustrate the man-
ner in which physical pain is used by “Empire” to “produce” the
human soul.^9 Jane Poyner also deploys Foucault’s framework to