Materiality and the Modern Cosmopolitan Novel

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80 Materiality and the Modern Cosmopolitan Novel


great effect in her discussion of the novel. In keeping with a central
concern of Foucault’s work, Poyner examines the manner in which
Coetzee’s fiction portrays “madness” as a sociocultural designation
that vindicates exceptional physical intervention and control. “In
Barbarians ,” she argues “the binaries of reason/unreason and mad/
not, are exposed in the context of Enlightenment thinking as con-
structions that serve to maintain Empire’s power.”^10 I n t h e d i s c u s -
sion that follows, I use Foucault’s theoretical model in ways that
are similar to those employed by Attwell and Poyner, but I also
examine the broader ethical implications involved, as well as the
role of empathy.
When the analysis turns to Disgrace and Elizabeth Costello , the
focus shifts beyond power relations between humans and looks at
those between humans and animals. This approach is by no means
new, and the past few years in particular have given rise to a new
wave of important critical works that have interrogated the ethical
implications raised by Coetzee’s depictions of animal suffering (par-
ticularly that caused by humans). In her recent book, Laura Wright
traces a trajectory in Coetzee’s fiction in which human and animal
suffering is first analogously juxtaposed but in subsequent novels is
conspicuously contrasted. According to Wright, this latter approach
deliberately avoids portraying animal pain as “symbolic” of human
suffering because to do so would be to rely on human similitude for
the reader’s sympathy. In Coetzee’s latter works, she maintains, the
spectacle of the suffering of animals is intended to be read simply
as the suffering of animals, and “not as symbolic representations
of other oppressed groups of humans.”^11 In the discussion below,
I observe similar processes occurring in Disgrace. However, I also
demonstrate that there are broader ethical implications that have
not been fully addressed in the critical literature. Specifically, this
involves Coetzee seeking to establish a “material” or physically
based ethical system that admits both humans and animals, thereby
expanding the foundations upon which cosmopolitan ethics might
be built.
As noted in the introduction, conciliation across ethnic, cultural,
and class divides is one of the central motifs of cosmopolitan thought,
which grounds its universal aspirations and ethical priorities. For

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