J. M. Coetzee's Poetics of the Child : Arendt, Agamben, and the (Ir)responsibilities of Literary Creation

"Tracing how central tensions in J.M. Coetzee's fiction converge in and are made visible by the child figure, this book establishes the centrality of the child to Coetzee's poetics. Through readings of novels from Dusklands to The Schooldays of Jesus, Charlotta Elmgren shows how Coetzee's writing stages the constant interplay between irresponsibility and responsibility-to the self, the other, and the world. In articulating this poetics of (ir)responsibility, Elmgren offers the first sustained engagement with the intersections between the writing of J.M. Coetzee and the philosophical thought of Giorgio Agamben. Key to the argument is Agamben's idea of infancy, the experience of holding thought in suspense, which is shown to productively complement earlier critical perspectives that, drawing on Blanchot, Levinas, and Derrida, find in Coetzee's writing an ethics of hospitality to an alterity that is always yet to emerge. With reference also to Hannah Arendt's thinking on natality and education, Elmgren demonstrates the inextricable links in Coetzee's writing between freedom, play, and serious attention to the world. The book is structured around five central dynamics of a "poetics of the child" in Coetzee's works: the child as a figure of truth-telling and authenticity; the ethics of the not-so-other child; the child, new beginnings and care for the world; infancy and the poetics of perpetual study; and the redemptive potential of the nonposition of infancy. Offering a fresh contribution to the field of literary childhood studies, this study shows the critical possibilities in thinking about-and with-childlike openness and childish experimentation when approaching the writing and reading of the work of J.M. Coetzee and beyond"-- Provided by publisher Cover 1 Half Title 2 Title 4 Copyright 5 Contents 6 Acknowledgements 8 Abbreviations 10 Introduction 12 The child in Coetzee: A story waiting to be told 12 Towards a poetics of the child 18 From Levinas and Derrida to Agamben and Arendt 25 Writing and the child 30 The child as the object of writerly desire 32 The writer as child 36 Conceptions of the child 40 ‘The child’ – a fluid concept 41 The child and the fully human 42 A figure of openness and possibility 46 Outline 49 1 The story of the (un)romantic child: Innocence, truth, and first fictions of the self 52 Fragments of childhoods 55 (Un)romantic children 57 Navigating fictions 64 Moments of openness 71 Authentic encounters: From self to other 74 2 Ethics of the not-so-other child 76 The savage-as-child-as-self 82 Children of iron 92 Ethics of indeterminacy 103 3 The child between past and future 106 Natality and the event 112 Worrying about the child 114 Getting beyond death 117 Amor mundi and transmissibility 121 The interregnum, freedom, and writing 124 Pedagogy and play 128 From natality to infancy 133 4 Childish behaviour: The poetics of study 136 From waiting to ‘pressing on’ 139 The incessant shuttling of study 143 Grasping the potentialities of the present 145 Impotentiality and the curious state of infancy 147 Embracing uncertainty 153 From childish to childlike 156 5 The redemptive nonposition of infancy 160 The burdensome search for truth 163 Infancy and language as such 168 Being like a child: ‘The revocation of every vocation’ 170 Infancy and ethics 173 Writing and redemption 175 Coda 178 References 182 Index 194 Tracing how central tensions in J.M. Coetzee's fiction converge in and are made visible by the child figure, this book establishes the centrality of the child to Coetzee's poetics. Through readings of novels from Dusklands to The Schooldays of Jesus , Charlotta Elmgren shows how Coetzee's writing stages the constant interplay between irresponsibility and responsibility - to the self, the other, and the world. In articulating this poetics of (ir)responsibility, Elmgren offers the first sustained engagement with the intersections between Coetzee's work and the philosophical thought of Giorgio Agamben. With reference also to Hannah Arendt's thinking on natality, education, and amor mundi , Elmgren demonstrates the inextricable links in Coetzee's writing between freedom, play, and serious attention to the world. The book identifies five central dynamics of Coetzee's poetics: the child as a figure of truth-telling and authenticity; the ethics of the not-so-other child; the child, new beginnings and care for the world; childish behaviour as perpetual study; and the redemptive potential of infancy. Offering a fresh contribution to the field of literary childhood studies, Elmgren shows the critical possibilities in thinking about - and with - childlike openness and childish experimentation when approaching the writing and reading of the work of J.M. Coetzee and beyond.