J. M. Coetzee's poetics of the child : Arendt, Agamben, and the (ir)responsibilities of literary creation / Charlotta Elmgren.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Elmgren, Charlotta, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Coetzee, J. M., 1940---Criticism and interpretation.

Coetzee, J. M.

Coetzee, J. M., 1940-.

Children in literature.

Criticism and interpretation.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

viii, 189 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

London ; New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2021.

Summary:

"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.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: The child in Coetzee: A story waiting to be told

Towards a poetics of the child

From Levinas and Derrida to Agamben and Arendt

Writing and the child

The child as the object of writerly desire

The writer as child

Conceptions of the child

`The child' - a fluid concept

The child and the fully human

A figure of openness and possibility

Outline

1. The story of the (un)romantic child: Innocence, truth, and first fictions of the self

Fragments of childhoods

(Un)romantic children

Navigating fictions

Moments of openness

Authentic encounters: From self to other

2. Ethics of the not-so-other child

The savage-as-child-as-self

Children of iron

Ethics of indeterminacy

3. The child between past and future

Natality and the event

Worrying about the child

Getting beyond death

Amor mundi and transmissibility

The interregnum, freedom, and writing

Pedagogy and play

From natality to infancy

4. Childish behaviour: The poetics of study

From waiting to `pressing on

The incessant shuttling of study

Grasping the potentialities of the present

Impotentiality and the curious state of infancy

Embracing uncertainty

From childish to childlike

5. The redemptive nonposition of infancy

The burdensome search for truth

Infancy and language as such

Being like a child: "The revocation of every vocation

Infancy and ethics

Writing and redemption.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 171-182) and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Elmgren, Charlotta. J. M. Coetzee's poetics of the child

ISBN:

9781350138421

1350138428

OCLC:

1143823824