This chapter proposes to read Coetzee’s self-reflexivity as an ethics of writing. Coetzee deliber... more This chapter proposes to read Coetzee’s self-reflexivity as an ethics of writing. Coetzee deliberately undermines his own authority, and he does this to the effect of handing over to the reader the task of making judgments. Self-reflexivity, especially in the form of metalepsis, is shown to be the opposite of what it is often taken to be, that is, a turn away from the world and from ethico-political issues; rather, self-reflexive narrative strategies are a way of opening the text to such issues through their extension of an invitation to dialogue to the reader. This chapter offers a discussion of the notion of metalepsis in these terms, drawing on theoretical material from the fields of ethical criticism and postclassical narratology by, in particular, Derek Attridge, James Phelan, Monika Fludernik, and David Herman.
This chapter focuses on the role of author and reader in the construction of storyworlds. The cha... more This chapter focuses on the role of author and reader in the construction of storyworlds. The chapter elucidates a parallel, in Coetzee’s works, between responsibilities to care for others who suffer emotionally and physically and discursive responsibility to bring a textual world into being. The figure of Elizabeth Costello, employed by Coetzee as an author surrogate in multiple texts (Slow Man, Elizabeth Costello, The Lives of Animals, “The Old Woman and the Cats,” “As a Woman Grows Older,” and Age of Iron, where Mrs. Curren is a forerunner), is shown to be in a state of limbo, subject to uncertainties in writing and reading. She functions to allow Coetzee to speak without claiming authority and to extend responsibility to the reader for the challenges that surrogates and author face.
This chapter explores how Summertime (2009), Diary of a Bad Year (2007), and Dusklands (1974) add... more This chapter explores how Summertime (2009), Diary of a Bad Year (2007), and Dusklands (1974) address the difficulty of autobiographical writing. The chapter makes use of the theoretical work of Mikhail Bakhtin and Judith Butler to argue for a dialogism in Coetzee’s work that is fundamentally ethical and to reconsider accounts of works at the boundary of fact and fiction in autobiography theory. The chapter reads Coetzee’s employment of explicitly autobiographical author surrogates as a means of rendering himself accountable as writer. Metalepsis, in these texts, serves to emphasize that storyworlds and reality are distinct but linked, that in writing the author creates a fiction but that this fiction has real-world consequences, and that these are outside the author’s control but that he nonetheless holds responsibility for them.
In 1996, Marie Darrieussecq published an article entitled ‘Autofiction, a non-serious Genre’ (‘L’... more In 1996, Marie Darrieussecq published an article entitled ‘Autofiction, a non-serious Genre’ (‘L’Autofiction, un genre pas sérieux’) in which she ironically lauded autobiography only to better support autofiction’s creativity and its noncommittal attitude toward reality. Even if Darrieussecq meant ‘non-serious’ to denote a less respected, frowned-upon subcategory of autobiographical discourse, now almost 50 years after Doubrovsky first coined the term, it is worth considering if indeed autofiction is a non-serious mode of writing, although along a different understanding of the non-serious than Darrieusecq’s. Autofiction, as a genre, is often associated with humour, irony, and play. Autofictional texts almost by definition play with language. They usually create an ironic distance between author and narrator or character-versions of the self; and autofictional texts, often humorously, challenge and transform conventions of autobiographical and/or documentary writing. Yet very few autofictional texts are exclusively, or even primarily, playful. Many employ humour and irony to engage with very serious subject matter, including human rights violations linked to historical and collective as well as personal trauma, and struggle with psychological or physical illness, abuse, and culturally dominant narratives that impose psychologically harmful restrictions on identity development. The articles brought together in this special issue demonstrate that these seemingly opposed characteristics of autofictional texts in fact work together, and show how a range of autofictional texts create affective effects in readers. The contributions illustrate how humour and irony, as dominant characteristics in much autofictional writing, can function to express and productively engage with a range of intense emotional states, and how representation of emotions can be strategically made use of to work towards real-life changes. The articles collected in this issue focus on how tragedy, mirth, and humour (as a rhetorical tool aimed at producing it) interact within the same narrative space. When it comes to personal narratives, whether autofictional or fully autobiographical, the feelings depicted are often exacerbated, by a particular psychological disposition or simply dramatic events. Autofiction conveniently allows authors to give voice to these emotions and operate under a veil of secrecy, namely generic ambiguity, and to thus retain a certain level of privacy that memoirists are ready to forsake. A preponderance of what could be dubbed hyperbolic emotions is not surprising, since as noted by Monika Fludernik, ‘All experience is therefore stored as emotionally charged remembrance, and it is reproduced in narrative form because it was memorable, funny, scary, or exciting’ (1996, 29). Emotions, and more particularly their expression and repression, are also part and parcel of the autofictional project as defined originally by Serge Doubrovsky. Emotions are inherently about communication, and their phenomenology is determined by what we learn through language and culture. As explained by neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett in How Emotions are Made. The Secret Life of the Brain, we have emotions because we have ‘emotion concepts’ expressed by means of language, and when you learn new
This chapter proposes to read Coetzee’s self-reflexivity as an ethics of writing. Coetzee deliber... more This chapter proposes to read Coetzee’s self-reflexivity as an ethics of writing. Coetzee deliberately undermines his own authority, and he does this to the effect of handing over to the reader the task of making judgments. Self-reflexivity, especially in the form of metalepsis, is shown to be the opposite of what it is often taken to be, that is, a turn away from the world and from ethico-political issues; rather, self-reflexive narrative strategies are a way of opening the text to such issues through their extension of an invitation to dialogue to the reader. This chapter offers a discussion of the notion of metalepsis in these terms, drawing on theoretical material from the fields of ethical criticism and postclassical narratology by, in particular, Derek Attridge, James Phelan, Monika Fludernik, and David Herman.
This chapter focuses on the role of author and reader in the construction of storyworlds. The cha... more This chapter focuses on the role of author and reader in the construction of storyworlds. The chapter elucidates a parallel, in Coetzee’s works, between responsibilities to care for others who suffer emotionally and physically and discursive responsibility to bring a textual world into being. The figure of Elizabeth Costello, employed by Coetzee as an author surrogate in multiple texts (Slow Man, Elizabeth Costello, The Lives of Animals, “The Old Woman and the Cats,” “As a Woman Grows Older,” and Age of Iron, where Mrs. Curren is a forerunner), is shown to be in a state of limbo, subject to uncertainties in writing and reading. She functions to allow Coetzee to speak without claiming authority and to extend responsibility to the reader for the challenges that surrogates and author face.
This chapter explores how Summertime (2009), Diary of a Bad Year (2007), and Dusklands (1974) add... more This chapter explores how Summertime (2009), Diary of a Bad Year (2007), and Dusklands (1974) address the difficulty of autobiographical writing. The chapter makes use of the theoretical work of Mikhail Bakhtin and Judith Butler to argue for a dialogism in Coetzee’s work that is fundamentally ethical and to reconsider accounts of works at the boundary of fact and fiction in autobiography theory. The chapter reads Coetzee’s employment of explicitly autobiographical author surrogates as a means of rendering himself accountable as writer. Metalepsis, in these texts, serves to emphasize that storyworlds and reality are distinct but linked, that in writing the author creates a fiction but that this fiction has real-world consequences, and that these are outside the author’s control but that he nonetheless holds responsibility for them.
In 1996, Marie Darrieussecq published an article entitled ‘Autofiction, a non-serious Genre’ (‘L’... more In 1996, Marie Darrieussecq published an article entitled ‘Autofiction, a non-serious Genre’ (‘L’Autofiction, un genre pas sérieux’) in which she ironically lauded autobiography only to better support autofiction’s creativity and its noncommittal attitude toward reality. Even if Darrieussecq meant ‘non-serious’ to denote a less respected, frowned-upon subcategory of autobiographical discourse, now almost 50 years after Doubrovsky first coined the term, it is worth considering if indeed autofiction is a non-serious mode of writing, although along a different understanding of the non-serious than Darrieusecq’s. Autofiction, as a genre, is often associated with humour, irony, and play. Autofictional texts almost by definition play with language. They usually create an ironic distance between author and narrator or character-versions of the self; and autofictional texts, often humorously, challenge and transform conventions of autobiographical and/or documentary writing. Yet very few autofictional texts are exclusively, or even primarily, playful. Many employ humour and irony to engage with very serious subject matter, including human rights violations linked to historical and collective as well as personal trauma, and struggle with psychological or physical illness, abuse, and culturally dominant narratives that impose psychologically harmful restrictions on identity development. The articles brought together in this special issue demonstrate that these seemingly opposed characteristics of autofictional texts in fact work together, and show how a range of autofictional texts create affective effects in readers. The contributions illustrate how humour and irony, as dominant characteristics in much autofictional writing, can function to express and productively engage with a range of intense emotional states, and how representation of emotions can be strategically made use of to work towards real-life changes. The articles collected in this issue focus on how tragedy, mirth, and humour (as a rhetorical tool aimed at producing it) interact within the same narrative space. When it comes to personal narratives, whether autofictional or fully autobiographical, the feelings depicted are often exacerbated, by a particular psychological disposition or simply dramatic events. Autofiction conveniently allows authors to give voice to these emotions and operate under a veil of secrecy, namely generic ambiguity, and to thus retain a certain level of privacy that memoirists are ready to forsake. A preponderance of what could be dubbed hyperbolic emotions is not surprising, since as noted by Monika Fludernik, ‘All experience is therefore stored as emotionally charged remembrance, and it is reproduced in narrative form because it was memorable, funny, scary, or exciting’ (1996, 29). Emotions, and more particularly their expression and repression, are also part and parcel of the autofictional project as defined originally by Serge Doubrovsky. Emotions are inherently about communication, and their phenomenology is determined by what we learn through language and culture. As explained by neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett in How Emotions are Made. The Secret Life of the Brain, we have emotions because we have ‘emotion concepts’ expressed by means of language, and when you learn new
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