Under the Shadow of a Self-Sufficient Writer: The Critic and J. M. Coetzee

Abstract

J. M. Coetzee’s writing has consistently challenged the work of the critic, questioning the principles of literary criticism and preempting its ordinary procedures. A distinguishing trait of this challenge is the solipsistic dimension of Coetzee’s writing, described here as a form of self-sufficiency in relation to the role of the interpreter. This dissertation examines Coetzee’s interrogation of literary criticism and the response produced by the dominant strand in the scholarship on his works. The work of the critic is conceived in the phenomenological terms of proximity, which presupposes an empathetic and celebratory stance in relation to the author, and distance, commonly associated with detachment and impartiality. A rhetorical approach to narratives as communicative acts provides the theoretical framework to gauge Coetzee’s implied views about the work of the critic. Three central issues intersect in the argument presented here. The first is Coetzee’s role in paving the way for a fundamentally proximal response to his works, a response that is often deferential. The second is the consolidation of this celebratory practice in Coetzee scholarship and its tendency to ignore the resistance to critical paraphrase and containment performed by his works. The third issue is the disempowering effect of the self-sufficient dimension of Coetzee’s oeuvre on the critic’s interpretive authority. Self-sufficiency is projected by the scope of Coetzee’s literary project, which includes prose and criticism, and it becomes particularly evident in the context of his later self- referential or autobiographical works, two of which are discussed here: the novel Disgrace and the memoir Summertime. The self-sufficiency of Coetzee’s writing disempowers the critic in two ways. First, the continuities between both spheres of his oeuvre give rise to a potentially self-explanatory relationship between them because the critical pieces indirectly provide a congenial explanatory framework to elucidate the fiction. The critic’s intellectual autonomy becomes, therefore, a questionable issue. Second, Coetzee’s works enact what can be described as a preemptive awareness of critical procedures that undermines the critic’s interpretive authority by throwing into relief the inescapable bias and flaws of the interpretive process.