Embodied encounters: the city and an alternative world of possibility in J.M. Coetzee's Slow Man (2005)

Wilson, J. M. (2017) Embodied encounters: the city and an alternative world of possibility in J.M. Coetzee's Slow Man (2005). Paper presented to: 16th Triennial European Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies (EACLALS) Conference: Performing the Urban: Embodiments, Inventories, Rhythms, University of Oviedo, Asturias, Spain, 03-07 April 2017.

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Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Abstract:	This paper examines the marginalizing of the metropolitan space of Adelaide in J.M. Coetzee’s novel, Slow Man (2005), due to the reduced mobility of the protagonist after losing a leg, and in relation to narrative self-consciousness about the construction of the text. Seeing corporeal enfeeblement as an analogue to the waning of fictional powers, it suggests that the novel’s metafictional dimension, the struggle for authorial control between the hero, Paul Rayment, and his alter ego, Elizabeth Costello, masks a search for alternative realms of meaning, given the corporeal body is no longer fitted to its environment. As the urban milieu becomes more circumscribed and as the fictional world expands, hidden feelings, dependencies and memories emerge. The narrator’s struggle towards fictional mobilization, paralleling his physical immobility, and his ‘othering’ by Costello, provides a level of fictional performativity. The paper examines how Coetzee’s construction of his protagonist in terms of corporeal suffering introduces a change of scale in thinking about regional and global connectivity. Although Paul Rayment’s physical horizons shrink following the loss of his leg, he finds transnational connectedness through recognising his migrant identity, and through his embodied urban encounters with diasporic others. Conceptual remapping, catalysed by his problematic engagement with nurses and carers and his struggle with the writing process, focuses on the spatiotemporal realities of the metropolis and the nation state. These markers of location are revalued in his reach towards an imaginary alternative world from which new solidarities may emerge.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Coetzee, Slow Man, corporeal suffering, embodiment, metropolitan, performativity
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > PR English literature > PR8309 English literature: Provincial, local, etc. > PR9369.3 South African literature
Creators:	Wilson, Janet M
Faculties, Divisions and Institutes:	University Faculties, Divisions and Research Centres - OLD > Research Centre > Centre for Critical and Creative Writing Research Centres > Centre for Critical and Creative Writing
Date:	5 April 2017
Date Type:	Publication
Event Title:	16th Triennial European Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies (EACLALS) Conference: Performing the Urban: Embodiments, Inventories, Rhythms
Event Dates:	03-07 April 2017
Event Location:	University of Oviedo, Asturias, Spain
Event Type:	Conference
Language:	English
Status:	Published / Disseminated
Related URLs:	Conference
References:	Attridge, Derek, J.M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Reading. Chicago and London; University of Chicago Press, 2004. Attwell, David. J.M. Coetzee and the Life of Writing: Face to face with time. New York: Viking, 2015.] Burkitt, Ian. Bodies of Thought. Embodiment, Identity & Modernity. London; Sage, 1999. Coetzee, J.M. Doubling the Point. Essays and Interviews, ed. David Atwell. Cambridge Mass. Harvard University Press, 1992. Dancygier, Barbara. ‘Close encounters: The Author and Character in Elizabeth Costello, Slow Man and Diary of a Bad Year. In In J.M. Coetzee’s Austerities, ed. Graham Bradshaw and Michael Neill. Farnham: Ashgate, 2010, pp. 231-252/ J.M. Coetzee in Context and Theory, edited by Elleke Boehmer, Robert Eaglestone and Katy Iddiols. London and New York : Continuum, 2009. J.M. Coetzee’s Austerities, edited by Graham Bradshaw and Michael Neill. Farnham: Ashgate, 2010. Wicomb, Zoe. ‘Slow Man and the Real: A Lesson in Reading and Writing’. In J.M. Coetzee’s Austerities, ed. Graham Bradshaw and Michael Neill. Farnham: Ashgate, 2010, pp. 215-230.
URI:	http://nectar.northampton.ac.uk/id/eprint/9489

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