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J. M. Coetzee's Ecopoetics and Environmental Ethics: A New Materialist Reading of Life & Times of Michael K and The Lives of Animals

Sep 2026 · MFS: Modern Fiction Studies · Vol 72, pp. 578 - 595 · 0 citations · 23 references

Abstract

Abstract:J. M. Coetzee's engagement with the nonhuman other in some early and later fiction raises the philosophical questions of being and materiality. In Life and Times of Michael K and The Lives of Animals, nature and the animal other assume the form of a radically non-signifying materiality beyond the confines of (human) language and discourse. Using contemporary new materialist theories of subjectivity, being and agency, this essay studies what appears to be Coetzee's attempt to go beyond his familiar constructivist position and figure out a way into the being of nature and the animal. It argues that his engagement with the nonhuman other lays the ground for a new post-deconstructive ecopoetics that takes embeddedness, embodiment, and empathic entanglement as modes of being in and knowing the world.

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