DisgraceTom HerronCrossing borders or the ends of man I come or surren - PDF document

DisgraceTom HerronCrossing borders or the ends of man I come or surrende Derrida (372)With their paralle different from any offered hy human exchange. Dif-ferent because it is a companionship offered to th i {A Thousand Plateaus 240)n extraordinary moment in Levinas:And then, about half lives. One da assembl and was waiting for us as we returned,jumping up an down and barking in delight )In desperate conditions Emmanuel Levinas comes close to articulating anew relationship with the animal, with the not to allegorize or metaphorize this dog; he tries to see Bobby in hi the moment of identificatio n needed to Levinas ) do not. Bynot differentiating between humanity of the prisoners; he ha worth of th other. But fo Levinas the fact that one's very humanit remarkable tension and irresolvable contradictions:what or wh this animal? How to respond to the gift he ha h and alongside this fellow being, thisdog, without reducing him to a mere representative of his kind?Levinas s difliculties with the animal are by no include , Kant, Heidegger,and Lacan) whosediscourses [on the] are sound and, but-thing goes on g l or theoretical architecture of their discourse.(383)When Levinas so movingly registers hist to this cherished being, we (383). But ultimately, for al his jumping and delighted bark-ing and friendly growling, Bobby can onl languag Mill, Bentham, and Buber) this tradi-tion has hardly concerne itself with the animal, and when it has turnedits gaze to other living creatures it ha tha resulted, more often than not, in th ''immens disavowal") and, onthe other, th ease with which writers and poets hav produced multipl diverse engagement y isregarded as "ae . There youe a hypothesis: be-tween philosophical knowledg valorizing poetry' o of J. M. Coetzee's recent literary creations:the Australian novelist Elizabeth Costello who African universityprofessor David Lurie of Disgrace (1999). In he poorly delivered guestlectures at Appleton College in the United States, Ehzabeth Costello inThe Lives of Animals restates Derrida's distinctio and the multiple lives of animals in poetry. Costello sets outher conviction regarding the cruelty of meat production, the irreducibleuniqueness of animals e is little sense the questions and objections of her audience. Ani-mals ar lecture philosophicalcounterpart to Disgrace, The Lives of -ing and depressing book that seems t having to resortto the conceits of everything in the bookis airless and vaguely pointless, and everything seems to end in failure.Witness the utter abjection of th final moments of th novella whenElizabeth Costello turns to her son an m I dreaming, I say to myself? Whatkind of house is animal and th s that play a part in the " (143) to them. which in its most profoun o sustained him d dead animals (those whose period of grace iseither ending or has ended), the firsts of of the resonances of many his mother, Elizabeth, lectureon the animal in literature, thinks.Jaguar poems ar all very well ... but you won't get a bunch ofAustralians standin the wholeanimal-rights business: that it ha ride on the back of pensivegorillas and sexy jaguars and huggable pandas because the realobjects of it concern, chicken and pigs, to sa gamong "cats . . . and , the crippled, themaimed, but also the young, the sound" in the possibility of bringing a crippled dog intothe shambles of an opera he has been composing for months. His life isas close to having no materia s because there is e of Coetzee's ar-ticulation of disgrace is the condition comesto articulat being of animals themselves: in otherwords, when the notion of disgrace has expanded to include all animals s that she runs in SouthAfrica'sn Cape d South Africa as . But not every dog fulfils such oppressive functions. There isKaty, the buUdog bitch, and e dogs brought in destroy on Sundays found on virtually every page of Disgrace, e process of becoming lost. Neglected, abandoned,attacked, burnedÑanimals fare badly in a world i hthes of "Africa's suffering beasts" (84): "grilled meat," "burningmeat," "meatballs," "soup-bones," "dog-meat," "blood," "brains," "bones,""butcher's meat," "stench of chicken feathers," "mutton chops," "boilingoffal," "singed fur," "fried chicken," "carcases of Some ofthe most moving passages in th e most part, beneath regard, hardly worth bothering about.The hvesof animals are routinely erased byn beings, not just through acts will be proved disastrously wrong about the deter-rence provide her assertion not a manifesto of animal rights. Itdoes not advocate an appreciation of animals as either a correlativ alternative to the "dark times" (216) it so vividly depicts. But as thenovel goes on, animals nonetheles South Africa; thebreakdown of law an order there; the ethics of silence as a response toblack-on-white, male-on-female rape; the notio c rationaliza-tion; the status of truth and the possibilities for reconciliation. As theseconcerns threaten to overwhelm David and Lucy to thett whatseems to be the most appropriate response tok times" is to becomeimperceptibleÑLucy suggests to s become the novel's matter;theyet matters.It i TheLife and Times of Michael K. (1974). Of course, Coetzee's texts discouragereadings that would seem to endorse such fulsome categorie growthand transformation. But somethin him isdifficult to articulate. It is not somethin novel's depiction of th -heid world. Indeed, our wha Derrida describes as"the industrial, mechanical, chemical, hormonal, and genetic violence towhich man has been submitting animal life for the past two centuries"(395). Nor should it diminish the possibilitie s of people over a periodof nearly half a century, a system of displayinghttle interest in animals. For much ofthe time they ar When they do feature in the earlier parts ofthenovel they are usually the stuff of metaphor "dogged silence," and so forth. When they are invokedmore explicitly it is in order to demonstrate narrowly anthropocentricconcerns. For example, contemplating self-castration in th : an appletree , what she does, but to meanimal-welfare people are a o kicka wha s is quite disturbing. Lucy has picked u r association with such people:"You .Which we share with thes the example that peoplelike Bev try to. That's the h the beasts. I don't want to comeback in let us be kind to them.But let us not lose perspective are ofa different order ofcreation from the animals. Not higher, necessarily, just different r as we cantell with seriousness. But at the same time and verbal performanc apparent contradiction to his professed lack of interes " And thereason? "Intercoursen Soraya [thee he visits every Thurs-da lengthy her home,he invokes an image fro intrudes into the vixen's nest, into the hom eIssacs, the episode is described in equally predatory terms:Not n her-self for the on its. (25)Lurie's reaction tog confironted bys father is to admit hispart in hern but, this, deploying the language of her at such a pitch of anger? A shark among the help-less little fishies? (53)Exiting th cornered a strange beast anddo not know how to finish it off" (55-56). And much later in the novelDavid will remember Melanie's reaction to his seduction of her as akinto "steppin out in the forest where the wild wolf prowls" (168).Until th professorof communications David travels out to Lucy's smallholding, this is theextent of animals' presence in th bee (122) as he calls it, or "darkes Afirica also calls itÑeverything changes whe David finds himselfin the midst of rea any part in David's rehabilitation or accom-modation to changed conditions. And there is certainly no suggestion thatan engagement with animals will not only paralle m the Shaws' animal-crowded house and garden. Almostimmediately after this exchange, at d begins working with animals. The first cag Katy, the bulldog bitch. Stretch-ing ou g him there:"Poor old Katy, she's in gods, and we respond by treating them hke things. r roomshe has recently vacated:"The e with them."Lucy. "I'm not sure that I have Becoming Animal in Coetzee's DisgraceA measure of ho far David moves in his journe through disgraceis the fact that by the end of the novel such language of certainty andauthorityÑeven if introduced ironicall via the Church FathersÑwil augmented by altogether more inclusive, more imaginative ways ofthinking. From th start of th book, David (once an active scholar ofromanticism but now reduced to teaching something called communica-tions, th premise which he fmds "preposterous" [3]) sees his languag more or less irrelevant to th fate: the language is"tired, friable, eaten from th g in a spiderweb, brittle to the touch, lighterthan, ready to . He feels "as i y the eroded shell of his heart remains."He and his language are becoming hollowed out, emptied: metonymsbeloved o e of the animal's soul after deathÑthat eternal soulhe had earlier reserved exclusively for the humany becomeremarkably powerful.At Lucy's suggestion, David volunteers to work at the animal refugerun by Bev (whose name he refuses t s him "of cattle"[79]). The care she displays toward the diseased and injured animalsprovokes i u arethinking" he responds with a silent "what ,so Ie I muste them, some parts of them." And t attitud more complex is revealed moments later, however, when, afterattempting to treat a particularly unpleasant injury to a goat, Bev attempt s response, although slightly off the through it. Bor for The Eve when he ha momentshas effecte "he visible as a filigre red and purple. The veins onher nose too." She possesses "a chin that comes straight out of her chest,like a pouter pigeon's" (82).What I've been calling David's transmutation will not completelyerase these habits of thought Everything at the end of the book is tenta-tive, balanced between what is determined ("Well, he is too ol heed,too old to change" [209]) and what is mutable ("There may be things tolearn" [218]). In this, David ha much in common wit moments of Anna Karenina, confides in hi reader:This new feeling has not changed me, has not rendered me hap-py, nor suddenly illuminated me as I dreamt it would.... But beit faith or notÑI do not know what it isÑthis feeling has als imperceptibly throug being close to animals, in lookin share his fate. In the final part of this essay I want to chartDavid's becoming animal and to demonstrate how it is, as Deleuze andGuattari insist, "perfectly real" {A Thousand Plateaus 238).¤In Kajka: Toward a Minor Literature Deleuze and Guattari suggest thatcertain types of writing can constitute forms of becoming Lives of Animals, the last of which contain to The Metamorphosis but also to "Report to movement stake outthe path of escape in all its positivity, to cross a threshold, toreach a continuum of intensities that are valuable only in them-selves, to fmd a world of pur deterritorialized flux, of non-signifying signs. (13)So, fo example, Gregor Samsa enters into that most famous becoming,a becomin e to find one, tha region where thevoice no longer does anything but hum.(Deleuze and Guattari Kafka 13)For al the audacity of Kafka's becomings animal and in spite of the vir-tuoso acts of imagination that produce Gregor, Josephine, and Re Peter,there is somethin s of their be-comings. For Deleuze and Guattari this has t suc imagination.... Becomings-animal are neither dreams nor fantasies. They are perfectly real.But which reality is at issue here? For if becoming-animal doesnot consist in playing animal or imitating an animal, it is clearthat th human being does no "really become an animal anymore than the animal "really" becomes something else. Becom-ing produces nothing other than itself We fall into a false alter-native if we say that you either imitate or you are. What is rea , Red Peter, et al. do not. Those nets of reterritorializationandn that Deleuze and Guattari perceive as death amorphous but nonethelesspowerful experience of disgrace. He moves into a realm of nonsignifi-cation, a "thing" neither fuUy human nor fuUy animal: a kind of ghost.Second, David wi not be returning to an . His time is taken uph three concerns: the pending birthof his d awareness of age, from malnutrition, from intestinal para-sites, bu most of all from their own fertility. There are simplytoo many of them. When people bring in a dog they do no e of it, make it disappear,dispatch i , hisbreath. I months David willbe observe more specific identification with the other animal. "An animal's eyes,"writes Martin Buber, "have th s to me?tis it?"That thist of I-Thou relationship r when, stepping out o e to make me think through thisabsolute alterity of ofa cat" (380).Thi encounte altogether more mobile ways of interrelated being:There is no animal in the general singular, separated from manby a single indivisible hmit.We have to envisage the existence of"living creatures" whose plurality cannot be assembled withinthe single figure of an animaht separates humankind from the other animals ... [I] t israther a matter of taking into account a multiplicit t oneof affection. It is not even a bond with these two in particular,whom he could notk out from a mob in a field. Neverthe-less, suddenly and without reason, their lot has become impor-tarlt to him. (126)Contemplating the fate of these half-starved animals, he admits to being"disturbed. I can't say why" (127). Considering the ethics of mourning,"theh of beings who , when "the door is closed andde he helps Bev episode o feel thee oft animals cease to befit objects for David's theoretical and philosophical. As hisprofessional, sexual, and gender identities crumble, and a , Davidmovesm a philosophical position ons to the understandingarticulated by chamber opera ex-emplifies this movement from the philosophical to the poetic. Althoughit "consume deformed.... It ha opera, David adopts anold banjo as hi s arms as shecalls out to her dead lover, Byron; and David hopes thatgl thenotes he has written, from "amidst the welter of sound there willt up,like immortal longing" (214).Then, mostaudaciously, David has the idea of introducing into his opera th voiceof the dog who likes music, the dog with the "withered left hindquarterwhich it drags behind it (215), the dog referre sound of the banjo. When he strumsthe strings, the do loose its ow lament to th heav-ens between the strophe ?(215)These are David's fmal snatches) to an audienc s thoughts and behav-ior. Her checklist is a call to become Disgrace. David's respons inflicted on animals in th Davidis in fact quoting from an author whose name he never mentions s with Lucy. Here e two of,cheek leaning against cheek, immediately before his face, watch- Trial to suggest that "the" will outlive the hapless K. In dying like adog he dies noty in the g dead.David's becoming is not quite of the same order o n the lives of theatre wit its zinc-toppedtable where the rich s whatfor so long has been s was unwilling ore to make toward thefellow being who accept th doesnot accept the status of Levinas and his comrades as "subhuman, a gangof apes" (Levinas 153) he is nonetheles language) that most philosophers of th Westerntradition have see s sense of affiliation with theanimals i t a racism marked by a virulent hatred of all blackpeople; indeed, David has good relationships inquiry into David's behavio e projected, mainly but not exclusively, onto blackpeople.e this habit of an Eastern Cape black sets smile. "I am the gardener and the dog-man. for a moment. "The dog-man," he repeats, savoring thephrase. (64)Petrus's support for the Bushbucks footbal team sustains his associationwith animals, and the metonymic chain of associations linking blacks,football, and animals surfaces again when David tries unsuccessfully toescape the lavatory into which he ha been forced by th t sustained yoking of s Disgracerapist is described minutes before the attack as hissing at the dogs in theircages and Davids nightmares: "panting, shoutingsoundlessly, [he] runs firom the man with the face like a hawk, like a Beninmask" (121). When the boy rapist returns to th scene of the crime asa guest at the party Petrus is throwing to celebrate a land transfer in hi regarde to him as "a jackal boy" (202). And when he catches the boypeering at Lucy , and strikes him ... 'You filthy swine!'. . . The word 'Swine!'" complicates an under-standing of his becoming animal. His racism, compounded by an authorialarrangement of events in which it is blacks who perform acts of crueltyand whites who clear up the mess (Bev an black people are responsible for the violenc th in other animals. The phrase wellsa allow what Derrida calls the animal's address tothe human whilst at the same time extending to animals human kindness,sympathy, and, finally .e of Bronze, State of Grace: Music and and Thou. Trans. Ronald Gregor Smith. Edinburgh: Clark,1937.Clark, David. "'The Last Kantian in Nazi Germany': Dwelling with Animalsafter Levinas." Animal Acts: Configuring the Human in Western History.Ed. Jennife Ham and Matthew Senior. London: Routledge Emmanuel "The Name ofa Dog