'The Impulse Towards Silence': Creaturely Expressivity in Beckett and Coetzee

Joseph Anderton

doi:10.1057/978-1-349-93437-9_13

'The Impulse Towards Silence': Creaturely Expressivity in Beckett and Coetzee

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter

Abstract

Forms of silence can serve as a signature of ?creaturely life?: the suspended state of being in uncanny proximity with the nonhuman animal to which a subject is exposed when detached from the constitutive values and normative meanings that structure human life. The claim in this chapter is that Samuel Beckett?s Worstward Ho and J.M. Coetzee?s Life and Times of Michael K are both attentive to the estranged, elusive, ahistorical dimensions of creaturely life through the pursuit of a non-discursive state coinciding with the compulsion or solicitation to speak. In their varying ways of voicing silence, Beckett and Coetzee generate a fraternity with animals in exposing the human?s own potential intimacy with the embodied life beyond the symbolic order of language and narrative.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	Beyond the Human-Animal Divide
Editors	Dominik Ohrem, Roman Bartosch
Place of Publication	New York
Publisher	Palgrave Macmillan
Pages	265-282
Number of pages	18
ISBN (Print)	9781137603098
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-93437-9_13
Publication status	Published (VoR) - 22 Nov 2017

Keywords

Literary Studies Literature English Impulse Silence Creature Expressivity Beckett Coetzee

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10.1057/978-1-349-93437-9_13

Cite this

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abstract = "Forms of silence can serve as a signature of ?creaturely life?: the suspended state of being in uncanny proximity with the nonhuman animal to which a subject is exposed when detached from the constitutive values and normative meanings that structure human life. The claim in this chapter is that Samuel Beckett?s Worstward Ho and J.M. Coetzee?s Life and Times of Michael K are both attentive to the estranged, elusive, ahistorical dimensions of creaturely life through the pursuit of a non-discursive state coinciding with the compulsion or solicitation to speak. In their varying ways of voicing silence, Beckett and Coetzee generate a fraternity with animals in exposing the human?s own potential intimacy with the embodied life beyond the symbolic order of language and narrative.",

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author = "Joseph Anderton",

note = "A whole world, that of nature and that of animals, is filled with silence. Nature and animals seem like protuberances of silence. ?Max Picard, The World of Silence (1948, 110)",

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doi = "10.1057/978-1-349-93437-9_13",

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'The Impulse Towards Silence': Creaturely Expressivity in Beckett and Coetzee

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