ࡱ> JLIa Jjbjbtt /XhD6  6         N P P P P P P , R#|      | N   N N N  "  N N r~r N N N N H 8 N N 0 N N N N 66 66 Compassion and Metamorphosis in J.M. Coetzees Disgrace In a review of J.M. Coetzees series of fictional lectures, The Lives of Animals, Ian Hacking wonders if his most recent work on the subject of animals represents a departure from allegory. Though, as he suggests, a novel like Disgrace invites allegorical interpretation, it nevertheless signals what appears to be an emerging preference for realism. He notes a rather principled abstention from metaphor in a novel where dogs [take] center stage. He states, when Coetzee is writing about dogs, he first of all means dogs. Hacking correlates Coetzees interest in realism with a desire to articulate, in austere, unsentimental terms, what it might mean for us to sympathize with animals: Coetzee has become the artistic voice of those who, almost against their reason, begin to feel bound to our fellow animals. He speaks for a felt sympathy between some people and at least some animals. Sympathy between (not for) may be the primary message of his most recent book The Lives of Animals. Not that it makes much sense to talk of a primary message from such a many-messaged multilayered messenger. Hacking is right to qualify the type of sympathy Coetzee ostensibly advocates. Sympathy for animals would seem to indicate a propositional attitude that depends upon a tacit invocation of humanistic concepts. It is an a priori stance that is not only patronizing but functions to preclude sympathy between humans and animals. Though Hacking is right to coordinate sympathy with realism, I believe he overlooks the possibility of a third term that might provide an explanatory link between the ethical and the aesthetic dimensions of Coetzees most recent work on the non-human: metamorphosis. In this short paper, I wish to show how, for Coetzee, metamorphosis is a process that lends itself to sympathy with animals. Furthermore, I argue that metamorphosis, as it is represented in Disgrace, is the unanticipated result of an encounter with non-human others that chastens Enlightenment concepts of subjectivity that posit the autonomy of reason and the will. Before I begin to discuss Disgrace, let me briefly outline two philosophical positions on the passions that are, to my mind, crucially important to an understanding of the type of compassion Coetzee has been investigating in his most recent work: the first, from Descartes The Passions of the Soul; the second, from Spinozas Ethics. In Article 148, That the exercise of virtue is a supreme remedy for the Passions, Descartes suggests that the practice of virtue which I take to be roughly correlated with rationality can effectively shield the soul from the onslaught of the passions, which are generally represented as pathological in the treatise. He states: In order that the soul may thus have what it takes to be content, it needs only follow virtue diligently. For anyone who has lived in such a way that his conscience cannot reproach him for ever having failed to do anything he judged to be best (which is what I call following virtue here) derives a satisfaction with such power to make him happy that the most vigorous assaults of the Passions never have enough power to disturb the tranquility of the soul. Descartes thus assumes that the subject, fully equipped with rational knowledge of the passions, can regulate them in accordance with a rather abstract notion of happiness: or what he refers to as the tranquility of the soul. Spinoza, however, dismisses the assumption that the subject can ever have an adequate idea of happiness. In Part Four of the Ethics, Of Human Bondage or the Strength of the Emotions, he says: Human infirmity in moderating and checking the emotions I name bondage: for, when a man is prey to his emotions, he is not his own master, but lies at the mercy of fortune: so much so, that he is often compelled, while seeing that which is better for him, to follow that which is worse. We are said to be passive, when something arises in us, whereof we are only a partial cause, something which cannot be deduced solely from the laws of nature. We are passive therefore, in so far as we are a part of Nature, which cannot be conceived by itself without other parts. The force whereby a man persists in existing is limited, and is infinitely surpassed by the power of external causes. Spinoza does suggest that experience can help us to learn how to exercise our reason against the passions so as to live wisely and in accordance with a constantly updated notion of the good. But the passage above suggests, without recourse to judgments of value, that the passions, for better or worse, connect us with Nature, of which we are merely a part. Whereas Descartes believes that rational judgment can protect us from the suffering passion engenders, Spinoza is more skeptical. Indeed, in light of this juxtaposition, one wonders whether it is wise to avoid what the passions may tell us about our embeddedness within the natural world. As Coetzees Elizabeth Costello states, with respect to the attitude towards suffering represented by Descartes: Cogito ergo sum, he famously said. It is a formula I have always been uncomfortable with. It implies that a living being that does not do what we call thinking is somehow second class. To thinking, cogitation, I oppose fullness, embodiedness, the sensation of being not a consciousness of yourself as a ghostly reasoning machine thinking thoughts, but on the contrary the sensation a heavily affective sensation of being a body with limbs that have extension in space, of being alive to the world. This fullness contrasts starkly with Descartes key state, which has an empty feel to it: the feel of a pea rattling around in a shell. For the remainder of this short paper, I wish to narrate a story about how and possibly why it is that a character, who is initially in thrall to Descartes key state, becomes impassioned by a kind of suffering that compels him to identify with the plight of animals. It is in and through this identification that he learns to accept his fate as a mortal being, and by extension, love beings that have a share in it. For those of you who may be unfamiliar with Disgrace, I provide a brief summary of the events leading up to what I take to be an exemplary moment of compassion. The novel begins with a portrait of David Lurie, an aging professor of literature, who has disgraced himself by sexually exploiting a young female student. When the university discovers the affair, he is subjected to a ritual of public humiliation that causes him to seek solace in the country with his daughter, Lucy, from whom he is apparently estranged. Its worth stating that, at this point in the novel, David is characterized as a man who is disconcerted to realize he is utterly without passion, ostensibly incapable of love, and has been so for a considerable period of time. It appears as though his personality has ossified and, in spite of his desire to reconnect with his daughter, he has no reason to believe he can change. The narrator describes his condition as follows: He knows too much about himself. He [is] cold, surly, impatient to be alone. That is his temperament. His temperament is not going to change, he is too old for that. His temperament is fixed, set. The skull, followed by the temperament: the two hardest parts of the body. (p. 2) Suffice to say, David appears to be a quite unsympathetic character. The reader is almost compelled to deny David compassion as much as he doggedly cleaves to his dour, solipsistic, philosophical outlook. But this begins to change when we witness, through David, an event so terrible and obscene as to virtually defy description. Not long after David becomes reacquainted with Lucy, three South African men break onto the scene and, after killing several watchdogs, proceed into Lucys home, lock David in a bathroom after setting him on fire, and take turns raping Lucy. Not long afterwards David is stunned to realize that, in spite of his entreaties for her to pursue legal recourse, Lucy remains committed to a position of passivity on the matter. After several arguments in which David demands some sort of rational explanation for her inaction, he finally shows signs that he is willing to yield to the authority of Lucys disarmingly enigmatic grief: How humiliating, he says finally. Such high hopes, and to end like this. Yes, I agree, it is humiliating. But perhaps that is what I must learn to accept. To start at ground level. With nothing. Not with nothing but. With nothing. No cards, no property, no rights, no dignity. Like a dog. Yes, like a dog. (p. 205) Though it is not precisely clear what has enabled David to begin to identify with Lucys passionate and apparently irrational commitment to passivity, I wish to suggest that his terse summary of her condition Like a dog indicates a burgeoning capacity for compassion that has been altogether lacking up to this point in the novel. Moreover, it is an indication of a rudimentary awareness what I wish to term metamorphosis of the awesome responsibility the condition of disgrace generates and possibly demands from subjects who for reasons that are immediately opaque feel compelled to change. After Davids illicit affair with Melanie Isaacs is discovered by his colleagues, his stubborn refusal to offer a conventional confession of guilt is a fairly accurate measure of his failure to work through the implications of his transgression. For instance, his recalcitrance to change is indexed by a host of impassive and cool philosophical explanations as to why, for him, the possibility of a meaningful confession is irrelevant. But after Lucys subjection to humiliation, the pain of recognition cannot be delayed, so that Davids vehement desire for her to seek conventional justice is vexed by a sense of his own complicity with an historical legacy of injustice that is productive of the very violence to which she is vulnerable. What David knows, albeit very dimly, is that if he wishes to be fully sentient to his daughters suffering, he must submit himself to the identity crisis the condition of disgrace requires. This would be to know what it is like to be a dog, not in an abstract, philosophical way, but in a fully embodied manner. But how does one come to know what it is like to have everything that marks you as human taken from you? When Lucy suggests she must learn to accept a life without cards, property, rights, or dignity, she conjures what, at a glance, takes the appearance of a utopian vision of society. It seems fair to assume Coetzee is alluding to Shakespeares The Tempest, in which Gonzalo lists the attributes of an ideal commonwealth by negation. The allusion is remarkably complex in its symbolic connotations as Shakespeare is himself alluding to Montaignes The Cannibals but it should suffice to note that Lucys statements indicate a reflexive irony on the part of her author. It signifies a refusal of a society that is, to her mind, dystopic inasmuch as so-called civil society has imploded under the weight of historical injustice. Hence her seemingly irrational, albeit profoundly moral desire to passively endure the violent consequences of injustice; which is why David ultimately feels compelled to recognize why his demand for rational, which is to say, legal expedients, to offset her pain is represented as insentient and misguided. But before David can fully grasp the full significance of his insensitivity, he finds himself strangely drawn to animals, dogs in particular. It seems that, in order for him to recuperate from his estrangement from Lucy, he himself must learn to identify with the condition of an animal, a state of being to which she has been reduced, and yet seems absurdly bound to embody with such passionate intensity. Davids initial attraction to dogs is disconcerting precisely to the extent that it fails to embody the type of compassion they elicit from Lucy. In the beginning of the novel, David expresses his ambivalence with respect to the sentiments they arouse in her. Lucy senses he disapproves of her commitment to animal welfare, as it would seem to undermine his ambition for her to live up to his expectations. She states, It is true. [Animals] are not going to lead me to a higher life, and the reason is, there is no higher life. This is the only life there is. Which we share with animals (74). David replies, albeit with polite condescension: Yes, I agree, this is the only life there is. As for animals, by all means let us be kind to them. But let us not lose perspective. We are of a different order of creation from the animals. Not higher, necessarily, just different. (p. 74) At this point it is difficult to discern who is being more realistic on the matter. Lucy, as she suggests, is averse to adopting a philosophical position on animals, or what David patronizingly refers to as perspective. But it is worth mentioning that Davids rather cool Parnassian outlook is complicated by a measure of perversity. Whereas Lucy tends to see dogs, for instance, as they are, David is inclined to perceive them, not as sentient, vulnerable, and real, but in accordance with the demands of his pathology. Davids public humiliation at the hands of his colleagues at the university is a painful reminder that his past sexual transgressions utterly exceed the bounds of social propriety. His sense of himself as a figure of excess is exacerbated when he, for reasons he can only dimly fathom, decides to volunteer at a poorly funded, but deftly managed animal clinic, which is run by Lucys good friend, Bev Shaw. Bevs task, as she sees it, is to euthanize unwanted animals in a manner consistent with their perceived dignity. When David is faced with the utter destitution of their lives, he is reminded of the way in which his sexual proclivities which are, by the way, infused with a considerable degree of self-loathing render him, in the eyes of others, disgraceful. To complicate matters, sexual desire, in a man of his age and temperament, is viscerally coordinated with an apprehension of mortality. Thus when he witnesses Bev preparing to administer the quietus to these forlorn creatures, he is undone by a despair that is expressed via a sentimental, literary pun. He says to himself: The dogs are brought to the clinic because they are unwanted: because we are too menny (p. 146). Dogs? Too menny? Too human? Too miserable? The allusion to Hardys Jude the Obscure powerfully suggests that, in spite of his pretensions to stoic rationality, his identity has become confused, not with animals per se, but with a metaphor: a metaphor, no less, that posits the animal as a concept of fallen humanity. That said, David is not prepared to accept the fate of these creatures. To do so would be to accept and take responsibility for the fact of his own mortality; which may explain why he feels compelled and thus chagrined to find himself vainly attempting to honor the corpses of dead animals. After he witnesses a group of workmen breaking the bones of animals to prepare them for incineration, he decides to intervene. He loads the corpses intact, one by one, onto the incinerator as the men look askance in puzzlement. He reflects: Why have I taken on this job? To lighten the burden on Bev Shaw? For that it would be enough to drop the bags at the dump and drive away. For the sake of the dogs? But the dogs are dead; and what do dogs know of honour and dishonour anyway? For himself, then. For his idea of the world, a world in which men do not use shovels to beat corpses into a more convenient shape for processing. (p. 146) Macabre and discomfiting as this ritual may be, it nevertheless illustrates that David, selfish and cold by temperament, has been transformed, to greater and lesser degrees by a passion that comes unbidden and unauthorized, and to which he is profoundly beholden. His thoughts suggest, however, that passion can provide instruction and encouragement. Quite simply, in Davids case, it makes him better, more sentient and alive to a world of suffering and horror to which, as this novel powerfully suggests, we ignore at great peril. In the final scene, David shows signs that he is prepared to embody, in a remarkably courageous manner, the kind of hope and love for this world the only one there is, the one we share with animals that modestly intimates the possibility of a better one. Bev and David are finishing up their work in the clinic late in the afternoon. She asks if he is ready to let go of a dog to which he has become especially attached: Bearing him in his arms like a lamb, he re-enters the surgery. I thought you would save him for another week, says Bev Shaw. Are you giving him up? Yes, I am giving him up. (220) This, without doubt, is a difficult ending to a most difficult book. But it is, I think, crucial to ask what it is, precisely, David has chosen to abandon. Within the constraints of the world represented on the page, David is compelled, by force of conscience, to give up the animal as a sentimental object of yearning, as a metaphor for a world that, if one is unwary, perniciously conduces to the status quo. But what is left in the wake of the dissolution of his fancy is a non-human world, real, sentient, alive and mysterious, of which humans just so happen to be a part.  Ian Hacking, Our Fellow Animals, The New York Review of Books, Volume 47, Number 11, June 29, 2000, p. 2.  Hacking, p. 2.  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