입증할 수 없는 것으로부터 배우기 -쿳시의 『엘리자베스 코스텔로』

손영주 ( Young Joo Son ) 한국현대영미소설학회 2009 현대영미소설 Vol.16 No.3

“입증할 수 없는 것”으로부터 배우기 —쿳시의 『엘리자베스 코스텔로』

손영주 한국현대영미소설학회 2009 현대영미소설 Vol.16 No.3

Taking a cue from J. M. Coetzee's analysis of Erasmus's (non)position in the essay, “Erasmus: Madness and Rivalry,” this paper examines the question of the ethics of writing and reading in Elizabeth Costello. Coetzee's view of the limits and possibilities of the Erasmian (non)position -- meaning “off the stage of political rivalry” in the era of political turmoil -- sheds much light on the writer-protagonist Elizabeth Costello's position in the novel, as well as that of Coetzee's own in postcolonial discourses. As a writer who is notoriously elusive or silent on political matters, Coetzee has frequently been accused of political and/or moral irresponsibility. On the other hand, other critics have focused on Coetzee's postmodern metafictional writing from a different perspective, arguing that Coetzee's formal experimentalism enacts an ethics which is not assumed to be secondary to politics, but initiative of alternative politics. Drawing on recent studies in relation to ethics, particularly those about the ethics of postmodern theories, these critics emphasize that Coetzee's texts reveal the unknowability of the Other, the unbridgeable gap between self and Other, language and body, and text and world, namely, the limit of representation. Few critics, however, have noted the fact that Elizabeth Costello directs the reader's attention to the 'stages' that constantly seek to make Elizabeth's statements part of the discourses of power, and thus, deliberately foregrounds the ways in which the unsympathetic and overly rational audience simplify, misunderstand, and/or distort her language about literature, ethics, and being. Elizabeth's lectures at times sound absurd, passionate, or simply crazy, and yet, the seemingly common sensical and logical accusations against her turn out to be even more problematic in their failure to read Elizabeth's “unverifiable” yet true messages: alternative knowledge and experiences that affirm “knowing” and “being” the Other. Far from endowing Elizabeth with the authority to deliver and teach truth and ethics, the text suggests that the ethics of writing would not be possible without the existence of a reader who is willing to “listen” to the “unverifiable” through an on-going process of learning how to read. Taking a cue from J. M. Coetzee's analysis of Erasmus's (non)position in the essay, “Erasmus: Madness and Rivalry,” this paper examines the question of the ethics of writing and reading in Elizabeth Costello. Coetzee's view of the limits and possibilities of the Erasmian (non)position -- meaning “off the stage of political rivalry” in the era of political turmoil -- sheds much light on the writer-protagonist Elizabeth Costello's position in the novel, as well as that of Coetzee's own in postcolonial discourses. As a writer who is notoriously elusive or silent on political matters, Coetzee has frequently been accused of political and/or moral irresponsibility. On the other hand, other critics have focused on Coetzee's postmodern metafictional writing from a different perspective, arguing that Coetzee's formal experimentalism enacts an ethics which is not assumed to be secondary to politics, but initiative of alternative politics. Drawing on recent studies in relation to ethics, particularly those about the ethics of postmodern theories, these critics emphasize that Coetzee's texts reveal the unknowability of the Other, the unbridgeable gap between self and Other, language and body, and text and world, namely, the limit of representation. Few critics, however, have noted the fact that Elizabeth Costello directs the reader's attention to the 'stages' that constantly seek to make Elizabeth's statements part of the discourses of power, and thus, deliberately foregrounds the ways in which the unsympathetic and overly rational audience simplify, misunderstand, and/or distort her language about literature, ethics, and being. Elizabeth's lectures at times sound absurd, passionate, or simply crazy, and yet, the seemingly common sensical and logical accusations against her turn out to be even more problematic in their failure to read Elizabeth's “unverifiable” yet true messages: alternative knowledge and experiences that affirm “knowing” and “being” the Other. Far from endowing Elizabeth with the authority to deliver and teach truth and ethics, the text suggests that the ethics of writing would not be possible without the existence of a reader who is willing to “listen” to the “unverifiable” through an on-going process of learning how to read.

거울 뉴런과 문학 2: 쿳시의 『엘리자베스 코스텔로』에 나타난 공감의 인지신경과학과 그 윤리적 함의

백진 한국동서비교문학학회 2021 동서 비교문학저널 Vol.- No.56

For all ages, sympathy has been emphasized as the source of human morality, sociality, and culture. The science of sympathy made a breakthrough when the Giacomo Rizzolatti team in Italy revealed that humans have mirror neuron system, a neural mechanism that enables us to read other people’s minds and feel sympathy. Through neuroscientific research on “mirror neuron,” which is a neural basis of sympathy, and cognitive scientific research that explains the work of the mind as “embodied” cognition, this paper aims to examine the principles of sympathy and its ethical implications in J. M. Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello (2003). Costello, the main character in this work, suggests “sympathetic imagination” as the source of our ethical behavior and asserts that there are no limits to it. However, the fact that (the silenced or animal) others do not have (human) languages symbolizes in itself an absolute limit to sympathetic imagination. This limitation suggests the limitation in rational reasoning. It reflects a cognitive neuroscientific perspective: Human beings’ autonomous ability of reasoning, which western classical philosophy emphasized as an element that distinguishes humans from animals, has, in fact, developed as a form of animalistic reason based on physical ability―in other words, the reason is something generated and refined through sensory and motor systems of the human brain and body. In this work, Costello can only sympathize with the pains of others through “embodied” language and “embodied” experience. In short, Elizabeth Costello proved the possibility and usefulness of cognitive neuroscience in literary interpretation by manifesting the leap of sympathetic imagination through an unconscious pathway called mirror neuron and its ethical potential.

20세기 초반의 미국과 21세기 초반의 미국

장시기 한국로렌스학회 2008 D.H. 로렌스 연구 Vol.16 No.2

In the early 20th century D. H. Lawrence says, in Studies in Classic American Literature, "America is a great melting pot" America is "away from everything That's why most people have come to America, and still do come To get away from everything they are and have been" In this respect Lawrence finds out "the spirit of place" different from European modern thoughts in th classic American literature including Benjamin Franklin, Fenimore Cooper, Edgar Allen Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman and so on But in the early 21st century Peter Weir, an Australian cinema director, shows the flight of Truman Burbank in 'The Truman Show' from the Seahaven Island Township which is symbolized as "the only world" in the Americanized post-modern world As Lawrence finds out the American "spirit of place", we think of American people as a different way of life from European modern thoughts But after World War Ⅱ America has been liked to the modern European way of life After all, Truman doubts his world and escapes through the danger of death from the Seahaven Island which was "all he'd ever known and as real to him as ours is to us" Comparing to Peter Weir, John M. Coetzee is, in Elizabeth Costello, going one step forward the trans-modern figure who is an Australian female writer, Elizabeth Costello She is "a writer, born in 1928", who has "left behind the territory" in which the modern white European were And she is a person who lives "in the far territory", where Lawrence finds out "the spirit of place" in the old classic American literary texts But most Americans don't understand her world and will not appreciate on her way of life So we have to try find out "the spirit of place", in which Lawrence thought of America as the different way of life from the modern European thoughts, not in America but in the present Australian and South African white writers