3. Ethical Thought and the Problem of Communication: A Strategy for Reading Diary of a Bad Year

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents v
3. Introduction: Coetzee and Philosophy 1
4. Part I. People, Human Relationships, and Politics
5. 1. The Paradoxes of Power in the Early Novels of J. M. Coetzee 19
6. 2. Disgrace, Desire, and the Dark Side of the New South Africa 43
7. 3. Ethical Thought and the Problem of Communication: A Strategy for Reading Diary of a Bad Year 65
8. 4. Torture and Collective Shame 89
9. Part II. Humans, Animals, and Morality
10. 5. Converging Convictions: Coetzee and His Characters on Animals 109
11. 6. Coetzee and Alternative Animal Ethics 119
12. 7. Writing the Lives of Animals 145
13. 8. Sympathy and Scapegoating in J. M. Coetzee 171
14. 9. Against Society, Against History, Against Reason: Coetzee’s Archaic Postmodernism 197
15. 10. Coetzee’s Critique of Reason 223
16. 11. J. M. Coetzee, Moral Thinker 249
17. 12. Being True to Fact: Coetzee’s Prose of the World 269
18. Part IV. Literature, Literary Style, and Philosophy
19. 13. Truth and Love Together at Last: Style, Form, and Moral Vision in Age of Iron 293
20. 14. The Lives of Animals and the Form-Content Connection 317
21. 15. Irony and Belief in Elizabeth Costello 337
22. 16. Coetzee’s Hidden Polemic with Nietzsche 357
23. Contributors 385
24. Index 389