Overview

This study offers a detailed analysis of the fiction of J. M. Coetzee, including the novels of the South African and Australian periods, to demonstrate the development of Coetzee's engagement with the complexities of non-normative embodiment. In this illuminating monograph, Pawe Wojtas demonstrates the extent to which Coetzee's multifaceted depictions of disability offer a sustained critique of the ableist implications of political violence and neoliberal inclusionism alike. Exploring a wide range of notions, such as ocularnormativism, mute speech, eco-disability, disability Gothic, dismodernism, autogerontography, and bibliotherapy, Wojtas shows how Coetzee's 'disabled textuality' provokes a sustained meditation on various forms of cultural denigration of disability experience.

Full Product Details

Author:   Paweł Wojtas (Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Artes Liberales, University of Warsaw)
Publisher:   Edinburgh University Press
Imprint:   Edinburgh University Press
ISBN:  

9781399522588

ISBN 10:   1399522582
Pages:   320
Publication Date:   01 December 2025
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Availability:   Not yet available  
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Language:   English

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Introduction: Towards the Embodied Fiction of J. M. Coetzee Chapter 1. Disabled Textuality: Dusklands and In the Heart of the Country Chapter 2. Scopic Regimes, Haptic Commitments: Countering Ocularnormativism in Waiting for the Barbarians Chapter 3. Eco-Ability and Narrative Violence in Life & Times of Michael K Chapter 4. Mute Letters: Against Phonocentrism in Foe Chapter 5. Impossible Modalities, Ailing Selves: Illness, Metaphor and Selfhood in Age of Iron Chapter 6. Disability Ethics and Gothic Form in The Master of Petersburg Chapter 7. Dismodernism and Forms of Dependency in Slow Man Chapter 8. What is the World Coming to? Senility, Illness and Irony in the Costello Fictions and Diary of a Bad Year Chapter 9. Negative Capabilities: Illness Narrative as Bibliotherapy in the Jesus Novels Epilogue: Positive Incapabilities Works Cited Index

Reviews

In this first, full-length study of disability and illness in J. M. Coetzee's fiction, Pawel Wojtas explores the subject not just as theme, but as part of the textual surface and creative practice of the Nobel laureate. Informed by judicious use of Coetzee's notebooks and manuscripts, and by wide reading in cultural theory and Coetzee criticism, Wojtas offers generous, illuminating and conceptually inventive readings of the entire oeuvre.--David Attwell, University of York

Author Information

Paweł Wojtas is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Artes Liberales, University of Warsaw. He completed his MLitt degree in English Studies at the University of Stirling (2008) and a PhD in Arts and Humanities at the University of Warsaw (2012). He acted as a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of York (2018) and The Kosciuszko Foundation Research Fellow at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin (2022). His main research area involves literary representations of disability in contemporary English and related literary fiction.

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