Voiceless

pp. 106-132

in: Carrol Clarkson, J. M. Coetzee, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009

Abstract

The title of this chapter is the name of an animal rights organization in Australia; Coetzee is their patron. The question of Voice", as we have seen in previous chapters, falls within the ambit of linguistics (the active, passive and middle voices), broader cultural and sociolin-guistic practices (Bakhtin's double-voiced and dialogic voices)¹ and Coetzee's aesthetics and ethics of writing (his notion of counter-voice). The concept of "voice" begins to take on ethical ramifications in relation to questions of subjective agency, and of the authority vested in the one who speaks or writes. The present chapter discusses a recurrent theme in Coetzee's fiction — the question of voice and voicelessness within an ethical context of human relations to animals: on what basis can one relate to animals other than human, when they are voiceless in human terms? What are the implications for one's sense of self as a rational speaking agent when one's interlocutor does not respond, or offers no reciprocal engagement in the language available to the speaker? How does one act with justice on this other's behalf? Questions such as these open onto preoccupations in recent philosophical engagements with Coetzee's work, which are perhaps best understood to be sparked by the first publication of Coetzee's 1997 Tanner Lectures, The Lives of Animals.