DISCOURSING TRANSNATION SPACE AND LOCATING SUBJECT POSITION IN JM COETZEE’S ELIZABETH COSTELLO AND SLOW MAN: DAVID MALOUF IN CONTEXT
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.29121/shodhkosh.v5.i1.2024.2213Keywords:
Australianness, Cosmopolitanism, Hyphenated Identity, Racism, Transnation, TransnationalAbstract [English]
In the Neustadt Prize acceptance lecture (2000), David Malouf had exuded due pride as an Australian and argued that the “power of language” enables one to remap the world “so that wherever you happen to be is the center” (Le, 2019). Malouf’s statement, it is argued, embraces a conspicuous turn from cosmopolitan to transnational. Although, the transnational turn yields certain benefits which are not served in being a cosmopolitan, however, according to Bill Ashcroft, it still fails to fix a definite “subject position”. Ashcroft argues that a definable subject position can be achieved not through embracing transnational turn but being within the space which he calls “Transnation”. This article interrogates the case of JM Coetzee, the South African born Nobel Laureate (2003) who happens to be an immigrant to Australia (therefore, bearing a hyphenated identity), and also contextualizes Elizabeth Costello, a fictional character in two of Coetzee’s Australian novels, in order to discourse the transnation space and locate Costello’s subject position.
References
Ashcroft, B. (2010). Transnation. In J. Wilson, C. Sandru, & S. L. Welsh (Eds.), Rerouting the Postcolonial: New Directions for the New Millenium (pp. 72–85). Routledge.
Ashcroft, B. (2014). A Borderless World: Literature, Nation, Transnation. In Ethnic Literatures and Transnationalism. Routledge.
Ashcroft, B. (2020). Australia: Transnational or Transnation? (pp. 1–14). Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, 20(2). https://openjournals.library.sydney.edu.au/index.php/JASAL/article/download/14303/13145.
Bhabha, H. K. (1994). The Location of Culture. Routledge.
Boehmer, E, et al., editors. (2009). J.M. Coetzee in Context and Theory. Bloomsbury.
Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. (2022, April 28). "Exclusive". Encyclopedia Britannica, 20 Jul. 1998, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Exclusive-Australian-history.
Clarke, F. G. (2002). The History of Australia. Greenwood Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5040/9798400664458
Coetzee, J. M. (2000). Disgrace. Vintage Books.
Coetzee, J. M. (2008). Diary of a Bad Year. Vintage Books.
Coetzee, J. M. (2004). Elizabeth Costello. Vintage Books.
Coetzee, J. M. (2006). Slow Man. Vintage Books.
Donadio, Rachel. “Out of South Africa.” The New York Times, 16 Dec. 2007, www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/books/review/Donadio-t.html..
Gordimer, N. “The Idea of Gardening.” The New York Review of Books, 2 Feb. 1984, www.nybooks.com/articles/1984/02/02/the-idea-of-gardening. Accessed 11 Nov. 2022.
Hallemeier, K. (2013). Elizabeth Costello and Affective Cosmopolitanism. In J. M. Coetzee and the Limits of Cosmopolitanism (pp. 69–96). Palgrave Macmillan. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137346537_4
Heaney, C. (2014). “Is JM Coetzee an ‘Australian Writer’? The Answer Could Be Yes.” The Guardian, 14 Nov. www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/14/is-jm-coetzee-an-australian-writer-the-answer-could-be-yes.
Jacklin, M. (2009). The Transnational Turn in Australian Literary Studies. Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature (JASAL), Special Issue ‘Australian Literature in a Global World,’ 1–14.
Jolly, R. (2010). “‘Going to the Dogs’: ‘Humanity’ in J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace, the Lives of Animals and South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.” (pp. 37–52). Liverpool University Press eBooks, https://doi.org/10.5949/upo9781846315244.003. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5949/UPO9781846315244.003
Le, N. (2019, May 2). Who Gets to Be Australian? - the Paris Review. The Paris Review. https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/04/30/who-gets-to-be-australian/
Malouf, D. (1978). An Imaginary Life. https://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BA58357576
Parry, B. (1996). “Speech and Silence in the Fictions of J. M. Coetzee.” Critical Perspectives on J. M. Coetzee, edited by Graham Huggan and Stephen Watson, London, Macmillan Press Ltd. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24311-2_3
Wltadmin. (2022, August 17). 2000 – David Malouf. Neustadt Prizes. https://www.neustadtprize.org/2000-neustadt-prize-laureate-david-malouf/
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2024 Samim Reza
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
With the licence CC-BY, authors retain the copyright, allowing anyone to download, reuse, re-print, modify, distribute, and/or copy their contribution. The work must be properly attributed to its author.
It is not necessary to ask for further permission from the author or journal board.
This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.
