Corpos mal situados: a figura do animal em Desonra e A vida dos animais, de J. M. Coetzee

Abstract

This thesis puts forth a reading of the animal figure in J. M. Coetzees Disgrace (1999) and The lives of animals (1999). The work pursues an investigation on how Coetzee challenges the frontiers of identity, and the intertwining of human and animals, as he writes non-human animals as subjects, without restraining them to anthropomorphic schemes. The research follows the process of animalization faced by Disgraces protagonist, who, after a series of destabilizing events, experiences a feeling of deprivation and impoverishment typical of non-human animals. It also seeks to understand how Elizabeth Costello, the main character of The lives of animals, after confronting dogmatic systems like the sovereignty of human reasoning or the normality of the violence perpetrated against non-human beings, brings closer both man and other living beings, in an effort to reconcile them through experience, the body, and poetry. Finally, this study attempts to evaluate the manner in which Coetzee endows poetry with the capacity of elaborate an alternative source of knowledge about animals, offering it as a kind of primitive experience. The work also explores this path of a valorization of a poetry that, although about the animal, is not limited to mere metaphors and imitations. A poetry that wields an experience grounded not on abstractions and premises, but on the encouragement of an almost physical, bodily, sensation of connection, of transversal communication, and of an agreement between man and other living beings.