Corporeal Suffering: Performing Resistance and Resilience in Slow Man

Abstract

Abstract: Slow Man (2005), a novel about migration, dislocation, and belonging, marks Coetzee's withdrawal from the socio-political landscapes of South Africa coinciding with his move to Australia, and his preoccupation in writing fiction with the conflicting demands of representation, auto/biography, and realism. The leg amputation and home nursing of the protagonist, Paul Rayment, following an accident, introduce a discourse on the various meanings of care and the ethics of caring that also acknowledges Rayment's corporeal enfeeblement, aging, and mortality. An intersecting meta-commentary generated by Rayment's dialogue with the metafictional character Elizabeth Costello complicates Coetzee's "compromised resilient narrative" of Rayment's hesitant trajectory of resistance, adaptation, and renewal. The focus on the migrant's place in the life of the nation, represented by Rayment's French origins and his recently arrived Slovakian carer, Marijanna Jokić and her family, represents a new departure for Coetzee.