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Allegories of the Bioethical: Reading J.M. Coetzee’s Diary of a Bad Year

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Abstract

This essay reads J.M. Coetzee’s novel, Diary of a Bad Year, as an occasion to problematize contemporary bioethical (and neoliberal) paradigms. Coetzee’s rhetorical strategies are analyzed to better understand the “scene of address” within which ethical claims can be voiced. Drawing on Foucault’s Socratic understanding of ethics as the self’s relation to itself, self-relation is explored through the rhetorical figure of catachresis. The essay ultimately argues that the ethical voice emerges when the terms—terms by which I relate to myself, to others, to my own body, and to the bodies of others—are themselves subject to catachrestic refiguration.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Canada Research Chair in Rhetoric and Ethics, Department of English Language and Literature, Carleton University, 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, ON, K1S 5B6, Canada

    Stuart J. Murray

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  1. Stuart J. Murray
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Correspondence to Stuart J. Murray.

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Murray, S.J. Allegories of the Bioethical: Reading J.M. Coetzee’s Diary of a Bad Year . J Med Humanit 35, 321–334 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-014-9273-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-014-9273-9

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