Issue Details: First known date: 2020... 2020 An Unrecorded Grammar : Speaking Embodiment in J. M. Coetzee’s “In the Heart of the Country”
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'This essay seeks to understand how J. M. Coetzee's In the Heart of the Country elaborates a response to the suffering body through linguistic indeterminacy, including its formal and structural presentation of numbered and often contradictory passages and through the liminality of the narrator Magda's consciousness. Grounding the paper on the possibility that In the Heart of the Country functions through its lacunae, I argue that Magda rewrites the oppressive language she has inherited by pointing to realities words cannot grasp, including the irreducible witness of the body in pain. The body stands as an incontrovertible presence just outside the reach of language, where, in its refusal to be codified, it catalyses new, transgressive attempts at speaking. Such attempts function as a body-speech that could transform the speaking-about of Magda's monologue into the speaking-to of reciprocity. It is a language that Magda, however, ultimately fails to articulate. She remains suspended in potentiality, reading the signals "in conformations of face and hands" that communicate, incompletely, the mysteries of another's being. But perhaps the act of speaking to another must always remain poised on the brink of failure: response to the unknown of another's being requires an unrecorded grammar. Thus, in the lacunae of his unfixed text, Coetzee offers a linguistic event as response to actual suffering.' (Publication summary)
 

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Transnational Literature no. 12 November 2020 21798232 2020 periodical issue

    'Transnational Literature has been on quite a journey over the last two years, so we genuinely couldn’t be prouder to be bringing you Volume 12.

    'The journal has, as regular readers will know, evolved and adapted since its inception. Transnational Literature started with the ground-breaking work of Professor Syd Harrex who brought the study of new literatures in English to Flinders University, South Australia. Dr Gillian Dooley, prolific scholar and Research Fellow in English, developed the journal over the next decade with a hard-working, volunteer Editorial Team and the support of senior scholars on an Advisory Board drawn from institutions around the world. By 2018, the journal had reached an international audience of over 2000 readers.' (Editor's Letter, introduction)

    2020
Last amended 14 May 2021 11:27:40
https://www.transnationallitsubmissions.org/index.php/trace/article/view/103/45 An Unrecorded Grammar : Speaking Embodiment in J. M. Coetzee’s “In the Heart of the Country”small AustLit logo Transnational Literature
Subjects:
Newspapers:
    Powered by Trove
    X