Mike Marais Mike Marais i(A132643 works by)
Gender: Male
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Works By

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1 The Incurious Seeker : Waiting, and the Search for the Stranger in the Fiction of Samuel Beckett and J.M. Coetzee Mike Marais , 2014 single work criticism
— Appears in: MediaTropes , vol. 4 no. 2 2014; (p. 6-30) 'This article argues against Patrick Hayes’s assertion that the principal difference between Samuel Beckett’s and J.M. Coetzee’s writing lies in the former’s solipsism and the latter’s attempt to imagine the ‘good community.’ I demonstrate that the search for the lost self that is thematized in much of Beckett’s fiction is a search for that from which the seeker has been estranged by community. At the same time, I contend that this Beckettian quest is also present in Coetzee’s writing, where it takes the form of a search for the lost, abandoned, or unborn child. The difference, though, is that, in Coetzee’s work, the search for this stranger is inextricably related to the presence of community’s outsider: the foreigner. In order to find the lost child, the seeker has to see the foreigner not as a foreigner, and therefore the bearer of the differences through which community constructs itself, but as a stranger. In other words, an unlimited form of hospitality is required of the seeker. This ethic of hospitality, which is closely related to the notion of waiting in Beckett’s writing, cannot but threaten community since the foreigner can only be received as a stranger by disabling the differences that enable community. In this argument, then, a community is only ‘good’ if it constantly calls itself into question and thereby renders itself incomplete.' (Publication abstract)
1 Through a Sheet of Glass : The Ethics of Reading in Peter Carey's Oscar and Lucinda Erica Lombard , Mike Marais , 2013 single work criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Literary Studies , vol. 29 no. 1 2013; (p. 50-66) 'This article explores the epistemological implications of one of the most striking features in Peter Carey's Oscar and Lucinda ([1988]1997): its systematic frustration of the expectations of its readers. Through an examination of its use of narratorial deception and its skilful deployment of irony, the article argues that the novel prevents readers from occupying a detached position in relation to it and its themes. Particular attention is given to its concern with the provisional nature of human ways of seeing, exemplified by the metaphor of glass that is developed throughout the novel. Oscar and Lucinda compels readers to reflect on the subject position they take up in relation to it, and, in so doing, on their implication in cultural systems of knowledge that seek to contain and eradicate what is deemed unruly. The article suggests, ultimately, that the ethical project in Oscar and Lucinda is performative in nature, and that its success relies on the extent to which it is able to alert readers to the limitations of their ways of knowing, and, consequently, the importance of respecting the otherness of others.' (Publisher's abstract)
1 1 y separately published work icon Secretary of the Invisible : The Idea of Hospitality in the Fiction of J. M. Coetzee Mike Marais , Amsterdam New York (City) : Rodopi , 2009 Z1687411 2009 single work criticism
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