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The J. M. Coetzee Archive and the Archive in J. M. Coetzee
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Coetzee’s archive at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin is a magnet for scholars, and is reshaping ideas about what constitutes this writer’s oeuvre. Jan Wilm’s chapter reads Coetzee’s archive alongside the published works, and via ideas by Michel Foucault and Theodor W. Adorno theorizes the archive as a counter-oeuvre that is driven by dynamics similar to those in play in Coetzee’s fiction. In his engagement with genetic criticism and the dialectics of Nachlass and Vorlass he argues against a fetishization of the archive as the more authoritative text, and against viewing the archive as providing answers to the complexities of particular novels. Instead, by viewing the archive as a trope already present throughout Coetzee’s oeuvre, Wilm reads the Coetzee archive from within the fiction. Against a simplistic positivist archive use, Wilm argues for an ethical engagement with the archive, which might be productive to philosophers and literary scholars alike.
Title: The J. M. Coetzee Archive and the Archive in J. M. Coetzee
Description:
Coetzee’s archive at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin is a magnet for scholars, and is reshaping ideas about what constitutes this writer’s oeuvre.
Jan Wilm’s chapter reads Coetzee’s archive alongside the published works, and via ideas by Michel Foucault and Theodor W.
Adorno theorizes the archive as a counter-oeuvre that is driven by dynamics similar to those in play in Coetzee’s fiction.
In his engagement with genetic criticism and the dialectics of Nachlass and Vorlass he argues against a fetishization of the archive as the more authoritative text, and against viewing the archive as providing answers to the complexities of particular novels.
Instead, by viewing the archive as a trope already present throughout Coetzee’s oeuvre, Wilm reads the Coetzee archive from within the fiction.
Against a simplistic positivist archive use, Wilm argues for an ethical engagement with the archive, which might be productive to philosophers and literary scholars alike.
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