Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2018
Publication Title
Transnational Literature
Volume
11
Issue
1
Pages
1-19
Abstract
This essay argues that J.M. Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello stages numerical sequences strategically, dialogically, and parodically in order to call attention to the ideological weight involved in counting. Focusing on how one counts - and accounts for - human and nonhuman animal pain, I contend that the repetition of numbers in the novel works to subvert the neoliberal faith put in numbers, quantification, and data. Without succumbing to some religious-mystical numerology, this reading attempts to expose the fiction involved in the act of counting and the need to pay more attention to numerical discourse in literary fiction. In tracking these numbers throughout the novel, I draw upon the polyphonic features of the text, particularly to understand the relation of law to justice as mediated by numbers. The number three that is repeated throughout the novel invokes religious, political, and ethical traditions that work to interrogate and disrupt ubiquitous dualistic conceptions of reality. Ultimately, the essay articulates the value of counting as it relates to humanimal pain, to writing the narratively unthinkable, and to the possibility of living a good life amidst unspeakable suffering.
Original Publication Citation
Piero, M. (2018). Dialogical numbers: Counting humanimal pain in J.M. Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello. Transnational Literature, 11(1), 1-19.
Repository Citation
Piero, Mike, "Dialogical Numbers: Counting Humanimal Pain in J.M. Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello" (2018). English Faculty Publications. 79.
https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/english_fac_pubs/79
Included in
Africana Studies Commons, Literature in English, Anglophone outside British Isles and North America Commons, Modern Literature Commons
Comments
Originally published in Transnational Literature.