Writing the Postscript in J. M. Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello & “The Return of the Language Gene” (novel extract)

Abstract

The theoretical component of this thesis in Creative Writing investigates the form and function of the Postscript in J. M. Coetzee's 2003 novel, Elizabeth Costello. In Tarrying with the Negative, Slavoj Zizek explains that, for Lacan, 'sexuality is the effect on the living being of the impasses which emerge when it gets entangled in the symbolic order, i.e., the effect on the living body of the deadlock or inconsistency that pertains to the symbolic order qua order of universality' (56). I argue that the ways in which Coetzee deals with the problem of the novel's conclusion demonstrates two different relations to what Sigi Jottkandt, in her account of Alain Badiou's conception of love, has c..