This week I looked at Coetzee's Slow Man and while I found the book a bit slow at first I was able to get into it and absorb some of the ideas Coetzee was getting across. The things that interested me the most in the novel was its take on history and the dynamic of the old and the new. History is set as part of the old, and is set in great peril when it comes into contact with the new. Furthermore, the novel points to the way in which the new is unnatural, or at least in a sense detached from the natural world that was part of the old. Machines can fabricate natural “looking” substitutes, but for Paul Reymant natural and originality only lies within the old. I found there to be a certain disdain for the new because it is seen as artificial and unable to tell the truth, while the old is presented as being pure and truthful. The first instance where I saw this was in chapter eight where Paul Reymant and Marijanna's daughter Ljuba have a discussion regarding his leg. Ljuba asks Paul if he has an artificial leg insisting on concept of having “screws” and Paul states, “I have no screws in me. If I had screws I would be a mechanical man. Which I am not.” (Coetzee, pg.56) Here in this phrase we see that for Paul any invasion of his body would be unnatural and he makes it a point to remark at the end that he is not, mechanical in any way, this is only the start of Paul's efforts to affirm his naturalness. Furthermore, what is important here is that the mixing of metal and flesh is seen as unnatural and so Paul can only fathom metal in a man if the man is machine, in other words a “mechanical man.” This idea is further emphasized by the story of the seamstress and the needle that Paul recalls. Paul then asks himself if “steel really [is] antipathetic to life? Can needles really enter the bloodstream?” The focus of Paul's meditation on this idea is that the steel is an invasive, and foreign being in the body, but what is most significant is Paul's inability to understand how someone made of flesh and bone, of the organic, can ignore the presence of something man-made and lifeless inhabiting their body. (Coetzee, pg. 55)
Another example of this comes in a moment where Paul is attending therapy and he is being pressed to get a prosthesis so that he may “look natural,” but Paul repeats that he “[prefers] to feel natural. (Coetzee, pg. 59) What is significant here is the idea that the mechanical has the ability to mimic the natural, but it would not be truthful to nature. In chapter nine in particular there is an emphasis on language that is associated with technology and the mechanisms of machinery. For example, Paul states that his therapist “Madeleine tells them...to re-program old and now obsolete memory systems.” (Coetzee, pg. 60) Madeleine uses words that could be easily applied to a machine, or more specifically something like a computer, because she is talking about changing the way something functions, replacing one program for a new program. Madeleine is presented as viewing her patients as having the capability to change almost seemingly at the drop of a hat. She does not make this statement explicit but she implies it with her language. The human body is set on the same level as the machine by Madeleine symbolizing the way in which the modern world pushes the natural into the mechanical trying to not simply change nature, but replace it. It is also significant that Madeleine uses the word “obsolete” because it implies that something is out of date, and so it can be said that the implication is that the natural, the body is out of date, and that it needs the aid of technology to be up to the minute. I also believe that the reference to “memory systems” is significant because in using this kind of technical languages tries to supplant and erase the organic language, it does not talk about memory as something ethereal but as something that can be stored and categorized within a system, to used as aid at later times. Paul resists this idea of “re-programming” all through out the novel, and it reminds me a lot about Disgrace and David Laurie's inability to accept the new South Africa that is unfolding in front of his eyes. Similarly, Paul resists change not simply because he is resisting the control from outside forces, but also because Paul cannot leave behind the natural world where things move at a different pace, a slower pace, much like pictures he developed in his youth. Paul's rejection of the a “new” world is a rejection of a fast changing, fast moving world, which does not allow him to go through a proper mourning process for his loss.
Another example of this comes in a moment where Paul is attending therapy and he is being pressed to get a prosthesis so that he may “look natural,” but Paul repeats that he “[prefers] to feel natural. (Coetzee, pg. 59) What is significant here is the idea that the mechanical has the ability to mimic the natural, but it would not be truthful to nature. In chapter nine in particular there is an emphasis on language that is associated with technology and the mechanisms of machinery. For example, Paul states that his therapist “Madeleine tells them...to re-program old and now obsolete memory systems.” (Coetzee, pg. 60) Madeleine uses words that could be easily applied to a machine, or more specifically something like a computer, because she is talking about changing the way something functions, replacing one program for a new program. Madeleine is presented as viewing her patients as having the capability to change almost seemingly at the drop of a hat. She does not make this statement explicit but she implies it with her language. The human body is set on the same level as the machine by Madeleine symbolizing the way in which the modern world pushes the natural into the mechanical trying to not simply change nature, but replace it. It is also significant that Madeleine uses the word “obsolete” because it implies that something is out of date, and so it can be said that the implication is that the natural, the body is out of date, and that it needs the aid of technology to be up to the minute. I also believe that the reference to “memory systems” is significant because in using this kind of technical languages tries to supplant and erase the organic language, it does not talk about memory as something ethereal but as something that can be stored and categorized within a system, to used as aid at later times. Paul resists this idea of “re-programming” all through out the novel, and it reminds me a lot about Disgrace and David Laurie's inability to accept the new South Africa that is unfolding in front of his eyes. Similarly, Paul resists change not simply because he is resisting the control from outside forces, but also because Paul cannot leave behind the natural world where things move at a different pace, a slower pace, much like pictures he developed in his youth. Paul's rejection of the a “new” world is a rejection of a fast changing, fast moving world, which does not allow him to go through a proper mourning process for his loss.
from Rolando-
ReplyDeleteVery interesting take on Slow Man and its analysis on the old and the new, especially since disabilities studies is an emerging field. This study is not only about giving a voice to a marginalized group, but about applying the perspective of the disabilities community in works such as these. I do, however, have to disagree with your notion of the new representing the new as unnatural and the old as true. I am not saying that this is not present, but it is not that simple, since truth plays such an important role. Coetzee connects the idea that truth or a more natural presence of identity is in the past is a product of a false sense of nostalgia people have for the ancient or dead. There are a multiple of references in several of his novels that address how even thinking what and where truth lies (no pun intended) is problematic. Also, this text is so heavily reliant on dis-abled body discourse. It is perhaps possible that is not a search for the natural but what makes him feel more like himself that is at issue. If he finds it in the "old", there is nothing wrong with that, especially since it is not up to us to determine what he feels. (I make this point since this is also very significant in disability studies)
Like Rolando, I found your comments on the novel very interesting. I hadn't thought of these points before. After reading your post, I started to think of some connections between what you are saying here and critical animal studies (and, so, of course, connections to _The Lives of Animals_). Paul's holding onto a sense of "authentic" "natural" "unadulterated" "uncontaminated" humanness seems naive and unrealistic (and, if we think about anti-miscegenation panics, even racist--or am I pushing this too far?). Have you read Donna Haraway's _Companion Species Manifesto_? The boundaries between human and other animals blur in tantalizing ways in that text. And your response also brought Haraway's "Cyborg Manifesto" to mind. Have you read that? Haraway, of course, is much less appalled by the prospect of cyborgs than Paul seems to be, so the two texts make an evocative counterpoint. (PS: And is Paul's desire to form a "union" with Marijana, perhaps one hopeful inidication that he is willing to break out of his endogamist mindset?)
ReplyDeleteHi Professor Barnard,
ReplyDeleteI have to say I agree with what you said, that Paul is naive for thinking he can hold onto the natural and unadulterated. I didn't mention this in my post because I thought it was getting too long, but I was particularly struck by the fact that Paul cannot wrap his head around what Drago is doing with his pictures. In other words, he cannot cope with the fact that the world is changing and that what seemed plain and natural can be made into much more complex and layered things. I feel that his vision of the natural world is kind of narrow and that he refuses to expand it. This refusal is seen in his rejection of the new and the prosthesis. The idea of the mechanical is foreign and other to Paul, its cold, and inorganic, and therefore he wants nothing to do with it because he is a being of flesh and desires. So I can definitely see what you are sayings about erasing boundaries and blurring lines. The text constantly pushes him into situations where change is called for, but like David Laurie, he constantly fights it. I also think that wanting to form a union with Marijana is a way for Coetzee to give us some hope in Paul because he so vehemently rejects change, and this shows us that there is some part of him that attempts to make an effort to break out of his endogamist mindset as you said.
Karla,
ReplyDeleteI think you've described quite well the way that Paul sees the world, and I think you describe his attitude well when you say that he believes that "natural and originality only lies within the old." I think, though, that the text itself actually calls this attitude into question at some points. I am specifically thinking of Marijana's comment towards the end of the novel when Paul is expressing his concern that Drago may have lost or sold the original Fauchery photograph. Marijana responds with "Original? . . . What is this thing, original photograph? You point camera, click, you make copy . . . So what is original? Original is copy already" (245). Her words challenge Paul's idea that the photographs have some sort of power to tell the truth. Even from the moment they were taken, they were nothing more than a copy, an imitation of the real thing, not reality itself. This calls Pauls entire veneration of the truth of the past into question.
I think it's interesting how you describe history in this texts as "set in great peril when it comes into contact with the new." Your description could easily apply to Paul himself, couldn't it? He seems to feel quite threatened by the new, whether it be a new (prosthetic) leg, or Drago's insertion of a new person in an old photograph. Paul has this great fear that he will become, as you quote, "obsolete," so he clings to the past, which he thinks of as true and unchanging, in an effort to align himself with the immortal. I find this rather ironic; it is his very disdain for the new that is making him "obsolete." By using new technology, Drago is the one who has (almost literally) inserted himself into the past, achieving more of a marriage with history than Paul does through his worship of the "original" photographs.
I do think there is some truth to the idea that Paul is living in "a fast changing, fast moving world, which does not allow him to go through a proper mourning process for his loss." Paul *does* need to take time to mourn. I think, however, that his absolute refusal to accept change is not any healthier than a rapid "reprogramming" of his life. Paul's insistence on viewing himself in terms of his old body instead of considering his new body is like making himself into one of his old photographs. No matter how much he stares at that old photograph, the past is gone, the change has happened, and all the staring and reminiscing will not bring his leg back.
-Melissa