Allegories of the Bioethical: Reading J.M. Coetzee’s Diary of a Bad Year

Journal of Medical Humanities 35 (3):321-334 (2014)
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Abstract

This essay reads J.M. Coetzee’s novel, Diary of a Bad Year, as an occasion to problematize contemporary bioethical paradigms. Coetzee’s rhetorical strategies are analyzed to better understand the “scene of address” within which ethical claims can be voiced. Drawing on Foucault’s Socratic understanding of ethics as the self’s relation to itself, self-relation is explored through the rhetorical figure of catachresis. The essay ultimately argues that the ethical voice emerges when the terms—terms by which I relate to myself, to others, to my own body, and to the bodies of others—are themselves subject to catachrestic refiguration

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References found in this work

Principles of biomedical ethics.Tom L. Beauchamp - 1989 - New York: Oxford University Press. Edited by James F. Childress.
Responsibility and judgment.Hannah Arendt - 2003 - New York: Schocken Books. Edited by Jerome Kohn.
Giving an Account of Oneself.Judith Butler - 2001 - Diacritics 31 (4):22-40.

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