J.M. Coetzee’s Revisions of the Human

Kai Wiegandt is Heisenberg Fellow in the English Department of Universität Tübingen, Germany.

“This is a study that is sure to become an essential reference in Coetzee criticism. Wiegandt sheds new light on worn-out discussions and opens up fresh insights and thought-provoking questions that are bound to inspire future responses to Coetzee’s work. … this book, furthermore, does not only work as a highly valuable and illuminating companion to Coetzee’s fiction but also constitutes apowerful reflection on the value of literature and literary criticism.”(María J. López, Anglia, Vol. 140 (3-4), 2022)“J.M. Coetzee is renowned for his postmodern metafictional plots and for the philosophical richness and complexity of his texts that have found readerships around the world, often appealing to scholars and intellectuals in particular. In his study J.M. Coetzee's Revisions of the Human (2019), Kai Wiegandt engages with Coetzee's literary negotiations of the human, illuminating the transhistorical reservoir of Western philosophy … . Wiegandt's study is marked by a sense of affordance … .” (Caroline Koegler, Anglistik, Vol. 33 (3), 2022)

• 1. ​Introduction.- 2. Method and Matter of the Revisions: Coetzee’s Posthumanist Poetic.- 3. From De-Humanisation to the Minimal Human: Dusklands.- 4. The Human, the Animal and the Body- 5. Humanity and Collectivity: Nation, State, and Community.- 6. Epilogue.